BPA Project Number:  2003-011-00
CR-365788
Performance/Budget Period: October 1, 2023 – September 30, 2025

Technical Contact/Project Lead:  Catherine Corbett
Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership
400 NE 11th Ave.
Portland, OR 97232-2714
Phone: (503) 226-1565
Fax: (503) 226-1580
ccorbett@estuarypartnership.org

Contracting Contact: Connor Kerns
Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership
400 NE 11th Ave.
Portland, OR 97232-2714
Phone: (503) 226-1565
Fax: (503) 226-1580
ckerns@estuarypartnership.org

BPA Project Manager:  Anne Creason
Bonneville Power Administration
905 NE 11th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97208
Phone: (503) 230-3859
amcreason@bpa.gov

Background
There are two contracts associated with this Project:  1) Direct implementation (CR#-365784)- for restoration projects feasibility, designed, constructed and monitored for effectiveness by Estuary Partnership staff and for those projects where Estuary Partnership act as subcontractors to partners on hydrodynamic and ecological functions modeling and effectiveness monitoring, and 2) Coordination (this one)- as part of the National Estuary Program, an important role of the Estuary Partnership is to identify gaps and provide support to partners for ecosystem restoration of the lower Columbia River, specifically in this Project by providing project evaluation, ranking and funding recommendations to BPA (via the Project Review Committee); providing technical assistance to partners for design, permitting, construction and effectiveness monitoring for their restoration projects; providing data and other information to partners to ensure best available science in restoration design and evaluation; and hosting networking and coordination events. This contract focuses on the Estuary Partnership’s coordination role.

The Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership’s (Estuary Partnership) 2011 Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (Management Plan) calls for 25,000 acres of habitat to be restored and/or protected by 2025 in the lower Columbia River and estuary. This goal was updated in 2016 to: 1) no new net loss of native habitats as of 2009 (2009 baseline represents 50% loss, or 114,050 acres, since 1870 [see Marcoe and Pilson 2017]), 2) recover 30% by river reach of historic extent for priority habitats by 2030 (restore 10,382 acres) and 3) recover 40% of historic extent for priority habitats by river reach by 2050 (restore 22,480 acres). Since 2000, the Estuary Partnership has been implementing the Lower Columbia River Ecosystem Restoration Program (Program) to restore lower Columbia River ecosystem structure and function, with funding from Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The geographic scope of the Program is within the study area of the Estuary Partnership and encompasses the lower 146 river miles of the Columbia River from Bonneville Dam to the Pacific Ocean. The overall Program includes toxic contaminant reduction and species recovery efforts, representing the umbrella program for the lower river. BPA funding under this Project focuses on a subset of actions addressing the Action Agencies' Columbia Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Program (CEERP) goal of improving habitat opportunity, capacity and realized function for aquatic organisms, specifically salmonids. Funding of this Project provides direct funding for multiple LCEP restoration actions under CEERP annually and provides leverage for the Estuary Partnership to expand restoration efforts beyond CEERP for a comprehensive, integrated and collaborative ecosystem based restoration program.    

To implement the Program, the Estuary Partnership staff work regularly with and rely on the Estuary Partnership’s Science Work Group, a committee of technical experts from throughout the region from the public and private sectors with specific knowledge in related sciences. Lessons learned during earlier phases of the Program have guided the development of the current approach, which now includes multiple major components. The components are designed to address the region’s goal of ecosystem restoration and support the needs of resource management programs and partner restoration practitioners:
1) A coordination structure designed to improve efficiencies and increase results;
2) A rigorous scientific review process to evaluate and prioritize individual restoration actions;
3) A restoration inventory database to track status of actions in a GIS-based system, allowing annual reporting to BPA and others; and
4) An adaptive management framework that includes:
a) Ecosystem monitoring to track trends in habitat conditions and fish use, provide a suite of reference sites for use as end points in restoration actions and place results of RME findings into the context with the larger ecosystem (via project #2003-007-00);
b) Action effectiveness monitoring to track whether restoration actions are meeting goals and need for future actions; identifies actions that work best and informs how to improve our actions (this project and #2003-007-00); and
c) Critical uncertainties research to address specific questions (e.g., salmon use of estuarine habitat’s contribution to adult returns) (via USACE AFEP projects).

Under the Action Agencies' CEERP within the Columbia River estuary, there are several key restoration partners that BPA relies on to meet FCRPS BiOp estuary habitat goals, including the Estuary Partnership, Columbia Land Trust (CLT), Columbia River Estuary Study Taskforce (CREST), Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and the Cowlitz Indian Tribe (CIT). The Estuary Partnership, a part of the US EPA National Estuary Program (NEP), is an umbrella organization, representing not only these organizations but other organizations such as state and local governments, watershed councils, soil and water conservation districts, not-for-profits, etc. Initially, BPA funding for restoration and protection actions within the estuary were channeled almost entirely through the Estuary Partnership’s technical review and funding processes under project #2003-011-00. Starting in 2010, BPA’s habitat program expanded into CEERP and multiple direct contracts to these other key restoration partners were created to support the capacity of these organizations in developing restoration actions in hopes of increasing the quantity and rate of habitat actions. The Estuary Partnership continues to provide technical review and funding recommendations to BPA (via the Project Review Committee) in addition to coordinating and tracking restoration (and monitoring) activities within the lower river as one of our roles as a NEP.

The Estuary Partnership will continue to partner with CREST, CLT, CIT, watershed councils, local governments and others to implement the Project, including annually implementing and monitoring multiple restoration actions. This statement of work describes the work elements, milestones and deliverables for the Program efforts that will be implemented from October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2025.

Project Review and Selection
Restoration actions are required by BPA to be reviewed by the Estuary Partnership’s Science Work Group - Project Review Committee (Project Review Committee, a subcommittee of the full Science Work Group) at the 30% design phase, if not before. For more complex projects or if significant questions arise, the Project Review Committee may request to review the project again at the 60% design phases to ensure comments and concerns are addressed by project implementers. The Project Review Committee evaluates the overall ecological benefit of the action, cost effectiveness, constructability, permit issues, and long term maintenance considerations. The Project Review Committee then provides BPA a technical and funding recommendation based on this analysis.

Since 2010, all estuary restoration actions undergo a second technical review by the Action Agencies’ Expert Regional Technical Group (ERTG) at the 60% design stage using the criteria developed by them. BPA then makes final funding decisions based on the ERTG score and the overall project cost.

Technical Review Process:
1) Advertisement and Proposal Receipt – the Estuary Partnership distributes an announcement of each review cycle to initiate the scientific review process during up to three cycles of each calendar year. An electronic announcement is sent to the restoration community, posted on the Estuary Partnership website, and distributed widely across the region and US within the monthly Estuary Partnership E-update. The announcement includes instructions on how to apply, funding available, priorities, etc. The following criteria are required:
•    Restoration and protection actions must lie within the geographic boundary of the Estuary Partnership (concomitant boundary of Action Agencies’ CEERP), including tidally influenced portions of tributaries from Bonneville Dam to the mouth
•    Funding is open to government, not-for-profits, private, tribal and university entities
•    Proposed actions must meet Action Agencies’ CEERP objectives - increase access to and improve the quality of juvenile salmonid habitat
•    Proposed actions must include Action Effectiveness Monitoring - actions must include pre- and post-construction action effectiveness monitoring data collection for Level 3 standard metrics (photo points, water surface elevation, water temperature, sediment accretion and site topography).    
•    Proposed actions must be consistent with and implement actions within the Estuary Partnership Management Plan.
Additionally, proposals incorporating the following elements may receive preference over others:  
•    Actions that result in tangible on-the-ground restoration of specific resources, including restoration of estuarine habitats, slough and drainage networks, and wetland habitats through:
•    Breaching or removing levees
•    Removing tide gates or culverts
•    Reestablishing flow patterns that have been altered by causeways, pile dikes, and tide gates
•    Restoring channels in inter-tidal areas
•    Restoring and enhancing connections between lakes, sloughs, side channels, or floodplains with the mainstem of the Columbia River.  
•    Actions that use passive restoration techniques to return the habitat to its natural conditions.
•    Actions that support the recovery of interior basin salmonids.
•    Actions that integrate climate adaptation and/or mitigation measures.

Proposals received by the due date are recorded and distributed to the Project Review Committee members. Project Review Committee members also receive the project evaluation criteria, a scoring sheet and a copy of the funding announcement. Information on all these are available on the Estuary Partnership’s website: http://www.estuarypartnership.org/our-work/habitat-restoration/habitat-restoration-project-funding.

2) Site Visits – the Estuary Partnership works with sponsors to schedule site visits to each site for the Project Review Committee to participate in. At each site, restoration sponsors lead the tour and answer reviewer questions re: restoration actions.  The site visits allow reviewers to review the site, ask questions of sponsors and allow sponsors to provide an overview and additional information to Project Review Committee members.  

3) Technical Review and Scoring - The Estuary Partnership then convenes the Project Review Committee to formally review and score the proposals. At these meetings, project sponsors are invited to present an overview of the project and respond to any remaining questions from Project Review Committee members. After the sponsor presentations, the Project Review Committee discusses benefits and concerns they have with each project, and ultimately provide a recommendation on whether a project should be funded or not. The Project Review Committee then scores each project and hands in a signed evaluation sheet to Estuary Partnership staff. An Estuary Partnership staff member facilitates the meeting and discussions but does not participate in the scoring or evaluation of the projects.  

When evaluating projects, the Project Review Committee focuses largely on providing scientific review of potential ecosystem benefits from the proposed actions and concerns they have with designs, long term success of actions including climate adaptation measures, community support, multi-species benefits, cost and constructability. The Project Review Committee provides clear guidance on whether an action should be funded as proposed, and if not, provides recommendations on potential improvements to ensure a scientifically-based, successful action. They can, and often have, requested to see the action again at a further phase to ensure sponsors are addressing their recommendations.

The Committee also scores actions, using the Estuary Partnership’s evaluation criteria (available from the Estuary Partnership website: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.estuarypartnership.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/Estuary%20Partnership%20Review%20Criteria_2021_0.pdf). These criteria were developed in a regional workshop with over 100 participants and have been reviewed by the Northwest Power Conservation Council’s Independent Scientific Review Panel (NPCC’s ISRP). These criteria were updated in 2013 to integrate the Estuary Partnership’s voluntary habitat coverage targets and again in 2020 to include climate adaptation measures.

Estuary Partnership staff tally proposal scores and rank them by median scores. Estuary Partnership staff then compiles the results from the Project Review Committee scientific review and provides them and their funding recommendations in a written letter to BPA. BPA weighs these recommendations in light of project costs and ERTG scores, and then makes funding decisions as to whether the project should proceed.

Project Review Committee members include federal and state representatives from fish and wildlife management agencies and include a wide range and depth of expertise such as fisheries biologists, restoration program managers and salmon recovery planners; representative agencies include US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Environmental Protection Agency, NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Additionally, the Estuary Partnership continually works to broaden the experience and expertise of the Project Review Committee. We have had intermittent participation by engineers and Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) to provide another level of review of proposed actions. All members of the Project Review Committee are well experienced and familiar with designing, permitting and implementing restoration and mitigation projects. These experts are well equipped to evaluate the actions from an ecological benefit, fish passage and stranding, constructability, engineering, and cost over-run perspective.

Review of Prior Work for Developing a Science-based Restoration Program
From 2000 -2022, the Estuary Partnership has supported 84 projects that have restored or protected over 5,149 acres and opened over 83.7 miles of stream habitat. When combined with partner projects, the region has accomplished 266 projects representing 33,113 acres restored or protected. The Estuary Partnership has also completed a multitude of programmatic tasks to provide a strong scientific framework for decision-making and effective implementation:
1.    Established a solicitation, technical review, prioritization and selection process for restoration and protection proposals, including the development and continual refinement of a rigorous set of restoration proposal evaluation criteria
2.    Developed and used a restoration prioritization framework for assessing landscape disturbances and comparing potential ecological uplift across actions
3.    Completed an inventory of shoreline condition to aid in identifying site specific limiting factors and potential restoration actions
4.    Monitored four pilot action effectiveness sites from 2007-2012, that lent key information to an overarching programmatic action effectiveness monitoring and research strategy, started in 2013
5.    Developed a suite of reference sites
6.    Compared action effectiveness data to reference sites to develop region specific restoration design considerations
7.    Developed a Restoration Inventory geodatabase to track location and status of actions
8.    Hosted a series of workshops on restoration to identify issues and increase coordination
9.    Developed a Technical Assistance Program to help restoration partners identify, design and monitor restoration actions and
10.    Created and facilitated a Pile Structure Program to aid BPA and the USACE implement 2008 FCRPS RPA 38.
The Estuary Partnership also leveraged resources from this Project to develop additional tools to help with prioritizing locations and restoration and protection actions as well as improving information available for designing and evaluating them. These latter landscape assessment tools include:
1.    Columbia River Estuary Ecosystem Classification (CREEC) (under project #2003-007-00)
2.    Land cover and bathymetry datasets (under project #2003-007-00)
3.    Terrain model (seamless topography and bathymetry dataset created by the USACE with support from us)
4.    Tidally impaired dataset
5.    Fish passage barrier inventory
6.    Habitat Suitability Index Model for juvenile Chinook salmon
7.    Columbian White-tailed Deer Habitat Suitability Model
8.    Historical Habitat change analysis from 1870-2010
9.    Voluntary Habitat Coverage Targets

All GIS datasets are available from the Estuary Partnership’s interactive mapping website (www.estuarypartnership.org) and can also be provided electronically upon request.

Work Efforts for October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2025
Implementation of the Project will allow regional partners to continue protecting and restoring the lower Columbia River ecosystem structure and function, focusing on habitat opportunity, capacity and realized function for aquatic organisms. This Project will increase habitat opportunity by reconnecting historic channels, floodplain and wetland habitats to the mainstem and tidal tributaries. It will improve habitat capacity by increasing habitat complexity and native species, in turn promoting site conditions supporting the production of preferred invertebrate prey, high assimilation efficiencies, and low predation and competition levels. Ultimately, these improvements should improve physiological conditions within organisms using these sites including foraging success, growth, fitness, and survival. The overarching project goal is to ensure ample coverage of diverse, quality habitats throughout the lower river to aid the recovery of juvenile salmonid natural life history diversities. We will accomplish this with the following under this contract:
•    Maintain a scientifically rigorous set of review criteria for evaluating individual restoration actions.
•    Provide technical review and funding recommendations of restoration and protection actions for BPA.
•    Provide regional coordination of restoration and monitoring as well as information sharing events to ensure ecosystem-scale adaptive management.
•    Provide technical assistance to partners as practical.

Through this Project, the Estuary Partnership will continue to support the work of partners to identify, develop, design, and implement habitat restoration projects. Restoration projects will focus on tidally influenced habitats in the lower Columbia River and estuary that provide benefits to salmonids. Project types may include dike breaches, tide-gate removal or retrofits, large wood placement, riparian plantings, and habitat creation. The Estuary Partnership will provide information to BPA on potential projects, help partners collect baseline data, develop scopes of work, budgets, and designs and oversee construction for those projects selected for funding. The Estuary Partnership will coordinate with subcontractors, engineers, and agencies as needed, and will ensure partners’ compliance with all applicable laws.

Estuary Partnership staff will continue to work with partners and Action Agencies to track restoration project information, including wetted acres and river miles restored; status; permitting and other issues; types of restoration actions; costs; and other information. The Estuary Partnership staff will continue to track this information in a central database and work on making this available to partners with different levels of permission for read/write accessibility. The Estuary Partnership will provide maps to the Action Agencies of results and provide project descriptions and maps to the public over the Estuary Partnership website for projects after receiving approval from partners and Action Agencies. The restoration project inventory database will allow the Estuary Partnership and its partners to track the status of restoration projects and help ensure that restoration in the lower Columbia is implemented in a coordinated manner.

Additionally, to aid in the development and implementation of the CEERP, project selection, and RME requirements, the Action Agencies and the Estuary Partnership will meet regularly to collaboratively plan future tasks, resolve problems that arise, discuss emerging issues and make decisions. In addition, the Action Agencies and the Estuary Partnership will work collaboratively to arrange field visits as requested. Participants of these visits could include Action Agency staff, contractors, Expert Regional Technical Group (or ERTG), elected officials, members or staff of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, and others to be determined on an ad hoc basis.

In summary, under this contract the Estuary Partnership will work in coordination with the Action Agencies, partners and others to accomplish the following:

(1) Continue the success of the habitat restoration program for the lower Columbia River and estuary and support efforts to move towards strategic project implementation.
(2) Provide technical staff support to restoration partners to address the limited resources of watershed councils, land trusts, and others pursuing habitat restoration projects.
(3) Ensure long term support and coordination of restoration activities and techniques in close collaboration with Action Agency staff.
(4) Support project implementation efforts by partners to ensure restoration activities are moving toward a more concerted, strategic method of ecosystem restoration.
(5) Continue to develop and advance the use of datasets and other tools as needed to better inform project identification, selection and implementation to ensure the long-term success on both individual project and program-wide scales.

The outcome of these approaches is a coordinated restoration program at both the program and project level that provides a high likelihood of sustainable project success over the long term.