Representatives of the Washington Department of Enterprise Services (DES) updated Thurston County’s Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) about the Deschutes Estuary Restoration Project at a meeting on Monday, September 30.
The two-mile project will remove the Fifth Avenue Dam and reconstruct the Fifth Avenue Bridge to its south, restoring Capitol Lake to an estuary.
The new bridge will contain vehicle lanes, extensive pedestrian space, and commuter bike lanes.
Dredging will also be done to re-establish the river and clean up the almost 500,000 cubic yards of sediments accumulated on the river channel since the dam was constructed in 1951.
These deposits would then be placed along the shoreline to establish new marsh habitats and tidal flats.
The project will also give the public access to recreational activities, boardwalks, water access, and fishing facilities.
Ann Larson, Project Director for the Deschutes Estuary Restoration Project, said that the watershed is approximately 270 square miles, and the lower 260 acres were significantly disrupted in the 1950s when the state built a dam at the mouth of the Deschutes River.
“Since that time there have been chronic water violations and sediment has accumulated up to 13 feet in certain areas, there’s also more than a dozen known aquatic invasive species…which actually caused the water body to be closed more than a decade ago,” said Larson.
The state will handle the maintenance of constructed recreation infrastructure, as well as project management and fiscal management.
Larson explained that the state will take those “soft causes” and will not include them in the interlocal agreement (ILA).
Thurston County’s contribution includes being the local account treasurer function. The county will manage the local accounts to ensure the legislature cannot “sweep the local funds,” said Sarah Reich, ECO Northwest project director.
The ILA will create a local account where the involved entities will contribute.
The county is expected to contribute a total of around $7,673,000, the same as most entities for the ILA term, to sediment management costs.
Larson also emphasized how culturally rich the project’s area is.
The Squaxin Island tribe, which identifies the people at the Deschutes estuary as st̓əč̓as (Steh-Chass), has partnered with the restoration team since the 1990s.
“There’s a lot of benefits to this, both environmental and transportation, and at the center of all this is about restorative justice…to the Squaxin Island tribe,” said Larson.
Because of this, although the tribe is part of the working group, unlike the other involved entities, it does not have an allocated contribution.
The other entities in the project include the City of Olympia, LOTT Clean Water Alliance, the Port of Olympia, the City of Tumwater, Private Marinas, and the State of Washington.
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bhalverson
What this article fails to point out is that the revenue (7.5 Million Dollars each entity or more in the case of the City of Olympia) that all these entities will be paying into this fund managed by the Thurston County Treasurer are to maintenance dredge the west bay of Budd Inlet following the cleanup of Capitol Lake and return of the lake to an estuary. The U.S. Corps of Army Engineers have always and will continue to maintenance dredge the deep channel area up to the Port of Olympia and then the Port of Olympia will continue, as they always have, to maintenance dredge the Vessel Berths. So what are these millions of dollars being collected to do? They are to maintenance dredge the area from the private marinas and yacht club to the deep water channel. Yes, that's right. Your hard earned tax dollars will be going to fund maintenance dredging to support private citizens moving their private boats and yachts from their moorage slips to the deeper water. Why are our hard earned tax dollars being allocated to pay for this? The state created this problem 75 years ago when they engaged in what can only be categorized as a vanity project to construct a dam and lake as a mirror pond for the capitol. In the 1990's the state recognized they had made a mistake and could not provide adequate maintenance on the lake to control the toxic algae and invasive species that were getting into the lake. Now, they want the tax payers to fund the restoration of the estuary and the local entities to fund maintenance dredging of areas to support private citizens, two private marinas, one yacht club and one public marina belonging to the City of Olympia. This is the story that has not been publicized and told. The JOLT, the Olympian and the Nisqually Valley News should be reporting this aspect of the project. The state owns this problem and the state should be the one to provide funding to keep the channels open from the private marinas to the deeper water - not the local jurisdictions.
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