Pepper Fisher
BLYN, Wash. – The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe was recently awarded over $4.2-million from a new grant program under the Pacific Salmon Treaty that will be used to extend by a mile the Dungeness River floodplain restoration project near Sequim.
The multi-agency project, which has been in the planning stages for some 20 years, last year got a federal grant of $3.5 million to relocate about a mile of a 90-year-old levee along the east bank of the lower Dungeness River and restore the river’s natural floodplain and for the benefit of salmon habitat. That project, now considered Phase 1, is still in the permitting process with the Army Corps of Engineers, though the funding is in place.
The latest phase fell into place earlier this year when North Olympic Land Trust succeeded in raising over $400,000 toward the purchase of the 104-acre River’s Edge property upstream from Phase 1, adding almost a mile to the restoration project.
That purchase would preserve 64 acres for agricultural use and 40 acres along the riverbank, thanks to funding from the Tribe, to move the levee east to match the layout planned for Phase 1.
An additional 25 acres that lies between the two projects was purchased by the Tribe as well, joining them to create a total of 2 miles of restored salmon habitat when the work is completed.
Here’s the Tribe’s Habitat Program Manager Randy Johnson.
“So you’ve got the County’s project that they call Phase 1, then you have the Tribes project which we call the River’s Edge, and they’re going to connect in the middle like the Transcontinental Railroad going from east to west. Two projects that connect to make one beautiful project. And those should, by all rights, be about the most productive two miles anywhere in the the Dungeness River, that will once again have really high salmon productivity.”
Johnson thinks the best-case scenario for getting both projects completed appears to be late in 2022, depending on the timing of permit approvals from the Corps of Engineers.
(Photo shows planned relocation of levee away from river bank)