DESCRIPTION
The Finn Creek estuary in Hansville, WA was buried under fill in the early 1900s at what is now Norwegian Point County Park. Working with Blue Coast and Kitsap County, Wild Fish Conservancy will have final designs for the estuary and fish passage restoration project in 2024. With this proposal we request funding to finalize permitting and construct the Finn Creek Estuary Restoration Project. Restoration actions include removing a failing 300' long barrier culvert and tide gate at the beach, removing a second culvert, removing fill to recreate a barrier embayment in the park and repurposing that material to construct a park-perimeter berm to protect adjacent properties, restoring native veg. and LWD, removing derelict creosote pilings, replacing the undersized culvert at the Buck Lake / Hansville Rd. intersection, and naturalizing the ditched channel upstream from that intersection. The project will create and sustain habitats used by natal and non-natal wild fish populations, and restore anadromous access to 2 miles of spawning and rearing habitat upstream from the park. The project will restore or enhance watershed and estuarine processes that have been lost, including fish passage; sediment sorting, scour, delivery, and longshore drift; riparian shading, nutrient and runoff filtering, and bank stability; and large wood recruitment. Ancillary benefits include reduced flooding in Hansville and a much-improved County park interpretive experience for the public.
Barrier culverts and a tidegate in Norwegian Point County Park block access two miles of spawning and rearing habitats in Finn Creek, and the Finn estuary has been buried under fill for decades. These conditions have blocked access to spawning habitat for coho, chum, and sea-run cutthroat; and have destroyed critical estuarine foraging habitats for non-natal juvenile Chinook, coho, chum, and pink salmon. The delivery of sediments to the nearshore, and longshore drift processes, are also compromised. This proposal is for a portion of the final construction phase of the multi-year Finn estuary restoration design collaboration between WFC, Kitsap County, and Blue Coast Engineering. WFC and partners will permit and construct this large-scale estuary restoration and fish passage improvement project to recover natural processes in lower Finn Creek that create and sustain freshwater, estuarine, and nearshore habitats used by wild fish populations. This is a Tier 1 project in the West Sound Nearshore Integration and Synthesis (Confluence, 2016). Finn Creek restoration opportunities are identified in the East Kitsap Steelhead Habitat Evaluation Project report. PSNERP Strategy for Lost Embayments has identified this opportunity. Restoration of the Finn Cr. estuary will complement Rose Point and Point No Point estuary restoration efforts. In addition to this proposal, the project team is currently applying for the balance of funding needed to complete the project budget.
NOTES
Kitsap County Parks Department and Kitsap County Public Works have been partners in each previous phase of this project, and continue to support the project. The upstream landowner is supportive and has provided an acknowledgement form; the park-adjacent landowners are supportive and have contributed throughout the project development, and WFC has led several public meetings to inform and take feedback from the Hansville community.
Fish species that will benefit from the project include juvenile Chinook, pink, and coho salmon (winter/spring rearing); adult coho and chum salmon (access for fall spawning); and adult and juvenile steelhead and coastal cutthroat trout (spring-spawning, all year rearing). Further, restoration of estuarine habitats will benefit marine forage fish species, prey for immature and adult chinook, coho, chum, and pink salmon year-round. Forage fish are imperative to salmon recovery (see: https://nwtreatytribes.org/healthy-forage-fishhabitat-imperative-salmon-recovery/).
