Clearwater Reach Restoration Planting

By Shawna Lee, Clearwater staff member

Work is nearing completion on the North Creek Clearwater Reach stream restoration project.

The final phase of the project involves planting thousands of native trees and shrubs in the riparian zones at both The Clearwater School and Clearwater Commons. Scott Moore, Native Plant Steward at Snohomish County Surface Water Management, created a planting plan and plant list to re-vegetate the construction area.

Shrubs awaiting planting on west side of North Creek

In the late fall, members of the Washington Conservation Corps (WCC) planted 1,000 trees on both sides of North Creek running through school property.

Hundreds more shrubs on the eastern slope of North Creek

In early February, 3,000 shrubs were delivered and placed. WCC did much of the planting, and last week members of that crew trained Clearwater students and staff how to plant the remaining several hundred shrubs to ensure a high survival rate. We have this week and next to finish the planting.

WCC crew member explaining technique to Justin, Lily and Tommie

...and they set to work

The Complex Story of Salmon in North Creek

This post is a departure from news about daily life at Clearwater and thoughts on Sudbury philosophy and practice. I was inspired by our Clearwater sockeye salmon, returning in much larger numbers this year to spawn in North Creek, to find out more about their story. I turned up information that I found surprising and fascinating. If you'd like to know more, read on.

A few weeks ago, I took a video of some salmon swimming upstream in North Creek on Clearwater's campus.

The Clearwater School is working with Snohomish County Surface Water Management to extensively restore our portion of North Creek to improve salmon habitat for spawning fish, eggs and fry. Thanks to a $75,000 grant, restoration work will begin in earnest next spring.

Around the same time our salmon started returning (descendants of salmon that spawned in 2006), the Seattle Times published an intriguing article . From that article I learned that sockeye that swim from Puget Sound up the fish ladder at Hiram Chittenden locks in Ballard to spawn in the rivers and creeks flowing into Lake Washington are not native to that system. They are descended from sockeye planted from a Skagit River tributary in 1935 and from a temporary hatchery on the Cedar River. North Creek is part of that system, flowing into the Sammamish River, thence to Lake Washington and the ship canal and out to Puget Sound. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife website briefly describes how sockeye came to be introduced into the Lake Washington watershed.

The salmon that are native to our rivers and creeks are chinook, coho and kokanee (a freshwater sockeye relative). However, unlike juvenile sockeye that are adapted to spend a year in deep-water lakes before heading to sea, chinook and coho need to mature in rivers and streams. Native salmon species are not doing well at all because our urban lakes and streams are befouled fish habitat. As a population we are not effectively enforcing the laws we created to preserve and restore stream habitat.

More after the jump...
Sockeye survive in larger numbers because they don't need to spend as much time in creeks before heading to sea. They also benefit from being reared in a hatchery. We are all spending $45 million to build a permanent sockeye hatchery on the Cedar River, then tag and track sockeye because of their value as a fishing resource. These non-native fish are not endangered, so there's little incentive or political will to clean up streams and rivers in which they spawn. Despite the fact that we're spending lots of money to preserve a non-native sockeye fishery, the returns have not been good enough most years to even open up fishing, beyond the treaty-guaranteed rights of local tribes.

For a short time, two dead salmon were easily visible near the foot bridge across North Creek. There's no way of knowing whether these two fish completed their mission successfully by laying and fertilizing eggs.

Washington Fish and Wildlife counts the sockeye that return through the Ballard locks each year. The counts since 2000 are available on their website. In 2006 a large number of sockeye returned through the locks--418,015, in fact. In 2007, only 60,117 came back. In 2008 there were 33,6259, and in 2009 only 21,718 returned. On Clearwater's section of North Creek, we did not see any sockeye during the past two years. Despite the fact that we saw more fish in our creek this year, the total return (156,752) was little more than a third of the parent population that spawned the current generation four years ago. Chinook and coho numbers are more dismal--10,565 and 3,608, respectively.

An animal dragged a dead or dying salmon onto the creek bank at school and left a lot of it there. This photo shows the very end of this fish's life cycle. Its flesh has become food for other creatures, including maggots. Little is left but a few thin bones.

There is one more wrinkle to this story, as I know it so far. At least one person knowledgeable about the history and practice of salmon management in the Lake Washington watershed believes that many of the fish spawning in our little local creeks are in fact native endangered kokanee, not introduced sockeye. If that were proven to be the case, it would become necessary for counties and municipalities to enforce stream habitat preservation laws. That is something various public and private interests would find at least inconvenient, and at most extremely expensive.

There is obviously more to this story and more research to be done. We know our current urban living style is not healthy for fish or the wildlife that depend on them. It is easy to feel overwhelmed and discouraged by the scope and complexity of the problem. To solve it requires consistent, informed action and a commitment to live sustainably by us, the inhabitants of the Puget Sound area. Our school's restoration efforts may be small in the scheme of things, but I treasure being part of a school community that is actively working to create better habitat for salmon, other creatures and humans.

End of post.

Clearwater is Snohomish County's First Rain Garden Project

Our rain garden was featured in the Snohomish Conservation District's Fall Newsletter. Unfortuantely, the article is a PDF so I can only link without graphics. This is part of the Clearwater Reach grant project.

$75,000 Grant Approved for North Creek Clearwater Reach Restoration Project

In mid-December, we heard from Snohomish County's Stream Enhancement Engineer that the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation granted Snohomish County the entire amount requested--$75,000--to begin stream restoration work on the part of North Creek that flows through The Clearwater School's property. We are excited to partner with Snohomish County and Clearwater Commons to participate in the North Creek Clearwater Reach Restoration Project. This unique project involves our school, an upstream intentional community dedicated to sustainability and a government entity, working together to enhance and protect the natural habitat along a 1400-foot stretch of North Creek--the largest restoration project planned along the Snohomish County portion of North Creek.

Access to North Creek was one of the school’s top reasons for purchasing the site in 2006. Students and staff have a great interest in the creek. Beyond the enjoyment of being near moving water, we have spent hours studying spawning behaviors and lifecycles of salmon. In 2006 we observed the majesty of Sockeye, Coho and Chinook salmon navigating up the creek and spawning along the school and Commons properties. Sadly, over the past two seasons we have seen a dramatic decrease in the numbers of fish returning to spawn.
During the past two years, Clearwater families, Snohomish County Surface Water Management and the Conservation Corps have worked to control invasive plant species, including Japanese knotweed, blackberries, tansy and thistle. This project has the potential to support Steelhead trout and Chinook, Sockeye and Coho salmon species. It will also improve the overall health of North Creek by nurturing greater diversity of animals and native plants.
The grant funds will help to finance restoration efforts, focusing on restoring creek banks eroded during the Winter 2007 storm. Snohomish County designed a plan to restore the creek and adjacent habitat to a healthy ecosystem in the most natural state possible. In December, a crew from Snohomish County came out to survey the part of the creek outlined in the grant. They also took core samples in two different places in the thistle field closer to and farther away from the creek. It turns out that much of the thistle field is fill dirt and the natural flood plain soil is around seven feet below the surface of the field. School Meeting authorized Snohomish County to remove much of the fill and create a more gently sloping bank that will be planted with native shrubs and trees. This will create an inviting and rich area to explore and better creek access on the east side of North Creek. Work is scheduled to begin in 2010.

Clearwater will donate in-kind volunteer hours to this project and involve members of our school and the extended community. We are lucky that our families include skilled educators, naturalists, landscape architects, and engineers, as well as dedicated laborers.

Our aim is to demonstrate that individuals, schools and government entities can work together to make a needed difference for our environment. We hope our involvement in this effort will inspire future projects in other locations.