OLYMPIC NATIONAL FOREST — About five miles south of milepost 212 on U.S. Highway 101, the finishing touches are being put on a 70-foot steel bridge that spans a dry, unnamed tributary to the North Fork Calawah River in the Olympic National Forest.
Months from now, when 3 feet of water fills the channel, native Chinook salmon, coho salmon and steelhead trout will once again be able to navigate up the stream — no longer waylaid by a culvert with an 7-foot drop that created an impassible barrier to anadromous fish.
The $457,000 project to replace the culvert with a bridge is a collaboration between the state Department of Natural Resources’ Forestry Resilience Division and the U.S. Forest Service under the Good Neighbor Authority program.
Authorized by Congress in 2014 and expanded in 2018, the Good Neighbor Authority allows the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to partner with state agencies, tribes and counties to perform work that improves and restores forests, rangeland, watersheds and fish and wildlife habitat on federal lands.
The Federal Lands Section within DNR’s Forestry Resilience Division is responsible for Good Neighbor Authority restoration projects like the Calawah culvert replacement. The Good Neighbor Authority expands the Forest Services’ capacity to take on projects in the 990,000-acre Olympic National Forest that it would otherwise be unable to, said Keith Anholm, Forest Service public affairs officer.
“It allows us a lot greater flexibility to complete projects,” Anholm said. “One of the things the Forest Service is trying to do is increase our partnerships so we can share the workload, because projects like this don’t just benefit just the forest, they benefit the state and local people around them.”
Leveraging the expertise of DNR and Forest Service personnel makes sense when both partners share a goal of creating healthy and resilient landscapes, said Justin Long, DNR Federal Lands Section lead engineer.
“We can tap into the skills and know-how with both agencies,” Long said. “They give us a ton of support.”
Over the last five years, the DNR’s Federal Lands Section has completed 25,300 acres of restoration work, 68 aquatic improvement projects, 345 miles of road improvements and in six national forests in Washington.
“We jointly decide what we’re going to do,” Anholm said. “The DNR says, ‘This how we’d like to do it,’ and the Forest Service reviews the project to make sure that it’s in compliance with all the laws and regulations.”
For the culvert replacement project, the four members in the Federal Lands Section’s Olympic National Park unit produced site maps, conducted geotechnical ground tests and hired Cle Elum-based contractor East Slope Earthworks. Funding for the project came from $150,000 in capital budget dollars and $307,000 from the Wildfire Response, Forest Restoration, and Community Resilience Account established by the Washington state Legislature in 2021.
The Federal Lands Section also oversees timber sales from federal lands. However, that revenue can only be used for Good Neighbor Authority projects in the national forest from which the timber was harvested. The personnel and processes are completely separate from the DNR’s Forest Resources Division, which manages state trust lands that generate revenue for public schools and services like libraries, hospitals and fire districts.
Two years ago, the Olympic National Forest unit managed a Good Neighbor Authority project thinning Douglas fir and hemlock on the Upper Calawah to improve the forest’s overall health and restore its old-growth structure. The timber was sold and revenue deposited into a revolving account that funded other Olympic National Forest projects.
Thinning does provide some revenue, but it’s a byproduct,” said Olympic Unit Restoration Specialist Michael Case. “Forest restoration is our primary objective.”
Olympic National Forest Engineer Scott Hanna said the Federal Lands Section and the Forest Service wanted to complete projects with as little impact on the forest as they could. That might mean replanting and rebuilding the soil of deactivated roads used to access project sites or using weed-free straw and grass seed that is applied for erosion control.
“We try to keep a minimum footprint,” Hanna said.
The culvert project, which began on Aug. 12, will be finished this week, but the Olympic National Forest unit won’t be resting. There are two other Good Neighbor Authority projects it has been simultaneously managing, one on Wynoochee Lake and the other near Queets.
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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com.
