News Release
| Release Number: | 99-111 |
| Dated: | 12/17/1999 |
| Contact: | Public Affairs Office, 503-808-4510 |
Portland, Ore. –Last minute consultations between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Marine Fisheries Service emphasized ways to achieve a mutual goal: recovery of endangered species in the Columbia River system.
"We looked at ways to achieve ecosystem restoration goals both within, and separate from, the Channel Improvement Project," said Laura Hicks, Columbia River Channel Improvement project manager. "As a result we received a non-jeopardy biological opinion, and also will be able to pursue our long-term goal of ecosystem restoration in the estuary more expeditiously than we could have done without NMFS added emphasis on its importance.
"This allows us to complete the Corps’ portion of the channel improvement study by producing the Chief of Engineers’ Report by the end of the calendar year. That report will include our recommendation to deepen the federal navigation channel by three feet. Major ecosystem restoration work in the Columbia River estuary is independent of the Channel Improvement Study.
"We have a number of different authorities that will allow us to perform environmental enhancement or restoration projects, and we’ll use them to find ways to accomplish the 5,000-acre shallow-water habitat restoration goal stated in the signed Biological Opinion we received today," Hicks said.
The additional work, outside of the Channel Improvement Study, goes beyond the Lower Columbia River Estuary Program’s original goal of restoring 3,000 acres of shallow water habitat in the Columbia River estuary.
The Corps’ Chief of Engineers’ Report on the Channel Improvement Project, including the final recommendation to Congress, is scheduled to be issued this month. A Record of Decision (ROD) will be issued in early 2000, and the project will be included in the Corps’ budget request. Congress, which authorized the project during its last session, must still appropriate funds for the work. The estimated cost of the proposed 43-foot channel, including environmental restoration of 250 acres in the estuary and $5.6 million of wetland and riparian habitat restoration at Shillapoo Lake, Wash., is about $196 million.
The earliest date that actual construction of the improvement project could begin is November 2001 (Fiscal Year 2002), if Congress appropriates funds for the project. In advance of start of construction, however, the Corps is proposing a 2001 reconnaissance study, funded separately from Channel Improvement, to comprehensively address the issues associated with watershed and estuary health in the lower Columbia River. If authorized and funded, that would mean the reconnaissance study could be underway before channel improvement construction begins.
Part of the channel improvement project is mitigation of the loss of 67 acres of riparian habitat and 20 acres of wetland habitat. That loss results from dredged material disposal on land, a disposal option that reduces in-water disposal and thus potential fisheries habitat impacts in the Columbia River.
The Project’s non-federal sponsors are the six lower Columbia River ports – Portland and St. Helens in Oregon, and Longview, Kalama, Woodland and Vancouver in Washington. In addition to the above mitigation, in 1996, the Ports asked the Corps to add an ecosystem restoration component to the project. Valued at $5.6 million, the ecosystem restoration projects restore more than 1,550 acres of wetland and riparian habitat at Shillapoo Lake, Wash., and elsewhere throughout the lower river. These projects include the retrofits to tide gates to improve fish rearing and spawning habitat on streambeds tributary to the lower Columbia.
The Willamette River portion of the project is on hold because of concerns with contaminated sediment in the Portland Harbor and disposal of that sediment. The sponsoring ports asked the Corps to delay that portion of the project until an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality investigation and remediation planning are completed.