Coos Watershed Association

supporting environmental integrity and economic stability within the Coos watershed

PROGRAMS

Assessment & Outreach
In 2005, the Association began its formal outreach program directed to landowners in the Coos Bay Lowland areas surrounding the Coos estuary. These lowland areas are characterized by a higher diversity of private ownership and land uses, as compared to the timber-dominated uplands. The mixture of private land uses, and smaller acreages in these lowland areas make it necessary for the Association to establish communications and working relationships with landowners to achieve watershed restoration goals. Through this program, we hold series of neighborhood Coffee Klatch meetings, where Association staff meet with landowners in their homes to solicit concerns and objectives, introduce and prioritize potential restoration actions, and present assessment results. As a result of our success in completing our Coos Bay Lowlands Assessment and Restoration Plan and Heads-of-Tide Draft Assessment, we will continue to use this model in order to assess and complete restoration planning in other areas of the watershed.

Restoration
Our restoration efforts include fish passage and in-stream habitat improvements, riparian area enhancement, and road-related erosion control. Our restoration projects have a broad representation of landowner partners including small acreage rural residential owners, agriculture operators, timber companies, and the state forest.

Monitoring
Monitoring of our restoration efforts is important to ensure specific project success as well as to guide future restoration priorities and project designs. Through this program we are developing monitoring protocols and tools as well as disseminating the monitoring results in peer reviewed reports.
Our organization is completing scientific monitoring of watershed health benefits that result from our projects. This involves both careful planning, in order to collect the baseline data before a project is completed, and dedication and follow-through in order to collect data over a time frame through which project responses can be measured.

RECENT GRANTS

OWEB Grants Awarded September 2011

-North Slough Fish Passage and Water Quality Improvements : Three existing tide gate doors will be replaced in North Slough with new light-weight aluminum doors (2 side-hinged doors, 1 with an attached muted tide regulator (MTR), and one top-hinged door). The new tide gate will decrease water temperatures above the tide gate and improve access to 22.1 miles of coho salmon spawning and rearing habitat. Monitoring will include water temperature recording above the tide gate and water surface elevations above and below the tide gate. North Way Lane is a high traffic gravel road that follows North Slough Creek very closely for 1.9 miles. A local improvement district and the Coos County Roads Department are planning to pave this road section during 2012. We will use OWEB funds to replace 15 stream crossings, including 3 fish passage culverts, and install 29 ditch-relief culverts prior to the paving. Three fish passage culvert upgrades will improve access to 1.62 miles of coho streams. Road upgrades will improve water quality in 3.0 miles of freshwater streams. OWEB Funds: $195,514 Total Cost: $566,008

-West Fork Millicoma River Engineered Log Jams 2012 : Large wood and boulders will be placed at 21 sites using a total of 70 whole trees in 1.5 miles of West Fork Millicoma River. This project will improve over-winter rearing habitat, provide cover habitat, decrease summer stream temperatures, and increase the availability of spawning gravels. OWEB Funds: $244,119 Total Cost: $350,171

-Wilson Creek Sub-basin Fish Passage and Riparian Enhancement: The Catching Slough Sub-basin, a tributary to the Coos River, is an area of high value to Chinook and Coho salmon, steelhead and cutthroat trout and pacific lamprey. The CoosWA proposes to improve fish passage in the Catching Slough Sub-basin by replacing two under-sized and perched stream crossings on Panther Creek, a tributary to Wilson Creek. These two stream crossing upgrades would improve access to 0.53 miles of excellent spawning and rearing habitat. The CoosWA will also be planting and stabilizing eroding banks on grazed pasture land along Wilson Creek. Bio-engineered revetments and willow walls, fencing, riparian planting and large wood placement will occur on 0.43 miles of reach. This will improve summer refugia habitat. OWEB funds will replace two crossings with an appropriately sized bridge and corrugated metal culvert and implement riparian and in-stream activities. Project partners include BLM, ODFW, the Coos County Roads Department, Lone Rock Timber, Curry SWCD and Doug Kroger and Laurie Judd. OWEB Funds: $186,530, Total Cost: $307,418

Coos Watershed Association :: P.O. Box 5860 , Charleston, Oregon 97420 :: Ph. (541) 888-5922 / Fax (541) 888-6111