Shoreline Habitat in Jefferson County

SHORELINE ALERT 2001

This year's legislative session began with much controversy over the Department of Ecology's recently adopted Shoreline Guidelines rule that better protects our shorelines, beaches, lakes and rivers. Since the beginning of session, anti-shoreline forces have been working to stop or repeal the new rule and pro-shoreline forces have been working for funding to enable the updates to happen.

Unfortunately, on the final day for bills to be considered (March 14th), the Senate took a dramatic action to rollback shoreline protection by passing Substitute Senate Bill (SSB) 5378, which would exempt more than 3/4 of counties and cities from updating their shoreline programs.

Action now moves to the House where the fate of the bill remains unclear.

At a time when clean waters, wild salmon and our quality of life are all under threat from the pressures of increased population and development, we need strong standards of protection more than ever. Washingtonians deserve to have their waters clean and safe and the implementation of the newly adopted shoreline rules is a positive step in that direction.

It is critical that our 24th District Representatives hear now from their constituents to support the new guidelines and oppose SSB 5378, the senate bill which attempts to roll back new shoreline protections.

Contact your state legislative representatives and urge them to support the newly adopted shoreline rules and the Governor's request for funds to help local governments implement the new rules:

Washington Legislative Hotline:
1-800-562-6000

Email:
Representative Jim Buck
Representative Lynn Kessler

The Shoreline Management Act was a well-crafted compromise when the voters passed it by initiative in 1971. Unfortunately, the rules guiding locally developed plans have not been comprehensively updated since that time. Now, the Washington Department of Ecology has issued new rules (Shoreline Master Program Guidelines) that incorporate scientific understanding of shoreline management issues gained since the early 1970s and provide a responsible and needed increase in protection from the harm that can result from the "development" of our shorelines.

Background

Healthy, productive shoreline habitat protected under the Shoreline Management Act is essential for the survival of many fish and wildlife species in Jefferson County. The decline of several species, including of ESA listed chum and Chinook salmon stocks, can be linked in part to the loss of shoreline habitat, which includes riparian, floodplain, estuary and nearshore habitat types.

shoreline armoring

land filling

diking and channeling

dredging

in-water structures

clearing and grading

nutrient enrichment

exotic species

water pollution

shifts in water flow regimes

and alteration of riparian zones.

As population growth continues in Jefferson County, and as people continue to build on and near the shoreline, there will continue to be pressures on the quality of shoreline habitats and the species they support.

Types of Shoreline Habitat

Riparian areas and floodplains are critical landscape components, linking aquatic and terrestrial systems; they regulate aquatic habitat formation, as well as the entry of water, nutrients, and organic material into aquatic habitats.

Salmon use floodplain channels for spawning and for over wintering, feeding and refuge. Salmon and other aquatic life take advantage of side channels that provide a rich food supply and stable hydrologic conditions. Juvenile salmon typically feed in the shallows and seek cover from predators in deeper water or in woody debris complexes and emergent vegetation. The growth that the juvenile salmon are able to acquire in these habitats improves their overall size and survival rates.

The channel migration zone is the area where the active channel of a river or stream is prone to movement over time. Channel migration is usually found along a small percentage of the entire stream network length; however, effective management of ecological functions in channel migration zones is critical to reduce flood hazards, erosion and habitat loss, and to avoid the need for future shoreline stabilization. River channel migration zones must be managed to ensure:

Future river channel movement is not restricted in ways that negatively impact adjacent properties or habitat

New development is located so as to avoid the need for future shoreline stabilization

The riparian zone is the area where aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems naturally interact and is essential to both fish and wildlife. Vegetation along riverbanks provides habitat for most wildlife and is extremely important for most species of Pacific salmon. Streamside plants shade the water, help moderate water temperature, promote stream-bank stability, and provide organic nutrients to the aquatic ecosystem. Riparian trees are the source of large in-stream woody debris that is a primary factor influencing channel form, creating the pools, riffles and side channels that are essential habitat for many fish and other aquatic species.

Estuaries have long been recognized as one of the most productive aquatic environments. Their abundant food supply and wide salinity gradients make these areas particularly valuable to anatropous fish for rearing, feeding, and completing the biological transition between fresh water and marine habitats. The vital role estuaries play in chum salmon ecology is a basic tenet of salmon biology.

Nearshore habitat serves to bridge these widely dispersed estuarine deltas areas. Natural beaches, eel grass beds, and functioning "drift cells", all provide productive, protected migratory corridors for salmon and other aquatic species. For salmon, these nearshore habitats serve to span delta estuarine-rearing areas and effectively transition to open-water migration.

"Drift cell" means a particular reach of marine shore in which sediment erosion, transport and deposition occur and which contains natural sources of sediment and also accretion shore forms created by such drift. Drift cells are analogous to watersheds in delineating land into discrete areas that function as an interconnected unit.

Shoreline armoring (or "bulkheading") can lead to beach erosion, interrupt sediment flow, adversely affect biological systems that depend on those sediments, physically displace (and destroy) high intertidal habitats (e.g. baitfish spawning habitat) and eliminate riparian habitat (e.g. overhanging vegetation).

Shoreline modification leads to direct habitat loss through conversion, and indirect habitat loss through alteration of nearshore processes and sediment budgets and has been identified as an important indicator of human impact on habitat health.

Queries of the DNR ShoreZone Inventory data show that approximately one-third of Washington State's shorelines have been modified. The extent of modification varies widely among regions, and is correlated with both human and environmental factors. Unconsolidated shorelines with high population densities tend to be more highly modified, for example 79% of the eastern side of Central Puget Sound Basin has been modified. The rocky outer coast, which is not extensively developed, has little shoreline modification.

Armoring of the shoreline is sometimes necessary; otherwise we couldn't land ferries or have docks and other structures. The critical part is deciding where those structures can be placed in order to maintain natural functions; and, of course, where they could be removed to restore functions. So, it isn't so much a matter of adding up all the miles of bulkheads; it is rather a case of planning more effectively in the future.

New Shoreline Master Program Guidelines

The new Shoreline Master Program (SMP) Guidelines promote a basin-wide approach to avoiding cumulative impacts to shoreline processes:

The Federal services have indicated they will issue an incidental take statement (ITS) for Part IV ("Path B") of the Guidelines. Once an ITS is issued, three layers of liability protection will be available to:

Existing agriculture is unaffected by both "Part III" and "Part IV" of the rule. In this case, the guidelines defer to the Agriculture, Fish and Wildlife process currently underway to define voluntary goals for agricultural use of shorelines: "New shoreline master program provisions do not apply retroactively to existing agricultural uses" [WAC 173-26-240(3)(a) and 340(3)(a)].

Jefferson County Shoreline Master Plan Update

The county made a commitment last year to produce an updated Shoreline Master Plan (SMP) that would go out for public review in 2001 and be incorporated into the Unified Development Code that was adopted in November 2000 to implement the Comp Plan's policy goals and objectives. The purpose of the rewrite is to bring the SMP into conformity with the county Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 1998, and to incorporate the last twenty years of shoreline management knowledge and experience into the SMP. It is also anticipated that the updated SMP will help move Jefferson County closer to meeting new federal requirements for the protection of salmon stocks recently listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Under the previous Board of County Commissioners (BOCC), the county proactively undertook to update its antiquated SMP and put a lot of effort into creating draft update that was released in July 2000.

The inventory and analysis requirement is probably the most costly element of the new guidelines, and the county has already made a significant start on that work, funded by two Coastal Zone Management grants administered by the Department of Ecology. The County had to match this money, and did so through in-kind contributions, including its own staff time and hours contributed by the Citizen's Advisory Group (CAG). The CAG included a dozen county residents with a wide range of ability and experience directly associated with shoreline planning issues. The CAG critically reviewed a SMP draft produced by county planning staff and consultants during a series of eight meetings in April and June 2000, which resulted in improvements to the draft SMP and also identified some key policy issues and options for the Planning Commission to consider. The combined value of this investment represents approximately $80,000 of taxpayer monies.

The next step had been for the Planning Commission to make recommendations to the BOCC on key policy options and for the BOCC to make the key policy decision whether to follow Path A (minimum SMA compliance) or Path B (for ESA compliance) in the new Guidelines, and proceed with creating the final draft for public review. However, the new BOCC has put that process on hold and joined with 28 other counties in an administrative challenge to the new Guidelines.

Impacts to Jefferson County Shoreline Environment

The eastern Jefferson County shoreline is certainly not a pristine environment. While it may be a relatively less impacted compared to the fully built out urban environments of Seattle, Tacoma and central Puget Sound, it has nonetheless been impacted by urban and rural residential development, agricultural and industrial land uses, along both fresh and marine water shorelines.

A 1999 survey of the shoreline between Kala Point and Tala Point revealed that only two of nine salt marshes had suffered no losses in recent years. An estimated nine acres, or 18 percent of the former total of 51 acres, has been lost due to road, home, and other construction and fill.

Queries of the DNR ShoreZone Inventory data show that approximately 11 percent of eastern Jefferson County's shoreline has been modified by a combination of boat ramps, concrete and wooden bulkheads, landfills, sheet piles, and rip rap.

In addition, there is evidence that human actions have severely altered or completely eliminated estuary habitat and functions on many river systems in eastern Jefferson County. The following data on impacts to eastern Jefferson County estuarine salmon habitat is taken from the Summer Chum Salmon Conservation Initiative: An Implementation Plan to Recover Summer Chum in the Hood Canal and Strait of Juan de Fuca Region, compiled by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and Point-No-Point Treaty Tribes: