Funds sought for Clark Fork Delta restoration

SANDPOINT — The Idaho Department of Fish & Game is hoping to duplicate the successes of the Pack River Delta restoration project at the Clark Fork River Delta.

A series of metal rods implanted in the Clark Fork Delta in 1997 are indicating that the delta is sloughing away by as much as 5-8 feet a year, which means 50 to 80 feet of ground has been lost in the past decade.

“Because you only see it little by little, you don’t really notice it,” Kathy Cousins, a mitigation biologist with Idaho Fish & Game, told the Pend Oreille Basin Commission on Wednesday.

One area is eroding so rapidly that the metal rods keep washing away.

“I can’t even keep bank pins in this site. The erosion here is phenomenal,” said Cousins.

But work on the Pack River Delta is proving that restoration is an attainable goal. More than 1,400 acres of palustrine wetlands and deep-water marsh were lost when the Albeni Falls Dam was constructed and inundated the delta.

A $2.5 million project funded through the North American Wetland Conservation Act and Avista led to the installation of erosion and sedimentation countermeasures.

Log vanes and willow bundles redirected flows away from river banks, while earthen berms and willow faccines armored landforms. Rootwad roughness structures and engineered log jams reduced flow velocities and shear stress along eroding banks.

The effectiveness of traditional rock breakwaters and geotube breakwaters was also tested. The geotube breakwater is a semi-permeable membrane that is filled with a slurry of water and soil that is covered over with plantings.

Cousins is working with Ducks Unlimited to develop a project to fortify the Clark Fork Delta, which is vital for migratory songbirds and waterfowl and a priority protection area for Fish & Game.

“We’re hoping that we can put some erosion control in as soon as possible,” said Cousins.

The project, however, lacks funding. Cousins said she is on the lookout for further grant opportunities, but is also holding out hope that the Bonneville Power Administration will help with funding.

BPA is assessing construction and inundation losses from the dam, but hasn’t taken up the matter of operational losses yet.

“There’s no operation loss assessment at present and BPA said it would not be willing to address operational losses until construction and inundation losses have been addressed,” she said.

BPA spokesman Michael Milstein confirmed that is indeed the case.

“As far as mitigation, we’re focused first on mitigating the construction/inundation losses, since those are clearly defined and we know what we’re shooting for and we’re committed to meeting that goal,” Milstein said in an e-mail to The Daily Bee.

Milstein said the operational losses need to be similarly measured and defined in order to responsibly spend ratepayer money to offset them.

But Cousins sees little harm in putting protections in place sooner instead of later.

“We can haggle about it as long as we’re protecting what we have,” she said.