Grant to fund five stream restoration projects

The grant comes through the Bureau of Reclamation, WaterSMART Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration. ODFW holds the funds and Hood River Watershed Group will do the work.

“The really important part of this work is that we bring millions of dollars into this watershed, into this community and this economy. And we tried to work as much as possible with local companies to help us implement these projects,” said Danielsen.

The Neal and Baldwin projects are already more than half designed. Some phases of restoration took place there in past years, with other grants.

Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs provided funding, including a 2023 grant of $505,051 for work that includes Tony Creek, Neal Creek and East Fork work. “They are a partner with us on all these projects,” said Danielsen.

“Rivers have a natural morphology and a natural flow,” Danielsen said. “And we’ve done a really good job at altering that. And that causes issues like flooding, and things that directly affect us and our infrastructure, and then also directly affect the aquatic wildlife that depend on the rivers and streams.”

Everything from development, to cutting trees along the rivers and streams, removing riparian areas, straightening streams, building roads along them, and pulling out natural logjams have impacted these waters. Logging is a big impact on the upper Hood River watershed.

Climate change will increase flooding and change streamflow patterns, too. “None of the watershed is spared from that,” Danielsen said.

The projects include three subwatersheds. Danielsen defined a watershed as “all of the water that drains to a particular point within a particular topography.” The area where all the water drains into Hood River are smaller areas where all the water drains into a certain tributary: Subwatersheds. The Hood, itself, is a unit of the massive Columbia River watershed.

Baldwin Creek is an important clear water tributary to the lower East Fork, and has winter steelhead and coho populations. This summer, the Watershed Group plans to remove a couple of fish passage barriers there, restoring access on up to two miles of streams.

Neal Creek’s project is a two-mile stretch of restoration project. This high-priority clear water stream is non-glacial, an important habitat factor for steelhead and salmon.

“So both clear water streams are high priority for us and our partners in the basin when we’re looking for places to do this habitat restoration,” Danielsen said.

In this summer’s third phase of restoration, helicopters will help place more than 600 logs from partnering timber companies to “move the needle for winter steelhead and Coho habitat,” Danielsen said.

Designs for another three projects on the Lower East Fork are planned, to restore a high-priority stretch of river, to be implemented through 2026. “It’ll be a really amazing opportunity to create some channel habitats,” Danielsen said. “In a dynamic stretch of river where, especially when the water comes up and it starts moving really quickly and it’s turbid, creating off-channel habitat,” crucial habitat for returning adults and young salmonids.

One project here involves working with the East Fork irrigation district. In the Hood River Watershed, 40% of the total surface water in the Hood River watershed is diverted for agriculture, from which fish are filtered by a screen and returned to the river. Moving the screen up to the diversion site could have a “huge” impact on mortality rates, and reduce the amount of water diverted, Danielsen said, adding “We work really closely with the three major irrigation districts. They’re excellent partners.”

Most East Fork projects are on private property. “We’ll be working with upwards of ten different private landowners,” said Danielsen. “There’s a huge component of outreach that goes into developing these projects, where we work with other private landowners to first bring people on board. ... Every step of the way, of the design, to make sure that everybody’s on the same page, and everybody feels comfortable.”

Earlier Neal Creek projects involved more than 15 landowners, with current work on county forest land. The Baldwin Creek project involves five landowners.

In the degraded, straightened channels, water crashes straight down the stream instead of being absorbed by the landscape. Gravel beds needed for spawning get swept away. Accordingly, the Watershed Group focuses on restoration, for the sake of humans and wild animals both. “Water conservation helps us for the future,” Danielsen emphasized.

Much of this work is reconnecting down cut streambeds to their floodplains. Straightening channels, and clearing debris from the streams, have made streams dig their beds deeper. Water has stopped overflowing deepened channels, cutting off access to critical off-channel habitat and food for young salmonids. Also, water is no longer absorbed by the floodplain, increasing flood risks.

The “chain effect” of adding logs can help the streams slow down, spread out, collect sediments and raise the stream's beds again. Sometimes, they break out the excavators and regrade a stream, making it easier to interact with old floodplains.

It works quickly. The very morning after earlier Neal Creek projects, Danielsen found young fish swimming through them “... to see some of the juveniles swimming around right in the place you just built for them,” Danielsen said, is "magical."

“When a river is connected to its floodplain, that’s sort of a natural flood remediation,” Danielsen added.

“I think the watershed is a really excellent example of how all these diverse interests come together ... And so we sit down at the table with timber companies, with the irrigation districts, the farmers, the orchards.” It’s been a productive shared interest, Danielsen said.

The grant covers design for the highly-engineered projects. After 2024, more grants will be needed to fund implementation.