Restoration Priorities

Strategies for Preserving and Restoring Small Puget Sound Drainages

Background

In fall 2013 the King County Water and Land Resources Division finalized a two year interagency agreement with the Washington State Department of Ecology funded by Environmental Protection Agency pass through funds as part of the Puget Sound Action Agenda Ecosystem and Protection Project. The purpose of this project is to develop strategies and cost estimates for preserving all Puget Sound drainages with "excellent" benthic index of biotic integrity (B-IBI) scores, and for restoring 30 drainages from "fair" to "good" B-IBI scores, two Action Agenda ecosystem recovery targets. This project is intended to accomplish near-term actions from the 2012/2013 Action Agenda including C2.1 NTA2: managing urban runoff at the basin and watershed scale, and C2.3 NTA 2: map, prioritize and restore degraded streams.

This project relies on existing data and does not include any new field data collection. B-IBI metrics and overall scores will be downloaded directly from the Puget Sound Stream Benthos website and sites that have “excellent “scores (greater than or equal to 42) and “fair” scores (28 to 36) will be identified. A geospatial analysis will be done to delineate drainage basins and calculate various landscape metrics for these identified sites including land cover and geology in addition to site characteristics such as precipitation and elevation.

King County staff working with the Puget Sound Watershed Characterization model team will develop a decision making framework to rank sites with "fair" scores and prioritize 30 sites for the development of restoration strategies. This framework will be developed using input from interested stakeholders. Once the 30 sites are prioritized, planning level cost estimates will be developed for proposed management and restoration activities on a general cost per unit of activity - such as linear feet riparian restoration or square mile of stormwater retrofit. Detailed descriptions of individual restoration projects will not be developed.

King County will also develop strategies for preserving basins with "excellent" B-IBI scores. Strategies to be explored will include public land purchase, conservation easement purchase, and transfer of development rights.

Primary Project Goals

• Develop a decision making framework for prioritizing and directing regional restoration efforts that utilizes geospatial information and regional B-IBI data;
• Collect information from regional stakeholders and peer-reviewed literature regarding what restoration activities are taking place and have been successful;
• Provide direction for moving forward on the Puget Sound Action Agenda B-IBI ecosystem recovery targets by developing a framework to protect sites with "excellent" scores and for restoring 30 sites from "fair" to "good" B-IBI scores.

Project Contacts

For more information contact: