When it comes to developing lands within a flood zone in the Chehalis River Basin, there aren’t many options to begin with, let alone alternatives that can benefit the local economy and aid in the restoration of salmon habitat.
But that’s what Chehalis resident and project visionary Bob Russell foresees, should his Coal Creek ecotourism hub idea come to fruition.
While he hasn’t found full funding for the project, Russell announced the Office of Chehalis Basin (OCB) has given him $280,000 to begin the “initial engineering” phase during a presentation at the Chehalis City Council meeting on Monday, March 10.
“The OCB, like we said, loved the project. So they had a pool of money, $280,000, and they said, ‘Please take it, run with it and show us what you can do with it,’” Russell said.
Before actually beginning the engineering design process, Russell also announced he is holding a community meeting at 6 p.m. inside the Twin Cities Senior Center, located at 2545 N. National Ave. in Chehalis, in order to gather public input concerning the project.
“We’re gonna meet on Thursday night with the citizens and ask, you know, ‘What do you want it to look like?’ And at the same time, tell them what we’re gonna do as we move forward,” Russell said to the council.
His project envisions a public access boardwalk trail system on roughly 88 acres of land that Coal Creek runs through, along with a connection to the adjacent Salzer Creek.
The land is located between Interstate 5 and North National Avenue, just south of the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds.
“About 20 (acres) of it is owned independently, and 66 is owned by the City of Chehalis,” Russell added.
While constructing the trail system, he hopes to carry out aquatic species habitat restoration efforts, providing access to Coal and Salzer creeks for the coho and steelhead salmon that once spawned in the area.
He also told the council returning the land to its original wetland state would help with flooding.
“It would’ve been all bogs, and the creek would’ve come through there, we’re talking 100 years ago … The function you talked about is the one that we would really love to see happen again, so that the salmon that come down there have a place to breed and brood and get big, and it’ll hold a lot of water,” Russell said.
Russell is joined in this project by Brandon Parsons, river restoration director for American Rivers, and Kirsten Harma, lead entity coordinator of the Chehalis Basin Collaborative for Salmon Habitat.
“Kirsten Harma runs that group (Chehalis Basin Collaborative for Salmon Habitat). It is a collaborative of everybody you can imagine, Ducks Unlimited, the counties, the cities and the ports,” Russell said.
Russell is one of the Lewis County citizen representatives in the Chehalis Basin Collaborative for Salmon Habitat. He received support from the collaborative upon pitching his Coal Creek project idea.
“In order to take these projects forward, you need a sponsor, somebody that’s done this before and it worked. So we went out, I told you last time, we were searching for somebody. This American Rivers is a very big organization. They were looking for a project, we pitched it to them and they loved it, so they’ve been helping us move it forward,” Russell said.
American Rivers is a nonprofit organization that works with communities to help preserve river and wetland habitats to protect plant and animal species and access to clean drinking water for residents living by rivers and wetlands, according to its website.
Parsons is a landscape architect who oversees floodplain restoration efforts and dam removals throughout the Pacific Northwest for American Rivers.
The cost of the project, according to previous estimates, is between $600,000 and $1.3 million, Russell said previously.
Now, with the $280,000 in OCB funding, Russell and his partners are looking forward to gathering public input on Thursday to begin project engineering and get a clearer idea of what the project might cost to complete.
“Once we get that, it’d be nice to have sort of an idea of what it would cost to go forward, and matching that with what the citizens and the city (want),” Russell said. “We’ll come back and say, ‘here are some ideas, one-two-three ideas, that cost $2 million, $1 million, $500,000. What can we fund?’”
Russell modeled his project after a similar project called the Auburn Environmental Park, originally undertaken by the City of Auburn in 2004 and opened in 2012.
The Auburn Environmental Park originally included a 1,200-foot boardwalk trail on 120 acres of wetland. After more land acquisitions by the City of Auburn, it now encompasses 250 acres and includes picnic tables, educational signs and a bird-watching tower, according to the City of Auburn’s website.
Auburn’s park was co-funded by the City of Auburn and the state through a $572,000 Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program urban wildlife habitat grant awarded to the city in 2007, according to the Auburn Reporter. Multiple land acquisitions were needed to complete the project, including one for a 29-acre parcel in 2010 for $629,800.
Boardwalk construction was carried out by the Washington state Department of Ecology Washington Conservation Corps at a cost that was not to exceed $45,000, the Auburn Reporter reported. Additionally, volunteers helped with planting trees in the park along with removing invasive plant species.
