The goal of this project is to facilitate and provide technical support for the estuary/ocean subgroup (EOS) and the Expert Regional Technical Group (ERTG) for estuary habitat restoration, as organized under the federal Columbia Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Program (CEERP).  The project will also investigate CEERP restoration design challenges, provide technical support for BPA’s tributary research, monitoring, and evaluation (RME) program, and analyze particular FCRPS operations to protect salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act.  Overall, this project will aid the action agencies in estuary-related aspects of implementation of the 2008 Biological Opinion (BiOp) on operation of the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS) (National Marine Fisheries Service 2008 ).

Comprehensive research, monitoring, and evaluation (RME) and estuary habitat restoration by the Action Agencies (Bonneville Power Administration [BPA] and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [Corps]), as stipulated in the 2008 BiOp, are ongoing in earnest in the lower Columbia River and estuary (LCRE).  Specifically, the BiOp’s Reasonable and Prudent Alternative (RPA) action 37 called for the Action Agencies to convene the ERTG to use “…habitat metrics to determine the estimated change in survival…” resulting from off-site mitigation actions in the lower river and estuary.  RPA actions 58-61 deal directly with estuary RME.  The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been contracted annually by BPA to facilitate the EOS since 2002 and the ERTG since 2009.  This work also includes technical support and facilitation for the CEERP adaptive management process.

Implementation of restoration projects in the CEERP restoration program has identified design challenges regarding the effectiveness of certain restoration techniques.  These challenges can adversely affect timelines of individual restoration project engineering designs, and result in inadequate information for cost-benefit analysis.  Moreover, there is a need for program-scale information developed from multiple sources and ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest and disseminated to support restoration planners.  These types of restoration design challenges have not typically been monitored as part of the CEERP action effectiveness monitoring and research.  Therefore, focused investigations of specific design challenges is warranted.