Gorley Spring restoration ending

The Columbian Estuary Study Taskforce (CREST) has about a week of construction left on a 1500-foot section of habitat restoration on a Grays River tributary that runs through the Gorley farm just off Fossil Creek road.

CREST habitat restoration specialist, Amy Ammer said the organization has spent nearly $800,000 on this phase of their project. And crews worked most of the summer, testing, cleaning and shaping the streambed. CREST workers added gravel in and along the upper portion of the tributary.

“The heavy equipment will be here probably another four days, “ said Ammer, “then our volunteer crew from Naselle High School will start site remediation that will help control erosion and stabilize the area before winter.”

The earth graders and log loaders have laid out the last of the man made logjams and gravel beds. Ammer said the actual construction and river shaping is pretty much done.

The logs are stacked crisscross fashion to help trap and slow the water during the flood season. Creating the logjams and stacking them will also catch silt, which in turn will help stabilize the shoreline and provides habitat for salmon.

New gravel is spread throughout the creek and along both sides of the 1500’ creek bank. The clean gravel provides new breeding habitat for chum salmon.

“This is one of the last remaining chum spawning locations on the whole lower Columbia River,” said Ammer, "and that’s why it's so critical and why we have a large amount of money here to restore this site.”

Ammer said the plan is to allow the river to run in the direction it seems to want to flow. “What were trying to do is help the river find a more stable path because just this last winter the river changed direction 400 to 500 feet.”

Habitat construction is a first step to try and work with nature. “The work we're doing here is to create a habitat forming processes,” Ammer said, “because if you get nature’s process right, you get the habitat right and then you can get the fish to come back.”

The restoration project is part of CREST’s on-going research into habitat restoration. The Gorley farm project is a two-fold study allowing researchers to study the before-and-after effects of the river’s course change and the impact of the work done.

Ammer said that in 1999 the Gorley farm was all but washed away when flooding resulting from upriver forestry and heavy rains washed out a dike along the upper Grays River, destroying a great deal of chum salmon spawning habitat.

The river poured through the breached levee and sediment and gravel created large gravel bars forcing the river to change course to inundate and erode 39 acres of the Gorley family’s 40-acre farm.

The Gorley family asked CREST researchers to look at how the river acted after it changed course.

“The family was hoping to reclaim some of their land,” said Ammer, “so we looked at the river and what it did after it left its bank."

Ammer said CREST now has the opportunity to study the river after restoration and determine what effects the new logjams will have on water flow.

Another of the project’s mandates has been to try to reduce the impact flooding has down river.

Ammer said that in 2003, Wahkiakum County contracted with CREST to help develop a comprehensive flood management plan, and the Gorley farm was identified as a high priority.

“People saw this project as a potential to really help people down river,” said Ammer, “and while this phase of the project is funded to specifically to deal with fish habitat, we think the logjams will help to lessen flooding downstream.”

Ammer said this project has been six years in the making, and the Bonneville Power Administration has funded this portion of the restoration project. The test comes this winter when CREST researchers will be able to watch how the river reacts to the new construction.

“This project is all about patience,” Ammer said, “and what we really are trying to do is to help the river find a more stable path.”