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HomeMy WebLinkAboutUntitled ©F coMDt Board of County Commissioners 497ON 1820 Jefferson Street 0Q' �' PC.� Box 1220 as Port Townsend, WA 98368 sIs Kate Dean,District.L Heidi Eisenhour,District 2 Greg Brotherton,District 3 HINO June 6,2022 Dear WCRRI Review Team, The Jefferson County Board of Commissioners would like to express our enthusiastic support for the Hoh River Resiliency—Lindner Complex Reach project application to the Washington Coast Restoration and Resiliency Initiative(WCRRI).The project's focus is a two-mile-long reach of the Middle Hoh River(River Mile 21-23), including the mainstem, shorelines and existing forested side channels. It will engage engineering consultants and landowners in the Lindner community to develop a final design for placement of engineered logjams(EUs). This phase of the project does not involve any construction activities. EUs are needed to reduce erosion risks to essential public infrastructure and to improve and expand fish habitat.The project will also continue resiliency planning and partnership development in the Hoh River valley more broadly. The proposed Lindner project will mimic the role of natural logjams by identifying locations for EUs to stabilize Lindner forests and side channels and help prevent the need for additional bank armoring in the form of riprap or dolosse.The logjams themselves will improve fish habitat by increasing scour and shade, providing thermal refugia during low water periods, improving spawning success, retaining and enhancing existing off-channel rearing habitat; and improving habitat abundance,complexity and diversity. EUs will be designed to look as natural as possible and sited with careful consideration for boater safety. The Lindner area, accessed from Highway 101 by the Upper Hoh Road, lies within the usual and accustomed hunting,fishing and gathering area for the Hoh Tribe. It is a residential,commercial and agricultural center developed by homestead families in the 1800s and includes the Nikolai Memorial and several local businesses that offer lodging, meals, supplies,services and walking trails, primarily to the hundreds of thousands of tourists to Olympic National Park's Hoh Rainforest upstream.The Lindner reach of the Hoh River is also important to independent recreational boaters and fishers as well as for fishing and scenic river guides and their clients. The proposed Linder project is the highest priority of the non-regulatory and collaboratively-developed Middle Hoh River Resiliency Plan (WCRRI#18-2005; www co Jefferson wa us 1 27JHoh-River-Resiliency-Plan). Resiliency planning for 17 river miles began in 2018 in response to expanding erosion-related impacts to the Upper Hoh Road as well the loss of cabins, pasturelands,forested buffers, and productive off-channel fish habitats. Cumulative human impacts, including extensive timber harvest, road building, and bank armoring have over decades altered the natural processes that created and sustained abundant runs of salmon and steelhead in the Hoh River. "Floodplain turnover"—how frequently the mainstem returns to a given area—has increased in recent decades from an average of about once per century to up to five times due largely to the loss of extensive floodplain forests of massive conifer trees and enormous natural logjams.As a result,floodplain vegetation in the Middle Hoh is increasingly dominated by younger willow and alder. Phone (16O) 185 9100Fax (360) y ':) 91 2 , ifFoc:ccto)c:.o.jeEEerson.wa.u,, Approximately 150 acres of forested side channels,including young and mature conifers, buffer the Lindner community from the mainstem river.Sandwiched between the Upper Hoh Road and the Lindner side channels is a Jefferson County Public Works road maintenance facility as well as a private homesite and property owned by the Hoh Tribe that was operated as a gas station.The river occupied this area most recently in 1994,and riprap was placed at about that time. The project proposal has received broad,although not unanimous, support from local residents and private landowners. If the grant is awarded, landowners will be invited to participate in the planning process and to provide input on initial conceptual designs representing a comprehensive restoration approach to the reach. Agreements with landowners to accommodate engineered logjam placement and related construction activities will lead to development of initial final design and permit application materials. In other West End and Puget Sound watersheds such as the Upper Quinault, Elwha, and Cispus Rivers, engineered logjams are being used successfully to provide and improve habitat, reduce erosion,and enhance climate resilience. Middle Hoh River Resiliency planning has brought the community together to develop a proactive approach to addressing the challenges linked to the mainstem river and loss of protective side channel habitats. We are eager to see the resulting collaborations continue and succeed in sustaining jobs,quality of life,and traditions that rely upon this world-renown river and its natural habitats.We support the Lindner design project as the logical next step in Hoh River mainstem restoration planning and request that you fund it in the 2023-25 WCRRI cycle. Sincerely, Jefferson County Commissioners ‘./ K e Dean Heidi Eisenhour,Chair Greg Brotherton District 1 District 2 District 3 2