A pragmatic approach to stream restoration

The Walla Walla District Corps of Engineers (Corps) recently completed a collaborative stream restoration project in November, 2002 with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) with funding furnished by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). This work was conducted under a Corps Program for Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration which is able to utilize BPA funds for a 35-percent cost-share through ODFW as the project sponsor. These three agencies, with somewhat different programs, purposes, missions, philosophies, politics, and process requirements, came together in a truly collaborative way to design and construct this project. A host of other Federal and state agencies and entities also weighed in during the review and regulatory compliance phases of the project. Many considerations and challenges must be faced in the course of constructing any stream restoration project. Among these are: - selecting or combining technical expertise and approaches to stream restoration; - determining what amount of planning and design is necessary or appropriate; - determining the appropriate amount of analysis of historic effects to understand the geomorphic conditions contributing to the observed degraded condition; - how to define what a successful project is; - expected project life or permanency of the restoration features and how that relates to the funds invested for the benefits derived; and others. The focus of this paper will be on some of the processes, design challenges and constraints that were addressed in getting this project to construction, with the intent of demonstrating universal applications to stream restoration design and some specific analogies to urban situations. We neither fixed the ecosystem nor totally restored the reach of creek we worked on. What we did do was achieve significant improvements to a stream system that was seriously degraded and provide benefits to summer steelhead and other aquatic and terrestrial organisms.