DESCRIPTION
Edmonds Marsh is a 32-acre remnant of a historical 100+-acre barrier estuary and marsh complex located a short distance from the downtown core in the suburban City of Edmonds. This project is intended to address the key salmon recovery issue of limited juvenile access to important, yet rare, nearshore rearing habitat. The goal is to identify a design approach to restoration that significantly improves the connection between Edmonds Marsh and Puget Sound to provide juvenile salmon access to this intact estuarine rearing habitat by daylighting the Willow Creek outlet of Edmonds Marsh to Puget Sound. The Early Feasibility Study (completed in May 2013 and funded by RCO 11-1553) indicated this restoration action will provide improved access to 28 acres of estuarine marsh habitat suitable for juvenile Chinook salmon.
The goal of the current project phase, Final Feasibility, was to address the remaining technical and social aspects of the project prior to entering into design work. These aspects included evaluating the marsh outlet configuration that would allow for juvenile salmon access into the marsh while still providing public park uses, evaluate the need for structural measures in the daylight channel to improve fish passage conditions and/or protect infrastructure, determine the need for a self-regulating tidegate to protect from coastal flooding, and assess the availability of the Unocal property for a daylighted channel and planted buffers.