Developing and Designing Restoration Projects to Benefit Juvenile Salmon Rearing in the Lower Columbia River and Estuary

Estuarine habitat restoration projects are particularly complex to implement.  Project development and design often requires in-depth habitat and fish use investigation, rigorous engineering, modeling, as well as community outreach in order to reach successful implementation.  The Fort Columbia Tidal Reconnection and the Otter Point Estuarine Habitat Restoration projects implemented by CREST in 2011 included each of these factors and were designed specifically to benefit juvenile salmon rearing habitat in the Columbia River Estuary. The project goal for both the Fort Columbia and Otter Point projects are to restore access and improve habitat quality to wetlands identified and mapped by Lewis and Clark.  The Fort Columbia project was designed to restore a tidal connection between the Columbia River mainstem and 96 acres of high quality wetland habitat associated with the Chinook River.  Project design focused on increasing fish access to the interior wetland by installing a 12 feet by 12 feet culvert through U.S. 101 a state managed highway and the excavation of a pilot channel in to the wetland.  The Otter Point project was designed to allow full tidal inundation from the Lewis and Clark River to 33.5 acres of wetland habitat cut off by a levee for a century.  The project involves the construction of 1,400 feet of new cross levee and breaching the old outer levee in 6 locations and excavation of historic and new intertidal channels to the interior of the wetland.  Cross levee construction is subject to the U.S. Army Corps Section 408 process for a major modification to a federal levee system.  These early implementation projects set the stage for increased meaningful large scale restoration in the Columbia River estuary.