BPA Project Number:  2003-011-00
CR-116980
Performance/Budget Period: September 15, 2009 – September 14, 2010

Technical Contact/Project Lead:  Catherine Corbett
Lower Columbia River Estuary Partnership
811 SW Naito Parkway, Suite 410
Portland, Oregon  97204
Phone: (503) 226-1565 Ext. 240
Fax:  (503) 226-1580
howard@lcrep.org

Contracting Contact: Tom Argent
Technical Contracts Administrator
Lower Columbia River Estuary Partnership
811 SW Naito Parkway, Suite 410
Portland, Oregon  97204
Phone: (503) 226-1565 Ext. 242
argent@lcrep.org
Fax:  (503) 226-1580

BPA Project Manager:  Tracey Yerxa
Bonneville Power Administration
905 NE 11th Avenue
Portland, Oregon  97208
Phone:  (503) 230-4738
Fax:  (503) 230-4564
tyerxa@bpa.gov


Background

The Lower Columbia River Estuary Partnership (Estuary Partnership) Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (Management Plan), completed in 1999, calls for 16,000 acres of habitat to be restored in the lower Columbia River and estuary.  The 2000 Biological Opinion on the Federal hydropower system adopted this goal and identified actions pursuant to it.  The goal, once achieved, will restore 50% of what has been lost since settlement. Since 2000, the Estuary Partnership has been implementing a habitat restoration program that includes funding from Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  The program includes on-the-ground restoration, development of a regional habitat prioritization framework for prioritizing restoration projects, action effectiveness monitoring to determine the efficacy of restoration actions, creation of scientifically-based evaluation criteria to evaluate project proposals, and the establishment of an infrastructure for soliciting, developing, selecting, and funding priority restoration projects.  To implement this program, Estuary Partnership staff work regularly with and rely on the Estuary Partnership’s Science Work Group, a committee of technical experts from throughout the region from the public and private sectors with specific knowledge in related sciences. The geographic scope of this program is within the study area of the Estuary Partnership, and encompasses the lower 146 river miles of the Columbia River from Bonneville Dam to the Pacific Ocean, including the tidally-influenced portions of its tributaries. The onset of the program coincided with the completion of the report “An Ecosystem-Based Approach to Habitat Restoration Projects with Emphasis on Salmonids in the Columbia River Estuary”. The Estuary Partnership’s habitat restoration program was designed, in part, to meet several of the recommendations of this report, most notably:

•Finalize the proposed project selection guidelines
•Prioritize restoration projects that promote the long-term sustainability of ecosystem function and structure at the landscape scale wherever possible
•Perform effectiveness monitoring for implemented projects and develop methods to evaluate cumulative effects of multiple projects; and
•Establish a data management system for Columbia River and estuary habitat restoration. (Johnson et al., 2003)

This statement of work describes the work elements, milestones and deliverables for the Habitat Restoration Program efforts that will be implemented from September 15, 2009 to September 14, 2010.

Review of Prior Work

The Estuary Partnership’s habitat restoration program remains the only restoration program focused on the mainstem of the Columbia River estuary (CRE).  Through the program the Estuary Partnership established a competitive review and selection process for project proposals; refined and used a rigorous set of project selection criteria; developed a habitat restoration prioritization framework for comparing potential uplift from projects; established an action effectiveness monitoring program; completed an inventory of shoreline condition, developed a system of reference sites and implemented more than 50 restoration projects that resulted in nearly 4,000 acres protected and/or restored and over 26 linear miles of shoreline reconnected or enhanced.  

While past restoration efforts in the lower Columbia River and estuary have been successful and progress has been made restoring estuarine habitat, much remains to be accomplished. Since 1999, more than 70 habitat restoration projects of various types and sizes have been implemented in the lower Columbia River. Using BPA, NOAA, and EPA funds, the Estuary Partnership has funded the restoration or acquisition of nearly 4,000 acres of habitat critical to ESA-listed species. When partner’s projects are added to this inventory, the number of acres restored or protected increases to over 13,000 acres. However, the next wave of restoration projects is likely to require larger, more complicated projects that require changes in the way restoration is approached to ensure that future restoration efforts are successful.

Two key challenges the Estuary Partnership and partners have identified include access to technical assistance and community and landowner relationship building. Many local governments, watershed councils, conservation districts, and other entities lack the resources necessary to design, secure financing and implement complicated, large scale habitat restoration projects. Designing complex restoration projects requires significant staff resources and funding as well as technical expertise. Limited resources may hinder the ability of organizations to develop quality project proposals, which can require several different areas of technical expertise, or manage existing projects. As such, projects with significant habitat uplift may not be developed or implemented due to a lack of access to technical assistance. Hence, the Estuary Partnership began providing technical assistance to local entities through this contract in FY08.

To be successful, habitat restoration and protection projects in the region must complement community and landowner goals. Restoration practitioners must understand community priorities, develop relationships and build trust with the community and landowners, and subsequently work to maintain good relationships with them in the long term. Resources for developing and maintaining community relationships are often relegated to a lower funding priority, and major funding entities active in the lower Columbia River area are often reluctant to fund the non-capital costs of restoration projects. This often results in smaller, less complicated projects that are developed and implemented on an opportunistic rather than strategic basis.  The Estuary Partnership is bridging the gap between funders and restoration partners to bring focus on important community and land owner considerations.

During the past several years, the Estuary Partnership has developed key tools, including the Columbia River Estuary ecosystem classification system (from the Ecosystem Monitoring Project #200301700), habitat restoration prioritization framework and shoreline condition inventory. These tools are geared toward being able to identify key locations for habitat restoration and protection to aid in the recovery of ESA listed salmon in the estuary and restoration of ecosystem structure and function. The Estuary Partnership is using these tools in coordination with the Action Agencies and others to identify high priority areas for habitat acquisition, restoration, or creation. The program goal is funding projects that are developed, designed and implemented strategically in those areas where the greatest uplift for ecosystem restoration and salmon recovery can be achieved, while at the same time being able to opportunistically fund some key projects that may have important ecological benefits.

Work Efforts for September 15, 2009 to September 14, 2010

The Estuary Partnership will continue to use and enhance the habitat restoration prioritization framework in restoration project selection. This framework provides a tiered method of assessing potential project success at a site specific and a system-wide scale. Based on existing data it provides a defensible method of comparing site function and structure at a system-wide scale using various disturbance metrics. It also allows the comparisons across specific projects, possible changes in function, likelihood of success, and the size of projects to determine which projects provide the most uplift. This approach strengthens restoration decision-making and emphasizes an ecosystem-based approach to site selection.  The Estuary Partnership will also incorporate the Columbia River Estuary Ecosystem Classification into their project development, prioritization, and selection process.  

The 2008 Draft Biological Opinion includes a Reasonable and Prudent Alternative (RPA) to “evaluate the effects of selected individual habitat restoration actions at project sites relative to reference sites and evaluate post-restoration trajectories based on project-specific goals and objectives” (RPA 60, Appendix A, NMFS, 2008). Hence, the Estuary Partnership will continue the Reference Site project. The study has multiple purposes. Restoration project effectiveness can be measured by comparing the restoration site to a reference site of similar habitat type in close proximity.  Data collected at reference sites provide a characterization of different, relatively unaltered habitats within the study area. These environmental conditions can be used as targets for restoration sites to improve habitat restoration success. In particular, information characterizing the elevation, soil, and inundation range required by native tidal wetland vegetation is critical for designing successful restoration projects. Ultimately, this network of reference sites will provide resource managers a means of analyzing and comparing older habitat restoration project sites with those just coming on line, to assess effectiveness not only at the site scale but of the coordinated inter-agency estuary-wide habitat protection/restoration program as called for in the estuary RME plan.

Also in response to RPA 60, the Estuary Partnership has implemented action effectiveness monitoring based on the plan for “Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation for the Federal Columbia River Estuary Program” (Johnson et. al 2008) in summer 2008. The Estuary Partnership, with input from the Estuary and Oceanic Subgroup (EOS) and Science Work Group, identified 4 pilot sites (Mirror Lake, Sandy River Delta, Scappoose Bottomlands, and Fort Clatsop). Sites were chosen to represent different restoration activities (culvert enhancement to improve fish passage; large wood installation; revegetation and cattle exclusion; and culvert removal for tidal reconnection), different habitats (bottomland forest, riparian forest, emergent wetland, and brackish wetland), and different geographic reaches of the river (reaches H, G, F, and A, ranging from tidal freshwater in reach H, the Columbia River Gorge, to saltwater intrusion in reach A, Astoria area). Action effectiveness monitoring partners are implementing the Roegner et al. (2009) protocols, which were designed for estuary-wide action effectiveness research, and are collecting data on parameters such as water quality, sediment accretion, channel cross-sections, vegetation cover, vegetation planting success, salmon, and salmon prey. During this contract period, action effectiveness monitoring will continue at these sites and include winter sampling events.

During 2009-2010, the Estuary Partnership will provide engineering, design, hydrogeology and other technical assistance to restoration practitioners. Technical assistance will reduce upfront risks to and address the often limited resources of Watershed Councils, land trusts and others who implement habitat restoration projects. Technical assistance will include developing conceptual designs for restoration projects, reviewing initial restoration project conceptual designs, identifying data needs for project engineering designs, and estimating project implementation costs. We anticipate these resources will improve project designs, reduce uncertainties in implementation, and reduce unanticipated construction issues.

A restoration subcommittee of the Estuary Partnership’s Science Work Group, a regional team of technical experts, will continue to meet regularly to discuss on-going and potential projects to ensure coordination and technical exchange.  The subcommittee will discuss gaps in restoration type and locations; pros and cons of techniques; logistical and long-term maintenance issues and ways to improve restoration programs in the CRE. Estuary Partnership staff will continue to compile information from partners quantifying acres and riverine miles restored; types of restoration; costs; success and failures and other information. The information collected through these meetings and from Estuary Partnership staff will be compiled into a central database and project descriptions and maps made publicly available on the Estuary Partnership website.

To aid development and implementation of AA expanded habitat program,  project selection and final decision making, and RME requirements the AAs and the Estuary Partnership will work collaboratively to determine how many, where, and who will participate in all field visits conducted under this contract.  Participants could include AA staff, management and contractors, regional technical experts, scientists, elected officials, members or staff of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council (Council), and/or  others. The AAs and the Estuary Partnership will meet periodically to collaboratively make decisions and plan field visits.  

The AAs will work in coordination with the Estuary Partnership, regional experts and others to accomplish the following:
(1)Continue the success of the habitat restoration program for the lower Columbia River and estuary (Bonneville Dam to mouth of river) and support efforts to move towards strategic project implementation.
(2)Identify and characterize reference sites for action effectiveness research in the CRE.
(3)Evaluate the effects of selected individual habitat restoration actions at project sites relative to reference sites and evaluate post-restoration trajectories based on project-specific goals and objectives.
(4)Provide technical assistance to restoration partners to reduce upfront risks and address the limited resources of watershed councils, land trusts and others pursuing habitat restoration projects.
(5)Ensure long term support and coordination of restoration activities and techniques through regular meetings of restoration practitioners through site visits, planned and arranged in close collaboration and coordination with Action Agency staff.
(6)Conduct project development work and support project development efforts by partners to ensure restoration activities are moving toward a more concerted, strategic method of ecosystem restoration

The outcome of these combined approaches is a coordinated restoration program at both the program and project level that provides a high likelihood of sustainable project success over the long term.