PROJECT: St. Helens Riverwalk, phase 1

LOCATION: St. Helens

SIZE: one half mile

START DATES: March 2021 (design), April 2024 (construction)

COMPLETION DATE: June 2025 (phase 1)

COST: $3 million (construction)

OWNER/DEVELOPER: city of St. Helens

PROJECT MANAGER/PRIME CONSULTANT: Mayer/Reed

GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Advanced Excavating Specialists

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Mayer/Reed

ENGINEERS: Otak, PAE, NV5

OTHER ASSOCIATES/CONSULTANTS: Archaeological Investigations Northwest, Architectural Cost Consultants, Naughton Communications, Pacific Habitat Services

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The grand opening of a linear park on Thursday marked a major milestone in the city of St. Helens’ mission to transform 24 acres of former industrial land into a vibrant mixed-use River District.

A half-mile stretch of former industrial land along the Columbia River has become a public amenity. The design emphasizes sustainability, habitat restoration and integration with the city’s broader trail and open space networks. Mayer/Reed designed the entire corridor up to 30 percent before shifting its focus to final design and implementation of phase 1, which was built by Advanced Excavating Specialists.

Key features of phase 1 include improvements to Columbia View Park, approximately 300 feet of riverwalk, interpretive signage, stepped seawalls, scenic overlooks, improved riparian and shallow water habitat for fish and wildlife, and links to Columbia County’s waterfront trail system and the new Columbia View Circle.

Funding is needed to complete phase 2, which will include construction of an amphitheater stage and playground in Columbia View Park. Central and southern riverwalk sections will feature beach access, a plaza, an accessible gangway to a launch and dock for light watercraft, a picnic area, and a large, cantilevered overlook.

The riverwalk is a key component of St. Helens’ broader Waterfront Redevelopment Project, which includes the simultaneous design and construction of the Streets and Utilities Extension Project, led by Otak. This project will provide multimodal connectivity between downtown, the Columbia River and the future River District.

“Building Blocks” spotlights noteworthy projects either under construction or approaching the start of construction. To submit a project for consideration, please visit: djcoregon.com/building-blocks.

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By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Trump administration said Wednesday that it would slash millions of acres of protected habitat designated for the imperiled northern spotted owl in Oregon, Washington state and Northern California, much of it in prime timber locations in Oregon’s coastal ranges.

Environmentalists immediately decried the move and accused the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Donald Trump of taking a parting shot at protections designed to help restore the species in favor of the timber industry. The tiny owl is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and was rejected for an upgrade to endangered status last year by the federal agency despite losing nearly 4 percent of its population annually.

“This revision guts protected habitat for the northern spotted owl by more than a third. It’s Trump’s latest parting gift to the timber industry and another blow to a species that needs all the protections it can get to fully recover,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Timber groups applauded the decision, which won’t take effect for 60 days. More thinning and management of protected forests is necessary to prevent wildfires, which devastated about 300 acres of spotted owl habitat last fall, said Travis Joseph, president of the American Forest Resources Council.

Loss of the ability to log in areas protected for the spotted owl has devastated rural communities, he said. The 3.4 million acres removed from federal protections Wednesday includes all of Oregon’s so-called O&C lands, which are big timber territory. The more than 2 million acres are spread in a checkerboard pattern over 18 counties in western Oregon.

“This rule rights a wrong imposed on rural communities and businesses and gives us a chance to restore balance to federal forest management and species conservation in the Pacific Northwest,” Joseph said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service agreed in a settlement with the timber industry to reevaluate the spotted owls’ protected territory following a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving a different federally protected species.

The Trump administration has moved to roll back protections for waterways and wetlands, narrow protections for wildlife facing extinction and open more public land to oil and gas drilling.

But for decades, the federal government has been trying to save the northern spotted owl, a native bird that sparked an intense battle over logging across Washington, Oregon and California.

The dark-eyed owl prefers to nest in old-growth forests and received federal protections in 1990, a listing that dramatically redrew the economic landscape for the Pacific Northwest timber industry and launched a decadeslong battle between environmentalists and loggers. Old-growth Douglas firs, many 100 to 200 years old, that are preferred by the owl are also of great value to loggers.

After the owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, earning it a Time magazine cover, U.S. officials halted logging on millions of acres of old-growth forests on federal lands to protect the bird’s habitat. But the population kept declining, and it faces another threat: competition from the barred owl.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has since said the northern spotted owl warrants being moved up to the more robust “endangered” status because of continued population declines. But the agency refused to do so last year, saying other species took higher priority.

That decision is facing a legal challenge led by the Center for Biological Diversity.

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RHODODENDRON — Mike Herrick would see the same three other guys at each pre-bid job walk when he started pursuing habitat restoration contracts. These days, he’s joined by around 30 other company representatives vying for a job.

Habitat restoration has been a bona fide sub-trade for less than three decades, but some firms that do this work have become specialized, and geared their businesses to the rhythm of the seasons. Herrick’s Aquatic Contracting is one of those firms, along with BCI Contracting, Henderson Environmental Design-Build Professionals and .

More firms, including some large ones, are now trying to get in on the action. However, the established specialists say they aren’t worried; there’s enough work out there now to sustain a greater number of competitors.

“We’re strong competitors, yes, but we’re like brothers and sisters,” said Kim Erians, LKE’s president. “For the first 10, 15 years we did it because it was the work that we loved. Now it’s an industry.

“Fish are the thing to do.”

Our understanding of natural process in aquatic habitats has evolved greatly over the past century, but the scars from a different way of thinking are still here. Tank Olson, an Aquatic Contracting employee, remembers during being instructed as a logger to pick up “every stick” from the river. Now he . Some lumbermen, with knowledge of the forest and skill maneuvering trees with heavy machinery, have found a perfect fit in this line of work, Olson said.

“There’s a lot you can do with an excavator,” he said.

Late last month, on the hottest day of the year, Olson was running an excavator in the middle of Still Creek several hundred yards away from the nearest road. He was building a logjam – a structure designed to back up water at natural points in a waterway.

Olson’s marching orders come from Brian Bair, senior project manager for the U.S. Forest Service.

“My preference is for the guys with the logging experience, who’ve thrown sticks around,” Bair said. “I’ve worked from Alaska to Maine to Hawaii, and by far the people who work with trees are the best. They have an understanding of how to have a light footprint. They understand the consequences of swinging a log around. Guys who dig dirt all the time don’t know that stuff.”

Bruce Henderson, principal of Lake Oswego-based Henderson Environmental Design-Build Professionals, also took an unusual route into contracting. The marine biologist was performing environmental planning for a large engineering firm, and gravitating toward work with clients in the wood products industry worried about environmental compliance.

“Life isn’t always linear,” he said.

It takes a special sort of person to work such a unique job, Henderson said. And, despite the perks, habitat restoration contractors report being afflicted by a common problem for builders today: finding the right people.

“We can teach the business to individuals, but they have to come to us with the right interests and motivations,” he said.

Henderson has been looking for a while for a project engineer with five years of experience in the field, for between $85,000 and $105,000 a year. But some hires don’t work out because they’re not prepared for what the job demands: namely, self-reliance and the ability to withstand long stretches apart from other people. Plus, workload demands fluctuate with the seasons.

“A lot of them don’t get that this is a whole lifestyle you choose,” Erians said.

The right hire can rise fast. Take Michael Neal, who Henderson hired about a year ago. The retired Navy submariner was new to the field, but now he’s tackling one of Henderson’s largest jobs as project manager.

Neal’s education is in wetland ecology, and his work history is diverse, spanning industrial construction, government work and biology. Being a fisherman helps at his current position, he said – he’s used to the bugs, the heat and being filthy. Another requirement of the job, he says, is a supportive spouse. He regularly works at night 45 miles from the nearest city, away from his wife and 6-year-old son in Tigard.

“I think what we do provides a benefit, and you can’t say that with every job,” said Neal, 38.

Though many contractors have the necessary equipment – usually, only an excavator – to perform this kind of work, few are familiar with the unique physical and regulatory environments of habitat-focused in-stream work, said Ian Sinks, stewardship director at the .

As funding sources beyond the federal government direct more money to restoration goals, Sinks looks for contractors who “speak the same language.”

“It’s nothing against these bigger firms,” he said. “It’s just that they’re used to working in these urban environments or dry environments, as opposed to working within a stream and watching out for river flows and water quality and trees. There’s just always a lot of uncertainty and regulatory oversight with this work, so we look for contractors who are able to work with sensitivity and finesse.”

Humans have through land use practices. It’s affected how rivers flood, and that weighs heavily on the work that habitat restoration contractors do.

“We want to restore habitat that will sustain itself 10, 20, 30 years down the road,” Sinks said. “We love to have it so you can’t tell what the past land use was, that it’s now a fully-functioning natural environment. And that’s going to be the most successful project for us.”

The land trust asks contractors to provide in their bid documents an approach to the project – how are they going to tackle the problems inherent in the project and implement the goals? How they accept the challenge of nature and respond is often “amazing” for Sinks to watch.

In one case, BCI Contracting developed and built a floating excavator to access a site they had a good chance of ruining and losing their equipment if they were to use heavy equipment.

“It was pretty spectacular that they were able to accomplish that project as the low bidder in a really dynamic, wet, flood-prone environment,” he said. “Just picture a sea of mud.”

The three Porter brothers, operators of BCI Contracting, have been in business about 25 years, and have watched “the whole morph of it,” according to Dave Porter, who was barely out of high school when he started.

“We started out doing it because other contractors weren’t doing it,” he said.

Much has changed in the two decades since gabion baskets were the big idea in riverbank stabilization. The rock-filled wire cages were a good idea as a first step, Porter said, but turned out to be “bad in about every way you could think of” once fish started interacting with them. The remains of some can be seen jutting from the banks of Still Creek.

The next wave of bio-engineering in the 1990s involved Lincoln Log-style cribs anchored in-stream. Today’s engineering approach is more natural, with the logjams constructed accounting for log lengths and boulder weight.

They might look completely innocuous, like a slash pile in the middle of a stream, but they’re highly-engineered installations, with log lengths and boulder weight factored in, and considerations needed for dewatering, water isolation and cleanliness.

“You think it’d be easy, right?” Porter said. “Building logjams in rivers is incredibly complex and we always say, you come in with a good plan, and the second you hit the ground and start digging you have plan B, C and D ready to implement as soon as it happens.”

One reason habitat restoration specialists aren’t worried about losing bids to larger contractors is they really care about this stuff.

Erians, who runs LKE with her husband, Jim, out of George, Wash., often takes children’s groups to see sites she mediated years ago, like the Eagle Creek Trail near Bonneville, Wash. It had been dredged out over years to make it flat for development, with the creek placed in a canal. After a heavy project, the creek now flows freely and provides habitat for young salmon.

“The legacy we leave is that you’ll never know we were there,” she said. “We don’t want to be known for a Walmart. I’m more proud that you can’t see what I’ve done.”

Erians has minimal experience with typical commercial contracting. She remembers waiting for months for payments from “gold chain-wearing, slimy guys.”

“Yuck,” she said. “It took forever to collect money, and it just felt like nothing you did mattered – all the extra effort, the heart and soul you put into a home site. I mean, really?”

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