Deschutes restoration project in Tumwater reveals history of poor forestry practices
The Deschutes River, which snakes its way north through Lewis and Thurston counties and out to Puget Sound through Budd Inlet, is fragile. Over the years, cities have used its banks more and more for recreation, with trails, parks, homes and more dotting it for miles.
In Tumwater, a portion of the Deschutes River shoreline at Pioneer Park is rapidly eroding. Each year, experts say the erosion pushes approximately 2,380 cubic yards of sediment into the river. Standing at its banks, which are now closed off to park visitors, you can see portions of the trail have been ripped away and large trees have been pushed into the fast-moving water. The area also has very little tree cover, contributing to higher water temperatures.
These issues combined are harming water quality and populations of coho salmon, and making it difficult — and potentially dangerous — to use the river for any recreational purposes.
The river is young, relatively speaking, and is still finding its path through Washington, so this movement isn’t necessarily out of the ordinary, experts say. But it’s possible the river wouldn’t be in this condition if it weren’t for poor forestry practices in the 1970s and ‘80s.
“Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, we thought, as humans, that the best way to manage rivers was to pull out all of that messy debris, like trees and logs,” said Amy Hatch-Winecka, who works in salmon recovery for the Thurston Regional Planning Council. “We were super wrong.”
Hatch-Winecka said back then, the Department of Fish and Wildlife and other state agencies logged riverbanks and the wetlands surrounding them, ripping away the root and woody systems that make a river complex. Meanwhile, the construction of roads and bridges cut off many wetland areas where the river could pool during flooding events and filter out sediment and debris.
Without roots in the ground holding the banks together, the Deschutes is easily able to push through fine sediment that makes up its fresh valley floor, leading to erosion and flooding events. Without trees growing up on the banks and subsequently falling into the water once the time comes, there’s no shade over the water to keep the temperature down and nothing protecting the riverbanks or fish that may need a place to hide or breed.
Meredith Greer, water resources educator for the city of Tumwater, calls the section of the Deschutes at Pioneer Park the perfect storm. The combination of geologic, hydrologic and vegetation problems isn’t unusual, but once you combine them with urbanization, things start to get tricky.
“In an ideal situation, you wouldn’t have folks building right up against the river,” Greer said. “There’s potential for areas like that to flood.”
She said it’s a two-fold balancing game from both a natural and urban planning perspective.
“We’re trying to, from a natural perspective, work with the river and try and hold some of that water while we can,” Greer said. “And from a city and urban perspective, we’re trying to, as we’re building out, we’re planning for that extra water and how we’re going to treat it.”
The hopeful solution
Greer and the city of Tumwater received grant funding from the Department of Ecology to design, permit and construct a restoration project to fix the eroding bank and improve habitat conditions along the section of the Deschutes that passes through Pioneer Park. The grant agreement was proposed by the Public Works Committee in December 2021 and the City Council voted to authorize Mayor Debbie Sullivan to sign the agreement at its Jan. 4 meeting.
The goal is to design and construct a project that will help stabilize a 1,000-foot section of eroding river bank and increase the complexity of the channel to reduce the risk of future erosion. The groups that take on the project will plant almost an acre of natural buffer in the form of native plants and trees to help reduce the temperature of the water and bring in more oxygen.
The idea is that the first step — adding log jams and stabilizing the riverbanks — will work as a temporary buffer while the plants and trees around the river have a few decades to grow. Then once those trees age and die, they will fall into the river, restarting the ecosystem’s natural cycle.
According to information provided by the state Department of Ecology, work for this project began in 2010 with conceptual designs and modeling, as well as survey work. But the river is constantly moving and taking new forms. On average, the Deschutes River channel that runs through Pioneer Park migrates 9.4 feet per year, rendering practically every prior study and proposals on boundary setting meaningless.
“The problem is that funding is at a premium,” Greer said. “Being able to have funding in hand to do design work and then to be able to construct something is often tricky. When we’re dealing with systems that are moving so quickly like the Pioneer Park project is, we weren’t able to get construction funding before the river changed so much that designs weren’t feasible.”
The project is anticipated to cost more than $450,000 to complete. The grant from the Department of Ecology’s Water Quality Combined Funding Program totals $338,086 and the city’s Storm Drain Fund will pay for the remainder of the work needed. According to meeting documents, $175,000 has been allocated from the 2020-2026 Capital Facilities Plan to Deschutes Habitat Restoration Projects.
There are several other similar projects in the works throughout the Deschutes watershed. Hatch-Winecka said she’s working with Capitol Land Trust to purchase land in the watershed to preserve it and bring the river back to its former glory, and there have been several success stories so far.
Greer said the next step for her is to work with a consultant to design the project and establish plans for replanting, stabilizing and sloping the banks. Construction could be a couple years out, Greer said, so coming up with a sustainable solution will be a balancing act and a race against the changing river.
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