The Brookside Creek Restoration Project

Summer, 2005: Lower Brookside (Wilcox property) fish passage obstruction removal

The stream restorations at the Wilcox home were adeptly rendered in two weeks’ time. This expediency was due to careful planning on the part of Jay Kidder, of Chinook Engineering, associated with Steward and Associates, and Brian Bodenbach (Biosphere Company), the contractor, AND the hard labor and long hours put in by Brian and Kevin Waller, the excavator operator. The excavator could drop materials very close to their resting place...
		... but the final placement of the rocks and gravel for formation of the weirs and pools in this stretch of Brookside Creek was achieved by sheer muscle power, plus the skill and knowledge gained from years of experience. Brian will tell you the hardest part, physically, was creating the creek bed of boulders and gravel through a new metal culvert which is 6 feet wide 4 feet high and 25 feet long, and replaced a smaller one under the Wilcox’s driveway.
Before any stream work could begin, Brian had the challenging task of designing and creating a 280-foot bypass out of 20-foot sections of rigid plastic pipe and 45-degree angle connectors. During the 1 1⁄2 weeks of work in the new streambed, this securely anchored conduit, reminiscent of the Alaska Pipeline, successfully carried the stream from the street culvert at the Southwest corner of the Wilcox property, diagonally across their lot, to the stream in the neighbor’s backyard. This diversion was necessary, in order to provide a dry creek bed for the restoration work.
		The bypass culvert was begun on Monday, August 29th. The new driveway culvert was set in place on the 31st. The new channel was completed and water was returned to the stream on Thursday September 8. This is the second of three projects to remove man-made obstructions that the Stewardship Foundation has set out to complete on Brookside Creek.
Remaining work at this site is the restoration of vegetation to the landscape. Adopt-a-Stream, a regional non-profit environmental organization, will be donating native plants and labor for this phase. The Stewardship Foundation will be calling for volunteers during the planting.
		Dustin Hinsen, fisheries biologist from Steward and Assoc., the primary engineering firm for this project, was on hand to assist with installation of the diversion pipe. To satisfy Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife guidelines, a qualified fish biologist must be present to relocate any fish which might be stranded when a stream is diverted. Though initially there appeared to be no significant aquatic life at the site, splashing in a small pool as the water was gradually deflected into the bypass proved to be caused by a 5 to 6 inch Cutthroat trout. Due to size and coloration, it was determined to be a stream native, as opposed to a lake trout. It was safely relocated downstream.
Later the same day, as Kevin lifted a large rock from the river bank with the giant jaws of the excavator, a Pacific Giant Salamander (Dicamptodon tenebrosus) lay lurking under the rock, at water level. Unlike the Pacific Giant we’d seen at the Hoy project upstream, this one had gills. Thus it is classified “neotenic”, rather than “metamorphosed” (without gills). This salamander species is the heaviest to grow in this region. It may reach 30 centimeters in length. Klaus Richter, PhD, an expert on amphibians of the Northwest, who Brian contacted immediately, said the gilled version of Pacific Giant salamander is fully aquatic, and is an excellent indicator of clean water. It is not generally seen in urban areas. The salamander was carefully relocated, as were a few sculpin and a crayfish.
		This little stream, Brookside Creek, has the good fortune to be flowing through a naturally protected watershed for most of its length. Its steadfast perennial flow arises primarily from springs in Grace Cole Nature Park. It passes through a long, deep ravine along which most homes are set above steep slopes. Covered with dense vegetation, these sloped banks provide functional buffer for the stream.
Not all the news about this stream is good, however. It has an additional source of water which is storm runoff from streets above the headlands. The Foundation is searching for a solution to this problem runoff, which results in destructive, erosion-causing fluctuation of stream flow. It is a major cause of the habitat-damaging load of sediment which is often carried, during and following storms, into McAleer Creek, and into Lake Washington. A means to work collaboratively with the Cities of Shoreline and Lake Forest Park to lessen storm event impact is a goal of the Foundation.
		Members of the Wilcox family have shown an outstandingly cooperative spirit of support for the task of bringing salmon back to Brookside Creek. Before we began restoration, they removed an ingeniously designed heat exchange system, which had been built by their father, now deceased, in the 1950’s. It had been designed to take heat from the stream water to warm the home. It consisted of many feet of tubular copper coils enclosed in large concrete and steel boxes, buried under a portion of the front lawn. This plant, due to high maintenance, had fallen into disuse long ago.
It has been a distinct pleasure working and visiting with the Wilcox family during the process of restoring their portion of the creek. They seem very pleased with the babbling brook which now tumbles over river rock, pauses in a resting pool, then tumbles and pauses again, as it makes its way through their front garden. Reported by Mamie Bolender, volunteer Project Director   This project was funded by the Community Salmon Fund grant and a King County, Department of Natural Resources and Parks, WaterWorks grant. The July 15, 2005 issue of Enterprise has an article by Brooke Fisher on the Brookside Creek restoration project as well as the StreamKeepers' macroinvertebrate sampling program.

October 7: 2003: A Stream Is Born

A babbling brook now meanders down its cobbled 80-foot course in the forested back yard of Rick and Launa Hoy in Lake Forest Park, through a corner of the new Grace Cole Nature Park, before it joins the main channel of Brookside Creek and continues downstream to McAleer Creek. This section of stream, now navigable to salmon and trout, replaced a perched culvert through an earthen dam, which formed a backyard pond. It is one of numerous improvements needed in Lake Forest Park to make all our streams passable to salmon and trout.

The Lake Forest Park Stewardship Foundation invited neighbors, public officials, volunteers and the professionals who planned and carried out the Brookside Creek restoration, to share in the official opening of the new creek channel on October 3, 2003. Brian Bodenbach, of Biosphere Company, worked from a plan by Arthur Fleming, of HartCrowser, to create this beautiful stream. Click here to see photos of the opening ceremony. Click here to download a movie of the ceremony (in Windows Media Format).

More information about this project follows...

September 23, 2003: The First Step on the way to restoring Brookside Creek

The Lake Forest Park Stewardship Foundation is conducting a major effort entitled The Brookside Creek Salmon Habitat Restoration Project. This project is aimed toward restoring Coho Salmon to Brookside Creek, a tributary of McAleer Creek.

As the first step, we have removed the obstacle to fish migration caused by a dam which was placed on an upper reach of Brookside Creek by a homeowner to create a backyard pond in the 1960’s. Launa and Rick Hoy, property owners, have generously granted the Foundation access to do the work on this dam, which is partially on their property. Coho Salmon and Cutthroat once spawned and reared here, and we anticipate they will again, after this barrier and two others downstream have been overcome.

Click here for a map of the Brookside Creek drainage and for details of the current barriers to fish passage.

The $49,000 Community Salmon Fund grant, which the Foundation was awarded last year, is funding this first step. It also provides for informational meetings with citizens who live along the creek. In addition it will help pay the salary of Eleanor Boba, the Foundation’s new Administrative Assistant, since one of her responsibilities will be handling some of the communication and recording details of this activity.

Project Directors Mamie Bolender and Jean Reid, and the Brookside Creek Committee, worked with Hart Crowser and Pentec Engineering Consulting firms, with local experts, and with the owners, to develop a plan which would accomplish the goals of providing good habitat and stay within the budget of the grant.

Several permits and approvals were required for this project. They included approval from the WA Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, the City of Lake Forest Park, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the Washington Department of Ecology.

Due to discoveries of location made during the surveying by the HartCrowser engineering firm, it was determined that all the downstream portion of the work, and part of the dam breaching, will be occurring on property of the City of Lake Forest Park, rather than on the private property of Launa and Rick Hoy. (The City-owned parcels are a recently acquired addition to the Cole Nature Park and property donated to the City by the Briarcrest Community.) This new information led to a series of discussions about the desirability of preserving the original man-made pond (as originally considered) vs. cutting the dam down to lower the pond. The decision to breach the dam turns a portion of the pond into wetland, with a meandering stream. Downstream, instead of a fish ladder, as originally planned, the final design involves a stream flowing down a grade, with occasional resting ponds for fish. This plan shift led to considerably more work for HartCrowser, and, consequently more expense. The firm and the Foundation are sharing this added cost.

Several work parties convened on the Hoy site this past summer to prepare the site for the the breaching of the dam. These, along with other hours spent by individuals on this project, add up to a total of 220 hours of volunteer labor so far on this project. The bulk of the “heavy lifting” occurred during the two-week period from September 8 through September 26. During this time Brian Bodenbach, the primary contractor for the project, temporarily rerouted the flow of Brookside Creek around the existing dam and created a new, fish-friendly stream channel through which Brookside Creek now freely flows.

Over the coming months, there will continue to be work parties in which volunteers will be removing invasive plants and revegetating the area with native species.

Photos of the Hoy Dam Removal project.

Photos of the Opening Ceremony, October 3, 2003.

Movie of the Opening Ceremony, October 3, 2003 (Windows Media Format, 2.7 MB)

Maps of the Brookside Creek Drainage

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