Sustainability Archives - Page 5 of 7

Otak Sponsors Forterra’s Green City Partnership

Gift will aid effort to improve Green-Duwamish Watershed’s environmental equity

Otak, Inc. is proud to announce its $8,000 sponsorship of Forterra’s Green City Partnership, a community-driven stewardship program that restores urban forests and parks in Washington state.

Otak’s contribution will directly support Forterra’s restoration work within the Green-Duwamish Watershed, identified by the EPA as one of the most polluted watersheds in the nation. Otak has helped the region manage its pollutants and stormwater run-off for more than ten years, notably designing environmental restoration and stormwater treatment projects for the Port of Seattle’s 162-acre Northeast Redevelopment Area between the cities of Burien and SeaTac.

“With this gift, we want to take the next step and show our personal commitment to making this region a healthier place to live,” shared Russ Gaston, Otak’s director of water and natural resources. “Supporting Forterra is one of the best ways to do that.”

“We greatly appreciate Otak’s support,” said Kim Hickey, Forterra’s associate philanthropy director. “When companies like Otak show environmental leadership like this, we can strengthen our green spaces and improve the air and water quality in these historically under-resourced communities.”

In addition to financial support, Otak will be involved in four private restoration events at locations in most need of volunteers within the cities of Burien, Des Moines, SeaTac, and Tukwila. The first event was held on October 30th at Tukwila Park.

To learn more about Forterra’s Green City Partnership and events, including Green City Days, Forterra’s annual kickoff to planting season, visit https://forterra.org/green-city-days-2021.

ABOUT FORTERRA

Forterra is a Washington-based nonprofit that enhances, supports, and stewards the region’s most precious resources — its communities and its ecosystems. Forterra conserves and stewards land, develops innovative policies, and supports sustainable rural and urban development. In its 30-year history, Forterra has helped conserve more than 250,000 acres. Its work stretches from the farmlands and river canyons of Yakima to the estuaries and forests of Washington’s coastline, reaching more than 100 counties, cities, and towns. Visit www.forterra.org.

ABOUT GREEN CITY PARTNERSHIPS

Green City Partnerships began 17 years ago in 2004, when Forterra and the City of Seattle responded to a critical need to sustain and improve the health of forested parks and urban greenspaces in Seattle’s neighborhoods. Green City Partnerships Are collaborative efforts between Forterra, community volunteers, and cities across the Puget Sound to steward forested parklands and green spaces, improving ecological health, access to nature, and community well-being.  Forterra’s Green Cities program trains and supports Forest Stewards—lead volunteers who coordinate community restoration work in-park—bringing together the people, materials, technical knowledge, and other resources to make on-the-ground forest restoration a reality.

Collectively, Green City Partnerships now span 14 cities plus Snohomish County and is working to restore more than 13,000 acres of forest parkland and serve 1.6 million people who live in these communities. Visit www.forterra.org/greencitypartnerships.

For more information about Otak, Forterra, or the Green City Partnerships contact:

Adam Tycaster, Pursuit Manager, Otak

425-250-5207

adam.tycaster@otak.com

Pronouns: he/him

Kim Hickey, Associate Philanthropy Director, Institutional Engagement, Forterra

206-905-6955

khickey@forterra.org

Pronouns: she/her

Chad Weiser: Meeting the Challenge of Preserving Cultural and Natural Resources

With more than 300 million visitors annually, protecting and preserving the 423 national parks, monuments, and scenic lands that make up the US National Park System is no small undertaking. It is a balancing act between providing an enjoyable experience for visitors today and preserving the natural environment and cultural heritage for generations to come. This is the primary mission of the National Parks Service (NPS). It is also at the core of what Chad Weiser, PLA does every day at Otak as the firm’s Federal Practice Leader.

A professional landscape architect by trade, Chad was drawn to Otak’s interdisciplinary approach to working with clients when he joined the firm in 1999. “When I first came to Otak, I was a project manager in the Planning and Landscape Group. Over time, my role grew and eventually ventured into working on a lot of federal work,” Chad states. “I have enjoyed the evolution, but being able to work with all the disciplines at Otak has made my work that much more interesting. To be able to work with civil engineers, structural engineers, and architects and bring all of those pieces together to do great work for our clients has been very rewarding,” he adds.

His longevity at Otak has not only allowed Chad to work with all of the different disciplines, but has given him a broad knowledge base and the ability to translate structural, architectural, and civil engineering data for clients. He explains that “the key is being able to understand the important elements of all of the different disciplines and how they come together, and distilling it down for a client so they can make the decisions that will make their project successful.”

Early in his career, Chad had the opportunity to work directly for the NPS, overseeing construction on various projects and acting as a liaison between contractors and NPS design teams. His background and familiarity with the challenges faced by the NPS have been an asset as Chad and other leaders at Otak have been helping the NPS with visitor use studies and restoration projects at a number of sites. “The challenge we have on every project,” Chad explains “is to find the right balance between the visitor experience and preservation. Sometimes we’re needing to think about expanding a footprint of a developed area, but doing it in a way that will have minimal impacts, both to cultural and natural resources.”

Mount Rushmore Facilities Improvements Project

Notable projects Chad and his team have been working on include facilities improvements and renovations at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, campground rehabilitation at Yosemite National Park, and new wildland fire facilities in North Cascades National Park. Chad cites the Yosemite campground project as a prime example of balancing the user experience with the need to preserve and protect the environment. “This was a 300-unit historic campground that was very tired and in need of a lot of updates. We provided the design for the campground renovation, which included updating the amenities at each campsite, as well relocating twenty of the campsites away from a sensitive river corridor and building a new access road to those sites,” Chad explains.

Chad is also spearheading projects in coordination with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, The US Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. He sums up working with the NPS and other federal agencies as a process of finding creative solutions to challenging problems and doing it in a way that everyone feels heard and understood. “We are often working with teams from multiple departments—from cultural interpreters and rangers to operations, maintenance, and law enforcement—and they all come with a different perspective and a different area of focus. They all need to be heard and they all need to feel the solution we’re coming up with meets their needs and expectations.” He adds that “it can be challenging at times, but we’ve become very good at putting all the pieces together, balancing all the different demanding needs, finding solutions and getting them implemented.”

Looking to the future, Chad and the rest of the team are most excited about the Great American Outdoors Act. Passed in 2020, the Act provides critical funding to address the significant maintenance backlog of deteriorating facilities within the National Park Service as well as other federal land management agencies. “There’s going to be a lot of work for us to help the NPS implement projects, and it will be a lasting legacy for the next 50 to 100 years and we get to be part of it,” Chad says enthusiastically.

Li Alligood and Maddie Woods: Bringing Sustainability to the Forefront at Otak

Committing to sustainability, both within our organization and in the projects we produce, is a core value at Otak. We believe an environmental focus helps communities function and succeed. In 2011, we put that commitment in writing, signing on to the AIA 2030 Commitment to achieve a carbon-neutral building environment by the year 2030, and putting our Sustainability Action Plan into place.

From that point on, we have been driven to educate our teams on sustainability, reduce our own environmental footprint, and incorporate sustainable practices into our projects. We are accomplishing these goals through the work of our Green Otak (GO) committee under the leadership of Maddie Woods, Project Coordinator and Sustainability Coordinator in our Colorado office, and Li Alligood, Senior Planner and Project Manager in Portland.

The duo has been able to meld their roles with GO into their day-to-day work at Otak, helping us all to prioritize sustainability in everything we do for our clients and affording us opportunities to learn how to educate others about the value of green projects. GO has three components, Training (led by Rose Horton and Keith Bates), Operations, and Practices, each with its own teams and missions, encompassing between 20 and 30 employees at any given time.

As a project coordinator, Maddie assists project managers to see their projects through and can provide sustainability support as needed, helping them to understand where our operations could be improved. On the reverse, she takes what she learns from one project and can suggest how to apply it to another.

Li works more on producing written documents such as reports and plans than on design, but her project management focus supports the Practice Committee’s focus on project-based tools and resources. “I’ve been able to bring the organization and structure that I learn from my job to the GO committees and incorporate those ideas and strategies into how we operate,” she says.

To date, Otak’s most aggressive action has been our carbon offset program. “This really shows our commitment to making an investment in sustainability as a company,” Maddie says. She said Otak has integrated and supported the work of the GO committee from top management down. In the early stages of a project, clients are shown how green ideas and structures can be applied to their projects and that there can be financial incentives to incorporating such strategies. “Our IT department worked with the GO committee to create a sustainability folder of certification programs and resources to allow our designers to see what best practices and structures could be adopted for each project. They can share that information with our clients,” Li adds.

Both say that support of GO within Otak has grown tremendously over the years. Maddie comments that highlighting the green aspects of the company and its work makes Otak more attractive to potential young hires who want to work on projects that improve communities. Enhancing the company’s sustainability-focused OtakU program, an internal program to educate teams on sustainable best practices, has also helped build support. “Initially the Green OtakU programs were specific for design practice, but as interest in sustainability has grown, it encompasses a lot of things. How do you define sustainability? Equity, lessening the impact of design, energy usage—it expands to include almost anything. I struggle to identify the limits of the GO committee in all aspects of the company,” Li states.

With 2030 not too far over the horizon, the GO team sees goals they’d like to reach in the coming year.

“How we are talking about achievements, understanding where we’ve been, benchmarking, and setting goals both from the operations and training perspective can be enhanced. We want to continue to make it easier for our staff to walk clients through the process of making their projects more sustainable,” Maddie comments.

For Li, the work ahead lies more in the nuts and bolts of developing databases and plans to help our teams have better access to information on environmental strategies that have been and could be used in our work. “It might be time to revisit our sustainability action plan too. Time to maybe adopt a new one that recognizes all we’ve achieved and where we want to go,” she says.

Moshier Park Stormwater Project Yields Benefits to Community and Fish Habitat

King County, in Washington, is situated within a natural watershed, home to various native fish species, including Coho Salmon. Restoration and preservation have become a priority focus across the region with salmon runs declining due to loss of habitat, barriers to fish passage, and poor water quality. For cities like Burien, with sensitive Coho salmon-bearing creeks running directly through them, there is an urgency to address water quality and pollution from stormwater run-off.

Public works projects need to balance multiple priorities against available funding and budget restrictions. So, when Otak was hired by the City of Burien (City) to do the final design of a stormwater retrofit at Moshier Park along Miller Creek, the team took a multi-disciplinary approach. The goal was to resolve a complex set of issues and provide maximum benefit in conjunction with other planned park improvements.

Addressing Untreated Stormwater Runoff, Flooding

Miller Creek, a natural waterway for spawning Coho Salmon, crosses through urbanized areas and ultimately discharges into the Puget Sound. Due to the amount of untreated stormwater runoff draining from the creek basin, the health of the creek is greatly degraded and conditions are poor for supporting the aquatic habitat. In addition, localized flooding and erosion along the creek’s banks have resulted from existing vegetation being converted to impervious or less pervious surfaces.

Moshier Park is a 15.2-acre public park that features lighted athletic fields, a community arts center building, and a large parking lot that is also used by Highline High School for events at Highline Stadium. The park was identified as an area for a stormwater retrofit project, funded in part by the Washington Department of Ecology, which would have the highest benefit value to Miller Creek.

Balancing Priorities, Maximizing Opportunities

While the project’s primary objective was to retrofit Moshier Park to provide stormwater flow control and runoff treatment, Otak saw the greater opportunity to incorporate other park improvements the City wanted to complete. Otak project engineer, Tyson Hounsel, explains that “by packaging some of the other park improvements into the design and construction timeline, we were able to save the city both time and costs. Plus, through all of our teams—survey, architecture, landscape architecture, water and natural resources, and engineering—we could develop a comprehensive design that includes the stormwater facilities, as well as a synthetic sports field, and a new restroom and concessions building at the park.” Otak also aided in obtaining the necessary environmental permitting and will act as the construction manager to oversee the retrofit and park improvements through completion.

One of these key improvements will be converting the large asphalt parking lot to less-impervious surfaces and installing an underground water detention tank and treatment facility that will capture stormwater runoff. Interpretive signs will also be installed in the park, which will be used by the neighboring high school as well. The project will break ground later this summer and is slated for completion in 2022

In the end, the City will have a newly designed and updated multi-purpose park that, as Tyson states, “will be a real community center.” Miller Creek will also benefit from improved water quality and will provide a more hospitable environment for spawning Coho Salmon.

Protecting National Wild & Scenic Rivers

Enacted in 1968, the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System (WSR Act) has safeguarded rivers with outstanding natural, cultural, and recreational values. The WSR Act also provides a framework for river use planning and management by federal and state agencies. As we celebrate National Rivers Month, Bill Valliere, Otak Research Analyst and member of Otak’s new Visitor Use Planning & Management (VUPM) team reflects on how his group’s work is aiding comprehensive river management plans and protecting national rivers.

While the team itself is new, their body of work is not. For example, Bill, and Steve Lawson, VUPM Director, have been working together on and off since 1999 on issues surrounding visitor use, management, and planning for outdoor recreation spaces—specifically with regard to how many people can visit natural places without either the experience or the resources being degraded. “Steve and I first met and worked on a project in Yosemite National Park that was eventually part of the Merced River comprehensive management planning. It was a very controversial, and complicated procedure, but it was ultimately successful,” Bill states, “More recently, we’ve been working with the U.S. Forest Service on some of their rivers that are in need of comprehensive river management plans.”

Otak’s VUPM team is dedicated to analyzing, modeling, and planning for visitation levels and patterns within the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, national parks, protected areas, and a wide variety of buildings and public spaces. Bill and the rest of the team offer a specific set of skills and expertise that public agencies typically do not have on staff but are critical to effective planning and use management. In the case of wild and scenic rivers, the VUPM team will be able to help ease a backlog of work.

Every river that is designated as a wild and scenic river needs to have a comprehensive management plan within three years of designation. Bill points out that “some of those rivers have gone beyond the three years and the Forest Service is trying to make up ground on the backlog of rivers that need to have these plans in place.” In this regard, the team will work primarily on the portion of those plans that deal with visitor use management and visitor capacity, providing key data on how many people specific river corridors can accommodate without degrading the wild and scenic designation values.

Photo simulation used for a study on the Merced River.

Through various studies, the VUPM team estimates the numeric capacities required by law. The team does not stop there, though. “We also provide strategies and tactics that managers may use to actually reduce impacts to the resources and potentially increase capacity,” Bill states. Trail design, access points, and other river features are brought into consideration with specific recommendations. “It’s a balancing act and we are often weighing different aspects of the river itself and the corridor to figure out where that capacity should be drawn from. A river may be designated because it holds a variety of outstandingly remarkable value, including recreation, wildlife, geology, or hydrology—there are a variety of values for which a river may actually be recognized. And those are the values we have to protect or improve upon.”

The capacity portion of the management plans is often a challenging part of the planning process for a given wild and scenic river. As one of the few firms providing visitor use and planning services of this nature, Otak is uniquely positioned to fill the gap with the expertise of its VUPM team who have been solving capacity and land use issues for more than 20 years. Bill and the team are excited about the work they are now able to do together and the impact they can have helping to protect our conserved spaces. “We want to help these land use and planning agencies be able to get those plans done so that they’re in compliance with the law and better manage the resources for present and future generations.”

Chris Romeyn Engineers Solutions To Sustain The Environment

The practice of Water and Natural Resources combines science and engineering to find a balance between the built and natural environment. For Otak, a company that strives to build sustainable communities in all its work, WNR is a critical discipline. While its WNR team is a mix of engineers and scientists, it’s not often both those skill sets are rolled into one employee, but that’s what Otak found in the hiring of Chris Romeyn as Senior Water Resources Engineer.

Tracy Emmanuel, Colorado Water Resources Director commented, “Chris brings wide-ranging experience and technical expertise that will help guide our design process, as well as provide crucial mentorship for our team.”

Chris had been flirting with Otak for a few years after a former colleague went to work for the company and tried to entice him to come aboard. He was interested in working for a smaller firm than the one he was with and liked what he saw at Otak, but it took a twist of fate with the arrival of the pandemic and forced work from home to solidify his hire. Chris had learned he preferred working at home or at least close to home in Glenwood Springs, Colorado and Otak is interested in expanding its services to that area of the state. With Chris’s background meeting Otak’s needs, the match finally clicked and Chris was hired in January.

A love for environmental issues and solutions goes back to Chris’s teenage years when he became obsessed with Edward Abbey’s books that touted environmental advocacy and showcased his time as a park ranger at Arches National Park. Chris ended up at the University of Vermont studying Natural Resource Management. Even with a degree in hand, Chris turned to his love of outdoor adventure and took a job in New Mexico working for the ski patrol.

Eventually, realizing he needed more of a career, he took the advice of a friend’s father and went back to school for his engineering degree, ending in a dual BA/MA program. Chris said the decision provided him with a broad set of skills combining technical competencies with a scientific understanding of waterways. “My goal has always been to do restoration work, but adding engineering broadened my skill set and set me up to land in consulting,” he said.

Chris is already putting his myriad of skills to work on complex projects at Otak. One is a fish passage that Otak was contracted to design through a grant from a non-profit. Chris explains there are two large river diversion structures that lie within a quarter-mile of each other and span about 100-feet across the river. The structures are at least 50 years old and can only dam the river up about three feet. For the fish that live there, and spawn in the Colorado plains, the existing fish passage is impossible to clear because they don’t jump. Chris says ramps that are several hundred feet long will have to be designed and built to give the fish a fighting chance of survival.

Other aspects of the project are to design for efficient sediment transport and meeting the needs of irrigation ditch owners. The overall project involves ditch companies, the USFWS, Colorado Parks & Wildlife, a water conservancy district, a fisheries biology professor from the University of Colorado, as well as the Otak team. The project is being funded through DOLA using federal funds and is sponsored by a non-profit watershed coalition.

Part of being a leader is having the ability to share your expertise with co-workers, and for Chris, that especially means his work with junior engineers. He has two points he feels are the most important to share. First is that critical thinking is the most crucial thing for a junior engineer to learn. There is no one solution to a problem, but there is a best solution, and an engineer must be able to look at all the facts and form a judgment for what will work. Chris said to get there the second idea he coaches is that people need to be comfortable to ask questions. “Learning from your mistakes works, but sometimes it’s good to feel comfortable going to someone who knows,” he said. He also commented that he faces his own challenges with his role as a mentor in letting go of the reins and accepting that someone else may do something differently than he would but that doesn’t make it incorrect.

Going forward, Chris is excited by the opportunities he sees to help grow the Colorado office and take on challenging projects that allow him to share his expertise at keeping waters flowing and fish swimming.

Otak Embraces Earth Month

An interesting discovery was made this year when scientists began to see that forcing everyone to stay home–away from their cars, avoiding plane rides– and watching big businesses turn to remote work had a positive impact on our environment. No one is saying that shutdowns are the answer, but it became a bit clearer that we can do better to protect our planet.

And a clean planet is what is being celebrated this April with Earth Month. Otak embraces sustainable and environmentally sound practices in all that they do, and so it is little surprise the people who make up Otak have been busy engaging in Earth Month activities. From educating clients to rolling up our sleeves to supporting those who work hard to protect the planet, we prioritize the earth this month and all the rest of the months of the year.

We started with our embrace of Earth Month by issuing a reminder to our clients that our accredited staff can help lead them through the sustainable development verification/certification process for their projects. Whether they are looking at LEED, Green Globes, Earth Advantage, Envision, SITES, EcoDistricts certification or others, we stand ready to help. Even for clients that may not be pursuing certification, we can use the same design principles and point them towards a wealth of resources to set them on a sustainable path.

For our “boots on the ground” Earth Month activity, Otak’s Portland office marketing team volunteered to pick up trash for SOLVE Oregon, an organization with a mission to improve the environment and build a legacy of stewardship. The group worked with other volunteers to collect 2,000 pounds of trash filling a 10-cubic-yard dumpster. Others from the Portland office got to work cleaning the company’s adopted stormwater planters, and still other staff members joined in their own Earth Month projects that were closer to their homes or their hearts.

Otak also looks inward to its own environmental stewardship. We have been working internally to reduce our carbon footprint and we’ve made great strides this past year in part because of the shift to remote work. We reduced our emissions a full 25% over 2019 and in partnership with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, we offset 827mT of carbon. Our offsets will go towards projects that include West Coast Tree Planting, Promise the Pod, Tribal Lands Renewable Energy, and Clean Energy Futures Education Program.

The last way Otak recognized Earth Month was by supporting environmental initiatives directly with our charitable giving. For Earth Month donations this year we chose organizations whose missions were focused on environmental conservation, stewardship, or mitigating the impacts of climate change. Each of our regions selected two organizations. This year’s recipients include: Depave and the Watershed Alliance of SW Washington in the Portland/Vancouver region; EarthCorps and Washington’s National Park Fund in the Redmond/Everett region; and The Greenway Foundation and Wildlands Restoration Volunteers in the Denver/Louisville region.

Earth Month may be over, but Otak will continue on its path to increase sustainable practices, elevate environmental awareness, and modify our operations to reduce our own carbon footprint.

Otak Survey Teams Expand Capabilities in Bathymetric Mapping and Hydraulic Modeling

Otak has long been at the forefront of survey and mapping processes and electronic data collection. With the recent acquisition of the Hyrdrolite single beam sonar and the Hydrone, an unmanned surface vessel (UVS) with the AutoNav system from Seafloor Systems, Otak’s survey teams have expanded capabilities in bathymetric mapping and hydraulic modeling. As Nathan Dasler, Otak Water Resources Engineer, states, “we now have an easy way of collecting a significant amount of accurate data for mapping channel bottoms to aid in our fish passage and stream restoration work, as well as construction and engineering projects that are either abutted against bodies of water or submerged.”

Equipped with pre-programmable GPS tracking, the UVS allows for remote data collection in otherwise challenging or inaccessible environments. Further, in situations where multiple surveys are needed over time, reliable data can be collected efficiently in the same location, and with extreme precision.

The application and use of the technology and equipment in the field are proving to be beneficial in a number of settings and project types including shoreline validation, hydraulic modeling, and sedimentation measurements.

Read the complete story on how Otak is using this new technology and the data it provides to achieve greater outcomes.

Waterway Restoration: A Holistic Approach to Improving Fish Passages

Posted on March 18, 2021November 6, 2024 by OTAK Team

Every year, millions of fish migrate between the ocean and their native habitat, navigating waterways across natural landscapes, farmland, and ever-expanding developed regions of highways, towns, and cities. Removal of barriers such as dams, culverts, and levees, has long been recognized as a necessary and viable means to improving fish passage, and good progress has been made in this regard. More importantly, though, waterway restoration as a whole has evolved over the past 20-30 years to encompass a broader approach.

Fish passage restoration is no longer confined to removing or replacing existing impediments. It is also about understanding watersheds and river basins as a whole and implementing solutions that improve the health of a complex ecosystem, improve the ability of fish to migrate and thrive, and ultimately improve multi-species preservation efforts.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, a real sense of urgency has also emerged as 27 West Coast Salmon runs are threatened, including Chinook Salmon whose survival is linked to the recovery of southern resident orca. In response, local agencies and tribes in Puget Sound have launched comprehensive fish restoration programs. Otak has been involved in a number of projects in Washington and the Columbia Basin and has been at the forefront of this shift to a more holistic approach to improving fish passages.

Barriers, Encroachment, and Water Quality

Today, rather than looking at only physical barriers like culverts and dams within a waterway, multidisciplinary firms like Otak take into consideration all of the other factors that impact healthy fish passages. “Twenty years ago, we had this concept of the four Hs: habitat, hydropower, hatcheries and harvest,” Jamie Bails, Otak Senior Environmental Scientist, states, “and while each of these things is important, we have come to understand it is barriers that are preventing fish from getting where they need to go.” But there is more to it, as Jamie further explains, “all of those things can’t be improved if we don’t fix the habitat. Correcting infrastructure like culverts and bridges will help, but ultimately it is the streams that will do the work when we get out of the way.”

What Jamie and the rest of the Water & Natural Resources team at Otak understand is that improving fish passage is not just about the physical barriers, it is also about encroachment on waterways and adjacent habitat. Water quality, sedimentation, and pollution are equally important and present real barriers to fish. Russ Gaston, Senior Vice President, Water & Natural Resources, has 33 years of experience studying and improving fish passages, working in both the public and private sector. He explains “for years, restoration projects focused mainly on removing physical barriers or helping fish pass through or around barriers. What we have seen though, is streams that had polluted water flowing into them did not achieve positive results after physical barriers were removed. Rather, they saw little to no improvement at all.”

For example, Russ and his team worked with Snohomish County for over 20 years to improve fish habitat and remove fish barriers in the French Creek watershed, but restoration of spawning salmon to the upper watershed remained impeded because the water-quality-barrier in the watershed had not been improved. They have since worked with the County and the farmers in the watershed, to restore stream buffers in the agricultural lands, and have developed options to improve water quality in the highly degraded lower reach of the watershed, which the County is evaluating and deciding on which option to move forward on.

Today, Russ says “we commonly focus on stormwater runoff and work to create a stable channel to keep bank erosion to natural rates, which are primary sources of pollutants in a stream. We also use the Benthic Index of Biotic Integrity (B-IBII) to project the health of the stream before and after the restoration is completed.” The work Otak did on the Miller Creek Daylighting project for the City of Burien, Port of Seattle, and the City of Sea-tac is an example of where the team has applied this process.

Multidisciplinary Project Teams

To fully understand what is happening within a waterway and what barriers—physical or otherwise—are having the greatest impact on fish passage, the entire watershed needs to be considered. And this requires expertise and perspective only possible through a multi-disciplinary approach. Optimally, project teams should include structural and civil engineers, geomorphologists, biologists, wetland ecologists, and landscape architects. Russ, who has been involved in a number of fish basin planning projects in Washington, points out that it is not just multiple disciplines weighing in on a project, it is integrated teams working together. “What I thought was an integrated team years ago, is nothing compared to what we do today. Engineers are no longer working in isolation, but are now working together with stream biologists, geomorphologists, landscape architects—all within one firm. This is a key advantage and influences the way we think about restoration,” Russ asserts.

Working closely together, integrated teams have a greater understanding of all the impediments to fish passage and where to focus restoration efforts. This level of data essentially provides a blueprint for identifying failing infrastructure and prioritizing projects. This in turn has the added benefit of not only improving fish passage and multi-species preservation across a region but can also save the various jurisdictions—cities, counties, the state—considerable expense.

Fish passage restoration is only a small piece of what teams like Otak’s Water & Natural Resources team can provide. For example, Otak has a surveying group that is experienced in collecting water resource information. “We are able to do everything in-house, which allows us to go beyond improving fish passages in isolation to really addressing stream restoration as a whole and improving an entire watershed,” Russ states.

Fish Passages and Stream Restoration

There are two typical approaches to designing and improving fish passage. One is an engineered hydraulic calculation with a specific focus on providing the right depth and velocity conditions in a system that targets specific fish species.

The other approach involves stream simulation, which takes into consideration the natural geomorphic processes and seeks to replicate how a stream might have evolved naturally, what is currently impacting channel evolution and how it might be impacted in the future. “Obviously, there are constraints to what we can do—existing roads, cities, and other development—but when we look at streams in this manner, it allows us to come up with solutions that will have a greater impact than improving specific sites in isolation,” Russ states.

With this approach, Otak has been working with cities, counties, and agencies to help them assess where they should be focusing their restoration efforts. “We bring a multi-disciplinary team to assess water quality, water flow, channel degradation, floodplain, and habitat values,” Russ explains. “We’re assessing fish habitats and the connectivity of wetlands, as well as existing infrastructure, regional stormwater management, and integrating our findings into cohesive designs and fish passage restoration planning,” he adds. Ultimately, with such comprehensive data, Otak’s teams are able to give recommendations based on real cost-benefit analyses and offer solutions that benefit the fish and other species on a broad scale. “This is an area where we have been extremely successful,” Russ asserts, “and the advances we are continuing to make in the industry are exciting.”

Lasting Resilience

It is not just firms like Otak that are embracing a comprehensive watershed approach to fish passage restoration. As the industry has evolved and best practices continue to improve with the integration of multi-disciplinary teams, government agencies are also looking at the bigger picture of coastal adaptation and seeking solutions that will not only improve fish passage and aid in multi-species preservation but will also benefit the region economically. Commercial and recreational fishing and tourism are all linked to fish preservation. Economics aside, the real benefit, as Russ points out, “is that we’re restoring natural processes, which holistically lifts the entire system, improves the resilience of the watershed, and benefits all aquatic and riparian life.”

See Our Fish Passage Work

Otak Completes ODOT Project to Repair and Upgrade Bad Banks Culvert

Lying beneath fifty-feet of fill and one of Oregon’s major recreational highways, was an ailing 75-year old concrete culvert with a history of operation and maintenance problems. The culvert in question funnels the Bad Banks Creek underneath Oregon State Route 22 about four miles east of Gates, Oregon. Working with the Oregon Department of Transportation, Otak’s hydraulics engineering team led a design and construction project to repair damage to the 300 foot-long culvert, improve stream flow and provide safer access for ODOT inspection and maintenance crews and equipment.

The Bad Banks Creek culvert at HWY 22 was subject to abrasion from sediment flowing in the stream channel, which over time, had worn down the concrete culvert and exposed the rebar reinforcement. The culvert also presented various safety issues for ODOT inspection and maintenance crews as it was difficult to access either end of the culvert due to steep slopes and lack of space to operate. While extending the life of the culvert was a priority, the other significant part of the project was to improve access for long-term maintenance.

Otak was hired by ODOT in May of 2019 to provide design services for repairs to the culvert to extend its service life and to modify the culvert entrance to improve access for long-term operation and maintenance of the culvert. Otak was then hired to provide construction administration, engineering, and inspection services during construction, which began in June 2020.

Extending the life of the culvert made sense—the typical life-span of concrete reinforced culverts is 75-100 years and it would have been very expensive to replace. As Otak Project Manager and Principal Kevin Timmins, states, “if the culvert ever does get replaced it will likely be with a bridge.” Rather than a costly bridge project with major disruptions to traffic along HWY 22, ODOT was able to get money and permits to make repairs and modifications and chose to work with Otak on a design to prolong the life of the culvert while also addressing the safety and access issues.

To mitigate the effects of streamflow and sediment abrasion, the culvert was lined with six inches of new concrete. The upstream end of the culvert was also extended, a more gradual transition into the culvert was added for better streamflow, and debris fins were installed at the upstream end to catch large debris so it doesn’t enter the culvert. The modifications had the added benefit of allowing the maintenance access road to come further down. As Kevin explains, “previously the access road just stopped at a steep vertical drop off into the culvert. By extending the culvert we were able to bring the road down and across the top of the culvert to the other side where we were able to create a level area where ODOT will be able to park an excavator and reach upstream of the debris fins in the event they need to be able to clear debris in front of the culvert.”

Ten days before substantial completion in September of 2020, the Beechie Creek fire burned through the construction site, scorching the forest vegetation, melting the stream bypass system, and causing damage to a portion of the freshly poured concrete. Otak has been working with the ODOT to manage the response at this site, including project closeout and plans for additional site stabilization and concrete repairs to be constructed in 2021.

“One of the reasons we were excited to work on this project was the fact that we were already familiar with the site,” Kevin stated, “and that our water resource team has a lot of experience in working in streams. They understand the hydraulic conditions, how to manage streamflow during construction, how to accommodate construction access.” This project was an opportunity for Otak’s hydraulics team, who possess deep knowledge and capacity for hydraulic engineering, to work in tandem with Otak’s structural team. Additionally, Otak has experience working on projects in environmentally sensitive areas, and mitigating the environmental impact during construction was a priority and requirement of the state.

In the end, the culvert repairs have staved off a costly bridge replacement by extending the life of the culvert and ODOT inspection and maintenance staff now have better and safer access to the culvert.