BPA Project Number:  2003-011-00
CR-365784
Performance/Budget Period: October 1, 2023 – September 30, 2025

Technical Contact/Project Lead:  Catherine Corbett
Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership
400 NE 11th Ave.
Portland, OR 97232-2714
Phone: (503) 226-1565
Fax: (503) 226-1580
ccorbett@estuarypartnership.org

Administrative Contact: Connor Kerns
Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership
400 NE 11th Ave.
Portland, OR 97232-2714
Phone: (503) 226-1565
Fax: (503) 226-1580
ckerns@estuarypartnership.org

BPA Project Manager:  Anne Creason
Bonneville Power Administration
905 NE 11th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97208
Phone: (503) 230-3859
amcreason@bpa.gov

Background
There are two contracts associated with this Project:  1) Direct implementation (this contract)- for restoration projects identified, designed, constructed and monitored for effectiveness by Estuary Partnership staff and for those projects where Estuary Partnership act as subcontractors to partners on hydrodynamic and ecological functions modeling and effectiveness monitoring, and 2) Coordination (CR-365788) - as part of the National Estuary Program (NEP), an important role of the Estuary Partnership is to identify gaps and provide support to partners for ecosystem restoration of the lower Columbia River, specifically in this Project by providing project evaluation, ranking and funding recommendations to BPA; providing technical assistance funding to partners for assessing restoration project feasibility and preliminary engineering designs; providing funding to partners for full engineering designs, permitting, construction and effectiveness monitoring for their restoration projects; providing data and other information to partners to ensure best available science in restoration design and evaluation; and hosting networking and coordination events. This contract focuses on the direct implementation of restoration projects by the Estuary Partnership.

The Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership’s (Estuary Partnership) 2011 Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (Management Plan) calls for 25,000 acres of habitat to be restored and/or protected by 2025 in the lower Columbia River and estuary. This goal was met and was updated in 2016 to: 1) no new net loss of native habitats as of 2009 (2009 baseline represents 50% loss, or 114,050 acres, since 1870 [see Marcoe and Pilson 2017]), 2) recover 30% by river reach of historic extent for priority habitats by 2030 (restore 10,382 acres) and 3) recover 40% of historic extent for priority habitats by river reach by 2050 (restore 22,480 acres). Since 2000, the Estuary Partnership has been implementing the Lower Columbia River Ecosystem Restoration Program (Program) to restore lower Columbia River ecosystem structure and function, with funding from Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The geographic scope of the 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. The overall Program includes toxic contaminant reduction and species recovery efforts, representing the umbrella program for the lower river. NPCC/BPA funding under this Project focuses on a subset of actions addressing BPA’s Columbia Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Program (CEERP) goal of improving habitat opportunity, capacity and realized function for aquatic organisms, specifically salmonids. Funding of this Project provides direct funding for multiple restoration actions under CEERP annually and provides leverage for the Estuary Partnership to expand restoration efforts beyond CEERP for a comprehensive, integrated and collaborative ecosystem based restoration program.    

To implement the Program, the 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. Lessons learned during earlier phases of the Program have guided the development of the current approach, which now includes multiple major components. The components are designed to address the region’s goal of ecosystem restoration and support the needs of resource management programs and partner restoration practitioners:
1) A coordination structure designed to improve efficiencies and increase results;
2) An ecosystem-based restoration strategy that includes identified locations to focus habitat protection and restoration actions based on restoring historic habitat diversity as well as quantifiable goals, or habitat coverage targets;
3) A rigorous scientific review process to evaluate and prioritize individual restoration actions;
4) A restoration inventory database to track status of actions in a GIS-based system, allowing comparison to habitat coverage targets and annual reporting to BPA and others; and
5) An adaptive management framework that includes:
a) Ecosystem monitoring to track trends in habitat conditions and fish use, provide a suite of reference sites for use as end points in restoration actions and place results of RME findings into the context with the larger ecosystem (via project #2003-007-00);
b) Action effectiveness monitoring to track whether restoration actions are meeting goals and need for future actions; identifies actions that work best and informs how to improve our actions (this project and #2003-007-00); and
c) Critical uncertainties research to address specific questions (e.g., salmon use of estuarine habitat’s contribution to adult returns) (via USACE AFEP projects).

Under this contract, the Estuary Partnership focuses on working with partners and landowners to identify, scope, design, construct, and assess multiple restoration actions.  The Estuary Partnership will also continue to partner with the Columbia River Estuary Study Taskforce (CREST), Columbia Land Trust (CLT), Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), the Cowlitz Indian Tribe (CIT), watershed councils, local governments and others to provide modeling, data collection, and other support to implement the Program. This statement of work describes the work elements, milestones and deliverables for the Program efforts that will be implemented from October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2025.

Review of Prior Work
From 2003 to June 2022, LCEP has supported 84 projects that have restored or protected over 5,149 acres and opened over 83.7 miles of stream habitat. When combined with partner projects, the region has accomplished 266 projects representing 33,113 acres restored or protected.

Since 2003, the Estuary Partnership with help from its partners has tracked these restoration and protection actions throughout the region in our Restoration Inventory, a geodatabase (see http://www.estuarypartnership.org/our-work/map for maps resulting from this database).  The Estuary Partnership records all identified, planned and completed protection and restoration actions for the lower Columbia River, including those funded not only through BPA but also OWEB, LCFRB, NOAA and others. Information presently tracked in the database include the project sponsor; actions performed at the site; site descriptions; limiting factors and threats addressed; acres and stream miles protected or restored; and known species using the site.

The Restoration Inventory addresses multiple objectives. Information on individual sites is periodically uploaded to the Estuary Partnership website so that partners and the public can use it. Data is also used to produce summary reports and maps upon request for partners such as BPA, the USACE and USEPA to fulfill various needs. The Estuary Partnership reports progress to USEPA and, through an annual brochure, to our partners. Additionally, the Restoration Inventory is used to compare where restoration and protection actions align with our voluntary habitat coverage targets in order to evaluate progress in implementing the targets and gaps in coverage. This information is periodically presented at workshops and conferences and provided to our restoration partners in hopes of ultimately addressing implementation gaps for priority habitats.

Work Efforts for October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2025:
Implementation of the Project will allow us to continue restoring the lower Columbia River ecosystem structure and function, focusing on habitat opportunity, capacity and realized function for aquatic organisms. This Project will increase habitat opportunity by reconnecting historic channels, floodplain and wetland habitats to the mainstem lower Columbia and tidal tributaries. It will improve habitat capacity by increasing habitat complexity and native species, in turn promoting site conditions supporting the production of preferred invertebrate prey, high assimilation efficiencies and low predation and competition levels. Ultimately, these improvements should improve physiological conditions within organisms using these sites including foraging success, growth, fitness and survival. The overarching project goal is to ensure ample coverage of diverse, quality habitats throughout the lower river to aid the recovery of juvenile salmonid natural life history diversities. We will accomplish this with the following:
•    Identify protection and restoration actions working with landowners in the lower Columbia River;
•    Assess feasibility, scope, design, permit, and construct restoration actions within the lower Columbia River;
•    Undergo technical evaluation process by the Estuary Partnership’s Project Review Committee and provide information to the Expert Regional Technical Group for the assignment of mitigation credits;
•    Collect pre- and post-construction action effectiveness data to evaluate the success and effectiveness of restoration actions for adaptive management;
•    Provide technical support to partners by:
•    providing field data collection, quality assurance, management, analysis and reporting, modeling and feasibility assessment;
•    providing hydrologic, hydrodynamic and ecological functions modeling; and
•    providing environmental compliance support.

Through this contract the Estuary Partnership proposes to continue to identify, design and construct restoration projects within the lower Columbia River. These actions will:
•    Improve habitat opportunity through breaching levees; reestablish flow patterns altered by causeways, culverts and tide gates; restore channels in intertidal areas and restore and enhance connections between sloughs, side channels and floodplains with the mainstem
•    Improve habitat capacity through adding large woody debris; remove or manage invasive and nuisance vegetative species; plant native plant species; and enhance thermal conditions.
Restoration projects will largely focus on tidally influenced habitats in the lower Columbia River that provide benefits to juvenile salmonids, and we will work with the Action Agencies to explore expanding this focus to integrate climate adaptation and mitigation actions. Present project types may include dike breaches, tidegate removal or retrofits, large wood placement, riparian plantings and habitat creation.

All proposed restoration projects will be reviewed by the Estuary Partnership’s Science Work Group - Project Review Committee at the 30% design phase, if not before. For more complex projects or if significant questions arise from the Project Review Committee, we will ensure another review at the 60% design phase to ensure comments and concerns are addressed appropriately. Additionally, we will ensure our restoration projects undergo a second technical review by the Action Agencies’ Expert Regional Technical Group (ERTG) at the 30% and 60% design stages.

The Estuary Partnership will provide information to BPA on identified potential projects and for those projects selected for funding by BPA as requested by BPA. The Estuary Partnership will coordinate with contractors, engineers, and agencies as needed, and will ensure compliance with all applicable laws.

One restoration project is underway:
* Multnomah Channel Natural Area (MCNA), owned by Metro - working with Metro and multiple other stakeholders, namely ODFW, to identify different methods for managing the site, including removing the tidegates. The landowner is taking a “wait and see” approach to moving forward with fish passage improvements, desiring to observe how the nearby work at JR Palensky project fairs in meeting similar landowner goals. We anticipate taking a phased approach with moving forward on this project, including completing interior site work in earlier years before potentially progressing on floodplain reconnection actions.  

We will collect pre-construction Level 3 AEM data as needed to move projects forward. We will provide support to the Cowlitz Indian Tribe for Level 3 AEM data collection at the Wallooskee-Youngs site. For this, we will provide support on action effectiveness monitoring by providing field data collection, quality assurance, management, analysis and reporting for restoration projects.

We will support the Action Agencies in evaluating new restoration techniques (e.g., enhancing cold water refuges, modifying native species plantings, allowing wetland migration inland), new locations for restoration actions (e.g., above Bonneville Dam to Hood River) and new targets for restoration actions (e.g., climate adaptation and/or mitigation). We propose to work with the ERTG Steering Committee to identify techniques, locations or targets of interest and to use Estuary Partnership staff and engineering firms to assess feasibility and address key uncertainties, including stakeholders’ willingness, constructability, cost effectiveness, and likelihood of success.

Estuary Partnership staff will continue to work with partners and Action Agencies to track restoration project information, including wetted acres and river miles restored; status; permitting and other issues; types of restoration actions; costs; and other information. The Estuary Partnership staff will continue to track this information in a central database and work on making this available to partners with different levels of permission for read/write accessibility. The Estuary Partnership will provide maps to the Action Agencies of results and provide project descriptions and maps to the public over the Estuary Partnership website for projects after receiving approval from partners and Action Agencies. The Restoration Inventory database will continue to allow the Estuary Partnership and its partners to track the status of restoration projects and help ensure that restoration in the lower Columbia is implemented in a coordinated manner.

In summary, under this contract the Estuary Partnership will work in coordination with the Action Agencies, partners and others to accomplish the following:
•    Identify protection and restoration actions working with landowners in the lower Columbia River;
•    Assess feasibility, scope, design, permit, and construct restoration actions within the lower Columbia River;
•    Undergo technical evaluation process by the Estuary Partnership’s Project Review Committee and the ERTG at appropriate times, determined in collaboration with BPA;
•    Collect pre- and post-construction action effectiveness data to evaluate the success and effectiveness of restoration actions for adaptive management;
•    Provide technical support to partners by:
•    providing field data collection, quality assurance, management, analysis and reporting, modeling and feasibility assessment;
•    providing hydrologic, hydrodynamic and ecological functions modeling; and
•    providing environmental compliance support.
•    Work with the Action Agencies to identify new restoration techniques (e.g., enhancing cold water refuges, modifying native species plantings, allowing wetland migration inland), new locations for restoration actions (e.g., above Bonneville Dam) and new foci for restoration actions (e.g., adult returning salmon and steelhead) for implementation in 2023 and out years.  
The outcome of this contract will be several completed restoration projects, pre- and post-construction data collected to allow us to evaluate the success of newly completed projects, and potential new project techniques. Results will allow the Action Agencies and regional partners to adaptively manage ecosystem restoration in the lower Columbia River, at both the program and project levels to provide a greater likelihood of success over the long term.