DESCRIPTION
The Tucannon River Geomorphic Assessment was initiated by the Columbia Conservation District through a SRFB grant focusing on assessing and design a 2 mile river reach from the Town of Starbuck to the Smith Hollow Bridge. The project expanded to complete a watershed assessment of more than 50 miles of the mainstem Tucannon River including the colection or remotsensing date ground surveys. The data set developed was used to develop a restoration plan for the Tucannon River beginning at RM 30 up to RM 50 in 2012. In 2013, the SRSRB became involved compleing a restoration plan for Reach 5 down to RM 13. In the same year the CCD conducted a sister plan for the remaing river length. The resulting restoration plan layed out 45 restoration project averaging more then a mile in length each, prioritized into three tiers based on benefit to salmonids and cost efficiency. In 2011, the first project was completed followed by on in 2012. It is anticipated that at least one project will be conducted each year through 2018. The Next project ready for implementation are project 14, 03, 15, 26, 22, 23, and 11.
The Walla Walla Community College coordinated with the Columbia Conservation District (CCD) in the completion of the Tucannon R Geomorphic Assessment & Habitat Restoration Study (Anchor April 2011) of the entire 50 miles of the main stem Tucannon River. This report led to the development of the Conceptual Restoration Plan, Reaches 6-10 (Anchor Nov 2011) followed by Reach 5 (Anchor Oct 2012) and Reaches 3-4 (Anchor Oct 2012b), for the same 50 miles. The plan illustrates the restoration objectives based on factors limiting salmonids recovery, and develops conceptual restoration actions needed to achieve desired condition. In total, 46 individual conceptual restoration projects were developed and prioritize based on expected biological response, consistency with natural geomorphic process, benefit to cost ratio and priority to recovery. The restoration concepts were developed and refined in the Regional Technical Team leading to discussion of alternatives and selection of preferred.
This project specifically funded the completion of a restoration plan for the 7 mile Reach 5 (Anchor Oct 2012), development of one tier 1 project into a conceptual design and design report (PA-24), and two projects into preliminary designs and reports (PA-14 & PA-15). PA-14 design will be developed to final for implementation in 2013-2014 and PA-15 is scheduled for final design in 2013 and implementation in 2014. Initially, it was anticipated that this project would be conducting part of the Geomorphic Assessment but, due to efficiency, the CCD completed the assessment with other funds allowing this project to instead complete a preliminary design on PA-14. Additionally, it was anticipated that at least one design project would be located within Reach 5, however none of the projects in Reach 5 were ranked as tier 1 so the three selected Tier 1 designs were located outside Reach 5.
This project is expected to benefit Chinook salmon and steelhead.
Tucannon River Population
