Have your cake and eat it too: Remediation and restoration as drivers of an environmental cleanup in Anacortes, WA
Presentation Abstract
The Custom Plywood project, a Puget Sound Initiative site, provided a rare opportunity to implement meaningful restoration of a historical industrial waterfront as part of broader site-wide cleanup action. Implementation was phased based on cleanup actions and available funding ultimately resulting in nearshore excavation and restoration in 2013. As part of these cleanup activities, Hart Crowser assisted in the design of a beach face that was not only protective of capped contamination remaining in the upland portion of the site, but also restored historical ecological function to the nearshore. The beach design promoted forage fish spawning and use by outmigrating salmonids, and restored emergent nearshore/wetland plants as part of a pocket estuary. Performance surveys over the past two years have quantitatively examined salmonid use, epibenthic zooplankton productivity, forage fish spawning occurrence/success, and wetland plant recruitment. The monitoring results show an increase in use, activity and productivity along the beach and within the estuary year to year compared to an adjacent unrestored shoreline. Not only did we remove contamination that was a potential human health risk but we also restored the physical and ecological processes at the beach. Our remediation design has restored ecological function to the Fidalgo Bay system which has experienced over a hundred years of industrial waterfront use.
Session Title
Remediation
Conference Track
Protection, Remediation, and Restoration
Conference Name
Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference (2016 : Vancouver, B.C.)
Document Type
Event
Start Date
2016 12:00 AM
End Date
2016 12:00 AM
Location
2016SSEC
Type of Presentation
Oral
Genre/Form
conference proceedings; presentations (communicative events)
Contributing Repository
Digital content made available by University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.
Subjects – Topical (LCSH)
Restoration ecology--Washington (State)--Anacortes; Hazardous waste site remediation--Washington (State)--Anacortes
Geographic Coverage
Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.); Anacortes (Wash.)--Environmental conditions
Rights
This resource is displayed for educational purposes only and may be subject to U.S. and international copyright laws. For more information about rights or obtaining copies of this resource, please contact University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9103, USA (360-650-7534; heritage.resources@wwu.edu) and refer to the collection name and identifier. Any materials cited must be attributed to the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference Records, University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.
Type
Text
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
Have your cake and eat it too: Remediation and restoration as drivers of an environmental cleanup in Anacortes, WA
2016SSEC
The Custom Plywood project, a Puget Sound Initiative site, provided a rare opportunity to implement meaningful restoration of a historical industrial waterfront as part of broader site-wide cleanup action. Implementation was phased based on cleanup actions and available funding ultimately resulting in nearshore excavation and restoration in 2013. As part of these cleanup activities, Hart Crowser assisted in the design of a beach face that was not only protective of capped contamination remaining in the upland portion of the site, but also restored historical ecological function to the nearshore. The beach design promoted forage fish spawning and use by outmigrating salmonids, and restored emergent nearshore/wetland plants as part of a pocket estuary. Performance surveys over the past two years have quantitatively examined salmonid use, epibenthic zooplankton productivity, forage fish spawning occurrence/success, and wetland plant recruitment. The monitoring results show an increase in use, activity and productivity along the beach and within the estuary year to year compared to an adjacent unrestored shoreline. Not only did we remove contamination that was a potential human health risk but we also restored the physical and ecological processes at the beach. Our remediation design has restored ecological function to the Fidalgo Bay system which has experienced over a hundred years of industrial waterfront use.
