OLYMPIA — Washington’s Salmon Recovery Funding Board has awarded more than $3.1 million in grants to organizations to restore fish habitat in Clark, Cowlitz, Skamania and Klickitat counties.
The local projects include:
Clark County
$325,000 to Clark Public Utilities to restore the lower half-mile of McCormick Creek, a tributary of the East Fork of the Lewis River. Crews will place tree root wads and large logs in the creek and plant the banks and floodplain.
$254,000 to the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership to improve habitat in the East Fork of the Lewis River and two unnamed side channels. Trees with root wads and large logs will be placed in the river.
Skamania County
$295,000 to the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership to restore 1.3 miles of upper Hamilton Creek. Thirty logjams will be installed and nearly 10,000 bushes planted on 30 acres.
$301,000 to the Lower Columbia Fish Enhancement Group to remove large, cemented log dams on Silver and Bluebird creeks in the upper Washougal River watershed. Removing the dams will open 1.75 miles in Silver Creek and 2.3 miles in Bluebird Creek to fish passage. Some of the logs will be used downstream to form wood structures for fish.
$425,000 to Underwood Conservation District to replace a large pipe that carries Mill Creek under Lakeview Road and blocks fish passage. Mill Creek is a tributary to the White Salmon River. The project will open 4.5 miles of habitat above the former Condit Dam site.
$66,500 to the Mid-Columbia Fisheries Enhancement Group to monitor fish recover to the White Salmon River following the 2012 removal of Condit Dam. A smolt trap will sample young salmon and steelhead migrating out of the system.
Klickitat County
$236,000 in two grants to the Underwood Conservation District to improve the shoreline and water quality of Rattlesnake Creek, a tributary to the White Salmon River.
Cowlitz County
$445,000 in two grants to the Cowlitz Conservation District to place logjams and do other restoration in Germany Creek.
$811,000 to the Cowlitz Tribe to restore 1.3 miles of upper Abernathy and Ordway creeks including whole trees and wood accumulations in the streams.
$51,000 to the Lower Columbia Fish Enhancement Group to plant at least 70,000 hatchery salmon carcasses during three years in the Kalama, North Fork Lewis, East Fork Lewis and Washougal rivers.
