At a station set up along the Fenster Levee setback project, Laird O’Rollins of the King County Department of Natural Resources neatly summed up what planners and engineers and everyone connected with the stream rehabilitation effort hopes it accomplishes for salmon restoration.
“We want the river to widen out a bit, get a little bit shallower, and a little bit more complex,” Rollins, project manager and lead ecologist for the design of the project, recently told City of Auburn and King County officials and invited guests as they traipsed over the recently completed second phase of the setback project at the Fenster Nature Park. “Really, what we want the bank to do is just kind of lay back.”
The project replaced approximately 520 feet of the existing rock levee along the Green River shoreline with a new, buried rock revetment placed farther away from the river.
Work began in July and ended in mid-September.
The area of the Fenster Nature Park – between 2nd Street Southeast and 4th Street Southeast – is closed to the public.
The Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery funds provide 50 percent of the total funding for the $631,456 project.
The project reconnects the river to nearly 2½ acres of its historic floodplain and provides for a more natural shoreline and maintains the existing level of flood protection for neighboring homes, streets and infrastructure.
The project is the final segment of a larger Green River corridor restoration effort extending nearly two miles upstream from the Fenster Nature Park.
This project will:
• Enhance and improve habitat for endangered salmon, steelhead and other aquatic species
• Improve water quality and increase flood water storage by reconnecting the river to a portion of its historic floodplain
• Remove invasive noxious weeds and re-plant more than 4 acres of stream bank and surrounding site with native trees and shrubs
• Reestablish riparian forest that will provide shade to maintain the cool water temperatures that fish need to survive
• Relocate the existing gravel access road to re-connect the 2nd Street Southeast gate with the rest of the Fenster Nature Park
• Construct a buried rock revetment to maintain or enhance the existing level of flood protection for homes, streets and infrastructure
Auburn City Councilman Rich Wagner explained what he liked about the project.
“The City only paid about 3 percent. And while I’m all for salmon restoration, it’s really not a local issue as much as it is a regional and state and federal issue. So, the fact that 97 percent of this is paid for by someone other than the City of Auburn is my best part of it,” Wagner said.
