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Puget Sound Nearshore Partnership
Steering Committee Meeting
April 19, 2005

Attendees:

Paula Del Giudice, Debby Hyde, Rob Koeppen, Josh Baldi, Hayden Street, Bernie Hargrave, Dick Ecker, Tim Smith, Jacques White, Paul Cereghino, Curtis Tanner, Doug Myers, John Dohrmann, Doug Osterman, Tom Leschine, Sascha Peterson, Fred Goetz, Debbie Rick

Update on the Puget Sound Partnership and Initiative

Special Public Forums – May 2006
Six general public forums will be held around the Sound in mid May. The first hour of the forums will be an Open House designed to acquaint people with the major environmental problems the Sound is facing. The second hour will be an interactive Town Hall meeting with members of the Puget Sound Partnership and environmental experts. The Partnership will use comments from the forums in its initial recommendations to the Governor on June 15.

For more information

Questions about the general public meetings? Contact: Linda Farmer, communications staff to the Partnership, lfarmer@psat.wa.gov, or 360-725-5445; or Jagoda Perich-Anderson, communications staff to the Partnership, jagodapa@sharedsalmonstrategy.org, 206-447-8667.

Scientists and resource managers invited to special forum on May 15

Scientists, natural resource managers and other interested parties are invited to participate in a special, topic-based forum hosted by the Puget Sound Partnership and the University of Washington from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on May 15 at UW. Participants will split into groups and discuss eight different topic areas from the perspectives of both science and management. The Puget Sound Partnership will use the results of the forum to shape its initial recommendations about the recovery of Puget Sound to healthy levels by 2020. Initial recommendations are due to the Governor in June.

The topic sessions are: Freshwater quantity; Habitat protection; Habitat restoration; Species and food web issues ; Toxic contamination; Nutrients and pathogens; Storm water; The overall ecosystem.

Topic papers and other ways to get involved - Short discussion papers on each topic will be sent out a week in advance of the meeting (no later than May 8) and posted on the Partnership website, www.pugetsoundpartnership.org. If you are unable to participate in the forum, you can send written comments about the topic papers to Partnership staff by 5 p.m. on May 15. Email your comments to Martha Neuman, lead staff for the Partnership, mneuman@sharedsalmonstrategy.org. Scientists also can participate by assisting the UW in the collection of specific, relevant scientific information. Please visit: http://www.washington.edu/research/toxics.php

Workshop logistics

The forum will be held on the UW campus in the Husky Union Building.
Directions: http://depts.washington.edu/sauf/hub/directions.php

The forum is free and lunch will be provided. Advance registration is required to secure a lunch. Please book your spot at http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=109770.

Next steps The Partnership will conduct in-depth forums on each of the topic areas during July (dates will be announced at the May 15 forum). In those forums, people will have the chance to work in much greater detail on the suite of potential strategies and actions that the Partnership might consider in pursuit of its draft goals and objectives. Both scientists and resource managers would attend with separate tracks and time for cross-discipline sharing of information and ideas.

For more information Martha Neuman, Partnership lead staff, mneuman@sharedsalmonstrategy.org or 206- 661-8078

Public forums: http://www.pugetsoundpartnership.org/psi_meetings.htm#forums

Online survey: www.pugetsoundpartnership.org/survey

Steering Committee Membership

Tim and Curtis will be meeting with several of the Steering Committee members whose attendance to the Partnership meeting has spotty or lacking. They will review with these members the progress to date as the completion of Stage 2 draws near and seek renewal of commitment to the Partnership and/or a recommendation of a replacement.

Tim and Curtis will also be looking at new Partners within the Cities/Counties, Department of Ecology, IAC, the industry, Burlington Northern Railroad, and others.

Review Project Criteria and Selection Process Estuary and Salmon Restoration Funding

Estuary and Salmon Restoration Projects –

The Implementation Team (IT) developed draft screening and ranking criteria for review of early action projects and prepared a list of projects by proponent from the PRISM database. Some constraints of PRISM in its current form require parts of this process to be manual but the ability to automate the process for future rounds is being developed. See attached Screening and Ranking documents.

Curtis is working with WDFW staff to support IT review of potential projects. Some initial problems have been identified, working on solutions. Project sponsors have been approached for missing project description information and other data gaps preventing project screening before request for additional information. IT is currently pursuing an approach to insure data request will provide all information necessary for project screening and scoring.

“Early Action Project Coordinator” –

Curtis is also working with WDFW Human Resources staff to define and establish new position that will provide IT support, Estuary and Salmon Restoration Project support, and PRISM Nearshore Projects database future development. This wills likely to be full-time “project” position funded thru June 2007.

Brief on VECs with “Value” Component - Tom Leschine

Dr. Tom Leschine, Social Scientist with the NST, gave a presentation on the “Value” component of the VECs. He highlighted:

• Indications of Economic Value of VECs
• Key Concepts, Terms & Ideas
• Valuation Techniques and Limitations
• Connections to Restoration

The PowerPoint is attached.

Upcoming meetings: June Retreat/July Executive Committee – Curtis Tanner

Retreat Planning – Plans are underway for a two-day retreat at Fort Worden. Preliminary agenda items include early-action project recommendations, WRIA9 Change Analysis presentation, and a Management Measure Technical Paper presentation.

Executive Committee is planned for July 14, at the Alderbrook Resort in Union, Washington. Agenda being developed but will include selection of projects for “Estuary and Salmon Restoration in Puget Sound” funding.

SUMMARY OF REPORTS “READ-AHEADS”

Staffing Changes –

Colonel Lewis’ deploys in June for her next duty station, Baghdad. The Change-of-Command Ceremony will be July 27 at 2:00 p.m., at the Chittenden Locks. The next Seattle District Commander will be Colonel McCormick. He was the San Francisco District commander two years ago where he was closely involved in many ecosystem and water supply partnerships. He likely will bring a lot of knowledge to our efforts gleaned from CalFed related projects.

Valued Ecosystem Component White Papers –

Megan Dethier, NST editor, has received five VEC white papers for NST review (Coastal Forests, Forage Fish, Marine Birds, Salmon, and Shellfish). Megan is prompting the other three authors (Beaches & Bluffs, Eelgrass & Kelp, and Great Blue Heron) to get their papers to the NST. Brigit Kriete was contracted in early April for the Orca paper and has already written much of the paper.

WDFW Contributions to VEC White Papers:

• Marine and Shorebirds – Joe Buchanan – Draft submitted, under review by NST reviewers
• Forage Fish – Dan Pentilla – Draft submitted, under review by NST reviewers
• Eelgrass and Kelp – Draft submitted, returned to Tom Mumford for additional work prior to review

Change Analysis Working Group –

Discussion reached ‘relative’ consensus of how change analysis would be organized by two nearshore regimes: beach (wave energy, sedimentation processes) and delta (fluvial-tidal mixing processes). The division of these regimes would be fixed based for both historic and current conditions, but we will document potential changes in process-based subunits in both regimes, e.g., estuarine salinity/hydrology regimes. We also agreed tentatively that fundamental units for the beach regime would be delineated by ShoreZone division, and hence aggregated up to beach accounting units.

Moderate sized estuarine embayments that historically had estuarine wetlands may be analyzed under both regime approaches; this may result in small gaps in the analysis associated with “beach” accounting unit (WG will investigate a procedure that ensures it is captured).

Implementing Change Analysis -

Negotiated agreement with Department of Natural Resources’ Aquatic Division management for 25 percent of Phil Bloch’s time to act Analysis Project Manager. Coordinating with Chris Davis, CommEn Space, to define future tasks, i.e., drafting change analysis work plan tasks based on WRIA 9 pilot project approach. Working on identifying other sources of GIS expertise for completing data development and analysis tasks. The state’s Supplemental Budget enables additional WDWF resource capacity: $25K for work during current FY (now thru end of June) and $250K for next FY (July ’06 thru June ’07)

Management Measure Descriptions –

The Implementation Team (IT) has been working on expanding the definitions of the nearshore management measures (MM) to include an engineering perspective. This will be a critical step in building the feasibility report. We have initially selected three management measures to work on before proceeding with the other measures: Armor modification/Removal, Channel Restoration or Creation, and Modify/Remove Over Water Structures. Engineering Perspective includes: adding content to the constraints and design considerations and best management practices where needed.

Revisions to the MMs will also include the addition of case studies, and cost and design data culled from a review of all case studies on a particular topic. The MMs presented at the March IT meeting generated discussion regarding how critical the wording and nuances will be for readers. The draft management measures are in varying states of completion. In addition to adding the engineering perspective, IT will try to make these measures have a consistent voice and anticipate that this task will require much more effort and review by the team before finalizing. The team has been discussing the use and expectation for the final product.

Strategic Needs Assessment Outline –

Beth provided the SNAR context to the Feasibility Report, in which it covers (a) the problem definition and (b) information gathering on historical, exist, and future without project conditions, that together constitute Phase II of the process. Phase III, completing the Feasibility Report, covers (c) development of plans, alternatives, and portfolio of restoration actions, (d) comparison of these plans alternatives and portfolios, and (e) selection and recommendation of the final plan.

A broad, collaborative discussion revolved walking through the draft (IT based) outline that Beth provided. Some of the key recommendations involved:

• Need to incorporate critical ‘regional’ conditions and change descriptions and analyses, such as environmental (e.g., climate), historical and cultural, and social.
• Addition of case studies that are not comprehensive across Puget Sound but that provide value-added insight and depth into frequency of change, differentiation between anthropogenic change and natural variability, etc.
• Emphasis on the logic sequence in our analyses, rather than the products per se, where the products are described (in detail in some cases) as tools to address the relationships between nearshore ecosystem processes, structure, functions, goods and services and (peripherally) VECs
• In most cases, while VECs were cited as examples to translate these relationships, their role in SNAR was considered to be more appropriate for the Conclusions and Recommendations (e.g., implications) and, more directly, the Phase III part of the process.

This discussion resulted in a modest reorganization of the SNAR report outline, albeit keeping most of the fundamental components. However, the NST emphasized critical gaps in the existing outline, that should be incorporated into the next revision, including change analysis emphasizing just as much about what is intact as what has changed, and more social values (change) analyses and context.

Case Studies:

• SNAR tells us what’s broken and why, and case studies would expand on synoptic change analysis would help us to really understand why we would choose particular restoration actions, e.g., what happened and why it happened
• Case studies would also allow us more opportunity to identify scales of natural variability
• Initial exploration of what case studies will constitute, and what role they will play in SNAR highlighted the primary “types” of cases studies, e.g. (a) examples of finer temporal- or spatial-scale change; (b) functional relationships between ecosystem structure and processes; (c) social values; (d) traditional values; (e) VEC link to nearshore ecosystem processes

Criteria for case studies might include: (a) Can be well documented, (b) is it compelling – easily understood by a national audience; (c) is there sufficient historic data; (d) is it linked to the ecological function or VEC that we care about; and (e) inform us where restoration can be most effective.

Future Without Project –

The new team composed of science and steering committee members continue to meet with the University of Washington Center for Urban Ecology researchers to refine the approach culminating in the first of two workshops.

Restore America’s Estuaries 3rd National Conference –

The Puget Sound Nearshore Partnership will be sponsoring the conference at a “Patron” level ($5,000). At this level of support the Nearshore Partnership will have prominent organizational listing in all Conference printed materials and on-site at the event, have one-quarter page ad in the Conference Program, complimentary exhibit booth space, two complimentary Conference registrations, and recognition and hyperlink on Restore America’s Estuaries’ Conference website.

Puget Sound and Adjacent Waters Restoration Program –

Skokomish Estuary Restoration Project Cooperation Agreement (PCA) pending late notice by the tribe that neither they nor Tacoma have right-of-way across portions of Reservation and Skokomish Flats roads necessary for construction. The team is working with the band of attorneys from the tribe and Bureau Indian Affairs that materialized when this issue surfaced. Summer ’06 construction work window is significantly jeopardized, perhaps even the project, if access cannot be provided.

Lake Washington Gravel Nourishment Decision Document and PCA pending SHPO letter necessary to complete the EA.

Curtis moderated a dedicated session on “Puget Sound Nearshore Restoration: Planning and Projects” that was accepted for Program

• An Assessment of the Current and Historic Geomorphic Conditions of a Highly Urbanized Marine Shoreline in Central Puget Sound – Andrea MacLennan, Coastal Geologic Services, Inc.
• Marine Nearshore Habitat Priorities in the Green-Duwamish Watershed in Central Puget Sound – Paul Schlenger, Anchor Environmenta
• Bulkheading in Thurston County: Impacts on Forage Fish Spawning Habitat -- Tim Abbe, Herrera Environmental Consultants, Inc.
• Nearshore Change Analysis in Puget Sound for Ecosystem Restoration Planning – Jessemine Fung, CommEn Space

Deschutes Estuary Feasibility Study –

The (Steering Committee) received 1st draft Reference Estuary Study report, which is currently under review by Technical Work Group. The Focus Group meetings and Public meeting have been completed identifying a wide range of social values associated with Capitol Lake/lower Deschutes Basin for scoping Net Benefit Analysis study. The Draft report is due April 30.

Engineering Design/Cost Estimate Study –

Proposal review and contractor interviews complete. The Contractor was selected on April 17.

Wiley Slough restoration project –

Curtis met with the WDFW project leads and USFWS Coastal Program representative. They discussed development of a proposal to USFWS National Coastal Wetland Conservation Grant Program. The Fish and Wildlife Service staff will assist in the proposal development and FWS Coastal Program to commit $10-15,000 for post-project monitoring. ~$700K request

Future Meeting Topics

Progress on Change Analysis Curtis Tanner
Future Without Project Workgroup Fred Goetz

Next Meeting: May 17, 2006

Pierce County Environmental Services
9850 64th Street West
University Place, WA 98487-1078
West Public Meeting Room