Tag Archives: Stream restoration

Extensive floodplain restoration brings new hope to Clear Creek

A giant piece of a cedar log stands erect in a barren landscape north of Silverdale, where a new channel for Clear Creek stands ready to receive water.

An old cedar log was recovered during excavation for a new channel for Clear Creek. Photo: Dunagan
An old cedar log was recovered during excavation for a new channel for Clear Creek.
Photo: Christopher Dunagan

Well, maybe this channel won’t be entirely new. Designers working to restore this portion of Clear Creek studied old maps. They tried to align the new man-made channel to the meandering stream that existed 150 years ago, before farmers diverted the creek around their fields.

During excavation, workers uncovered buried gravel — remnants of the old streambed — along with chunks of cedar that had lain along the edge of the stream. Buried and cut off from oxygen, these pieces of wood survived for decades underground, while cattle grazed in the fields above.

Workers excavating for the new channel used their heavy equipment to pull out what remained of a great cedar log. They stood the log vertical and buried one end in the ground — a monument to the past and future of Clear Creek.

A restored Clear Creek floodplain (before plantings) north of Waaga Way in Central Kitsap. Photo: Kitsap County Public Works
A restored Clear Creek floodplain (before plantings) north of Waaga Way in Central Kitsap.
Photo: Kitsap County Public Works

Chris May, manager of Kitsap County’s stormwater program, showed me the new channel this week. He said it was rewarding to uncover some buried history and realize that the stream would be restored in roughly the same place.

“We found the old channel,” Chris told me, pointing to a deposit of gravel. “We are pretty confident that we got it right.”

This $3-million project has been conceived and designed as much more than a stream-restoration project. The elevations of the land around the stream have been carefully planned so that high flows will spill into side channels and backwater pools. That should reduce flooding in Silverdale and help stabilize the high and low flows seen in Clear Creek.

Before photo: This was the farmers field as it appeared before restoration. Photo: Kitsap County Public Works
Before photo: This was the farm field as it appeared before restoration. // Photo: Kitsap County Public Works

The engineers did not calculate the reduced frequency of flooding, but floodwater storage is calculated to be 18.4 acre-feet, the equivalent of a foot of water spread over 18.4 acres or 29,700 cubic yards or 6 million gallons.

In all, about 30,000 cubic yards of material have been removed across 21 acres, including the former Schold Farm on the west side of Silverdale Way and the Markwick property on the east side. Native wetland vegetation will be planted along the stream and in low areas throughout the property. Upland areas will be planted with natural forest vegetation.

The topsoil, which contained invasive plants such as reed canarygrass, was hauled away and buried beneath other excavated soils to form a big mound between the new floodplain and Highway 3. That area will be planted with a mixture of native trees.

Graphic showing area before restoration. Graphic: Kitsap County Public Works
Graphic showing area before restoration.
Graphic: Kitsap County Public Works

Plans call for removal of 1,500 feet of an existing road with upgrades to two aging culverts. Adding meanders to the straightened channel will create 500 feet of new streambed that should be suitable for salmon spawning.

Plans call for adding 334 pieces large woody debris, such as logs and root wads to the stream. Some of that wood will be formed into structures and engineered logjams to help form pools and gravel bars.

Graphic showing area after restoration. Graphic: Kitsap County Public Works
Graphic showing area after restoration. Notice stream meanders near beaver pond habitat
Graphic: Kitsap County Public Works

“This will be one of the first streams to meet the Fox and Bolton numbers,” Chris told me, referring to studies by Martin Fox and Susan Bolton of the University of Washington. The two researchers studied natural streams and calculated the amount of woody debris of various kinds needed to simulate natural conditions, all based on the size of a stream. (Review North American Journal of Fisheries Management.)

The elevations on the property were also designed so that high areas on opposite sides of the stream would be in close proximity in several locations.

“Beaver will pick that spot,” Chris said, pointing to one location where the stream channel was squeezed by elevated banks on each side. “We want to encourage beaver to come in here.”

Beaver ponds will increase the floodwater storage capacity of the new floodplain and provide important habitat for coho salmon, which spend a year in freshwater and need places to withstand both high and low flows. Because the county owns the flooded property, there won’t be any complaints about damage from beavers, Chris noted.

Aerial photo showing project area with Silverdale in the background, Silverdale Way to the left and Highway 3 to the right. Photo: Kitsap County Public Works
Aerial photo showing project area with Silverdale in the background, Silverdale Way to the left and Highway 3 to the right. // Photo: Kitsap County Public Works

Clear Creek Trail (PDF 390 kb), which begins on the shore of Dyes Inlet, will be routed along the higher elevations as the trail winds through the property. Three new bridges will provide vantage points to watch salmon after vegetation obscures other viewing areas from the trail. Viewing platforms, as seen along other parts of Clear Creek Trail, were not included in this project but could be subject to further discussions.

Count me among the many people — experts, volunteers and users of Clear Creek Trail — who are eager to see how nature responds when water (now diverted) returns to the new stream channel. For decades, the lack of good habitat has constrained the salmon population in Clear Creek. The stream still has problems related to its highly developed watershed. But now a series of restoration projects is providing hope for increased coho and chum salmon and possibly steelhead trout as well as numerous other aquatic species.

In a story in the Kitsap Sun, Reporter Tristan Baurick described work this week on the Markwick property, where fish were removed in preparation for final channel excavation.

Here are some details (including photos) of various Clear Creek projects, as described in the state’s Habitat Work Schedule for restoration projects:

Washington Department of Ecology provided $2 million for the project. Kitsap County’s stormwater and roads programs each provided $500,000.

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Hospitality for salmon coming with restoration of Big Beef Creek

Big Beef Creek, which flows into Hood Canal near Seabeck, will soon undergo a major wetland renovation that should improve the survival of coho salmon and steelhead trout.

Other work, which started last year, involves placing large woody debris in the stream to create deep pools for salmon to cool off and rest before continuing their migration. The wood also will help to form new spawning areas for coho, fall chum and the threatened summer chum of Hood Canal.

Large woody debris placed in Big Beef Creek last summer has begun to form pools where salmon can escape the strong current. Photo: Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group
Large woody debris placed in Big Beef Creek last summer has begun to form pools where salmon can escape the strong current.
Photo: Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group

Big Beef Creek is an unusual stream, one with a personal connection for me. In the late 1970s, I lived at Lake Symington, a man-made lake built years before by impounding Big Beef Creek. A few years ago, my wife and I bought a home with a tiny tributary of Big Beef Creek running through the property.

To get a lay of the land, I ventured along the stream and through the watershed in 1999, meeting many people along the way and gaining a new respect for Big Beef Creek — known as the longest stream contained entirely within Kitsap County. Check out my story for the Kitsap Sun called “The Watershed.” Much later, I wrote a Water Ways blog post about the creek beginning with, “It is the best of streams; it is the worst of streams,” with apologies to Charles Dickens.

Today, the $1.2 million habitat transformation is taking place in the lower portion of the stream, just upstream from the estuary where people go to watch bald eagles soar. (Check out this week’s “Amusing Monday.”) The project is on property owned by the University of Washington’s Big Beef Creek Research Station. Work is under the direction of Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, a division of Pacific Northwest Salmon Center.

Site work will expand an 11-acre wetlands by five acres and reconnect the wetland complex to the stream channel. Coho, which remain in freshwater for the first year of life, will find a safe place to stay during the low flows of summer and the fierce floods of winter.

Officials agreed to close the well, so a relocated road will not be needed. Note the off-stream channels and the ability for the stream to change course. Map: Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group
Officials have agreed to close the well, so a relocated road will not be needed. Note the off-stream channels and ability of the stream to change course within the floodplain.
Map: Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group

“Coho rely on streams with complex habitat, including pools and shade with good water quality,” said Mendy Harlow, executive director of the salmon center. “In this project, we are focusing on the lower one mile of stream.”

Removing an access road along with 1,600 cubic yards of fill will restore two of the five acres of wetlands and open up the floodplain. The other two acres come from excavating some 4,500 cubic yards of fill from an elevated area where old storage buildings were removed last year.

In last year’s work, 10 man-made logjams were created where excavators could reach the creek. At the end of this month, helicopters will be used to place another 13 logjams in sections of the stream that could not be reached by land.

In a coordinated fashion, the helicopters also will be used to place logjams in Little Anderson Creek, which drains into Hood Canal just north of Big Beef. Little Anderson Creek, which originates near Newberry Hill Heritage Park, previously received several loads of wood in 2006 and again in 2009.

Both Big Beef and Little Anderson are part of an “intensively monitored watershed” program, in which experts are attempting to measure the extent to which habitat improvements increase salmon populations. It is not an easy thing to figure out, since salmon runs vary naturally from year to year. Still, over time, the improved spawning and rearing conditions should be measurable.

Other restoration work is planned on Seabeck Creek, while Stavis Creek will remain unchanged as the “control stream” for the Hood Canal complex of intensively monitored streams.

Fish traps placed in the streams monitor the out-migration of young salmon smolts, while a permanent fish trap at Big Beef Creek is used to count both smolts and returning adults. For each stream, biologists also count the number of redds — mounds of gravel where salmon have laid their eggs — to determine if conditions are improving.

Big Beef Creek logjams
Adding wood to Big Beef Creek results in greater stream complexity, offering salmon options for food, spawning and other needs.
Photo: Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group

The improved wetlands and floodplain on Big Beef Creek will allow the stream to move among several historical stream channels as sediment loads build and decline over time. Strategically placed wood will provide complexity wherever the stream chooses to go, according to Mendy, who has been working toward this project since 2007.

“I’m really excited about it and look forward to the changes,” she said. “The phase of work going forward this summer is the important phase.”

Sarah Heerhartz, habitat program manager for Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, said improving the wetlands will not only help fish but also birds that favor wetlands. The stream will have room to move and spread out, she said, and some of the sediment from upstream sources will drop out before reaching the estuary.

“The floodplain is going to be a big boost for coho fry to smolt survival, because that will open up a lot of rearing habitat for juvenile coho,” Sarah told reporter Ed Friedrich in a story written for the Kitsap Sun.

The stream restoration is not expected to affect work at the UW research station, which continues to play a role in salmon studies, including efforts to improve hatchery conditions. In 1999, I wrote about the efforts to restore a run of summer chum on Big Beef Creek. Take a look at “Reviving a salmon run.” Unfortunately, the resuscitation effort has not been entirely successful, but there are new hopes that this summer’s stream repairs will give a boost to the summer chum as well as the coho.

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Three videos take us upstream, where it all begins

John F. Williams of Suquamish, known for his brilliant underwater videos, has worked his way upstream from Puget Sound and into the freshwater streams of the Kitsap Peninsula.

His latest video project began somewhat haphazardly, John told me. But the end result is nothing less than an entertaining and educational series that anyone can enjoy. It helps that each video is just a little over four minutes. In such a short time, John was able to tell a story while packing in a lot of information.

“It all started,” John said, “when Ron (Hirschi) invited me to come film him taking some preschool kids down to the South Fork of Dogfish Creek. He thought that would be fun.”

Ron Hirschi, who grew up around Port Gamble, worked as a biologist for years before becoming a successful children’s author. He tells stories of nature in simple and endearing ways. In the first video on this page, you’ll see Ron reading from one of his books.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Ron and I have known each other for more than 30 years. He was an early mentor for me as I was learning about streams and shorelines in Western Washington, and I still rely on him for advice from time to time. He was an important voice in the book “Hood Canal: Splendor At Risk.”

Anyway, it was nice to see the two storytellers — John and Ron — link up on a project together.

“At the time, we had no idea where this was going,” John said.

A member of the Kitsap Environmental Education Program, John learned that some money was available for education projects through the “Puget Sound Starts Here” campaign.

“It occurred to me that what I was doing with the streams fit into what they wanted,” he said, “so I pitched the idea of doing several movies about streams and people’s interactions with them. I wanted people to understand that these streams, which are hidden behind the trees, are part of their lives.”

John completed the video with Ron Hirschi, showing a visit to a forgotten stream, Poulsbo Creek, as well as the well-known Dogfish Creek, both in North Kitsap. John also obtained leads for stories about Olalla Creek in South Kitsap and Chico Creek in Central Kitsap.

His contact in South Kitsap was teacher Lisa Wickens at Ollalla Elementary School. It so happens that I had worked with Lisa on a story about elementary school children building a rain garden to prevent dirty water from getting into Olalla Creek. Check out “Olalla students learn science with a rain garden,” Kitsap Sun, Dec. 13, 2013 (subscription).

John was blown away by the intellectual and scientific skills of this younger generation.

“I was sitting in Lisa’s classroom one day, and she was giving her second-graders an assignment to write a persuasion piece,” John noted. “She wanted them to persuade someone to take care of the Earth. I said I would love to come and film the kids reading their papers… It was so amazing.”

You’ll get a feeling for their abilities in the second video.

For the third video, John connected with Maureen McNulty, a teacher at Klahowya Secondary School who was organizing the students to build a rain garden. It turned out that older students were teamed up with younger ones on the project, so that everyone learned something.

John also traced the path of a stream from the school wetlands into the adjoining forest and encountered Frank Sticklin, the chief guru for Newberry Hill Heritage Park. Frank educated John about beaver dams.

“I had never seen beaver ponds, and he showed me these incredible things,” John said.

In reality, John probably had seen beaver ponds and beaver dams without knowing that beavers were responsible. After Frank’s tour, he went for a walk south of Port Gamble and encountered something that he immediately recognized as a beaver dam. Once you’ve seen one, you know what to look for.

“I think of this as a metaphor of what I do with my movies,” John told me. “I help people see things that they haven’t seen before and to look at the world in a new way.”

John’s videos have been recorded onto DVDs and distributed to nearly 200 schools and environmental organizations throughout the area.

He’s now working on some projects involving the Puget Sound shoreline. I’ll let you when they are done. Meanwhile, you may wish to check out his websites, Still Hope Productions and Sea-Media.org.

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