Salmon Superhighway Project - Tillamook-Nestucca Basin (Oregon)

The Tillamook-Nestucca Fish Passage Partnership (Partnership) is an unprecedented landscape-scale program to expeditiously reconnect fish passage and watershed functionality, provide major economic benefits for local communities and upgrade important transportation infrastructure in the Tillamook sub-basin and its six major tributary watersheds, on Oregon's North Coast.   Significant restoration accomplishments result from implementation of a strategic, community-based blueprint for reconnecting the most biologically important stream networks and selecting the most cost efficient combination of restoration projects for implementation.  Using traditional methods, restoring passage at all 270+ barriers, at average current spending of $2 million/year, would take 70 years and $140 million.  However, the Partnership provides an investment portfolio and construction blueprint which will achieve similar overall benefits in a fraction of the time and for less total cost.  This is done by strategically selecting the most biologically important and cost efficient suite of projects and implementing them in a much more concentrated and economically efficient manner. Community focus and team work, job creation and related economic benefits, increased flood resilience, a reduced public works maintenance burden and healthier fisheries and ecosystems are important outcomes from this investment in the future.