Construction is set to begin on Monday, Aug. 3, on a habitat restoration and riverbank stabilization project at Lower Daybreak Park, where the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership hopes to reduce erosion, reconnect floodplain habitat and improve conditions for fish, wildlife and park visitors.
The project will relocate portions of the park's trail system away from an eroding section of the East Fork Lewis River shoreline while creating new floodplain benches designed to provide additional room for high water during seasonal flooding. The park will remain closed through Oct. 15 while Tapani, Inc. contractors complete the work. The upstream side of Daybreak Regional Park will remain open.
Kari Dupler, principal restoration ecologist with the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership, said the existing trail and nearby infrastructure have become increasingly vulnerable as the river has steadily worn away the bank.
“The trail alignment will shift back toward the tree line in this new kind of shape that will be moved back away from the river to help prevent the trail from being in an erodible zone in the future,” Dupler said. “We've already moved back a couple of power poles from the river's edge. Those were at risk after a few high flow events, so those have been moved back."
The relocated trail will overlook two newly constructed floodplain benches that will serve both erosion-control and habitat restoration purposes.
"So this new area is going to act like a floodplain bench so it will have kind of a two lobe feature to it," Dupler said, adding the trail will overlook the multi-tiered flood plain bench.
The floodplain benches are designed to accommodate seasonal flooding rather than resist it.
"The portion of the benches along the front of the river will come down approximately 4 to 5 feet so that's going to create a lot more flood capacity and a lot more floodplain space for waters to go when the river does get high,” Dupler said. “They kind of are seasonally inundated mostly in the winter and then they'll be planted with a mix of all kinds of lovely native species, shrubs and trees and things throughout."
Along the shoreline, large logs will serve a pair of critical purposes towards the project's mission.
"Those structures are to help prevent erosion along the shoreline but they're also designed to help provide habitat and large wood cover for fish that are using the river,” Dupler said. “So they'll have a pool below them and those are all going to be along the front of the river."
Dupler said the project addresses years of visible erosion that has threatened existing infrastructure.
"The trail that was put in years ago, and the power poles that were located along the river, you know, the river has been eating into this bank for years and has put those pieces of infrastructure at risk,” she said. “Which is why we are moving them back away from the river so that they're not, you know, continually in peril in the future during other high flow events.”
The Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership has already implemented similar floodplain restoration work nearby and has observed positive results during recent high-water events.
"One of the things that we have seen just downstream from here we completed our portion of the project called county yard and in that area we moved some county infrastructure from their maintenance yard and used that area to create about five or more acres of additional floodplain space,” Dupler said. “And what we saw in the high flow event was that water was flowing through that area so we know that's several extra acres of space that water has that isn't causing the river to have a higher elevation because it's confined. It's spreading out on the floodplain, we're seeing deposition of gravel and sand and we're seeing the vegetation in that area grow really well. It looks really nice now. So we definitely see that the expansion of floodplain space is working and so we're bringing that idea here."
In addition to protecting the shoreline, the restoration will convert what is now primarily a grass field into a more diverse native plant community.
"Like you said it is a little bit of a food desert for pollinators. It is a largely grass system,” Dupler said. “It's going to be a mix of trees and shrubs and herbaceous species that will grow a little bit better here once it's been excavated down and getting a little bit more inundation from the river. That mix is always better for nature versus a single species field of grass."
According to Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership Public and Legislative Affairs Manager Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky, community volunteer planting events and student field trips are planned for late fall and winter after construction is complete, with a public reopening celebration currently scheduled for Oct. 15.
Dupler said the Lower Daybreak Park project is one component of the broader Ridgefield Pits floodplain reconnection effort.
"This site is just one piece of the much larger project,” she said. “All of these areas are designed to increase the flood capacity of the river and of the floodplain. And so they all work together to just increase that capacity, increase water storage, increase areas for the water to flow during high flow events, and really restore the shoreline, restore the native plant communities. So, yeah, this is just one piece in that whole, long river puzzle."
