PROJECT DETAIL

CLIENT: Sustainable Environments, LLC LOCATION: Skagit County, WA

The Skagit Environmental Bank was developed by a consortium of private investors to provide compensatory wetland mitigation for a variety of adverse impacts on aquatic ecosystems within the bank services which encompasses the lower Skagit River watershed.  The design consisted of restoring the site to pre-agricultural conditions by breaching artificial levees, introducing large woody debris jams, and establishing self-sustaining vegetation communities.  The first phase of this project was constructed in 2016 which entailed the installation of channel spanning woody debris dams “engineering beaver dams’ to aggrade the stream channel which will re-establish floodplain connectivity while still allowing adequate fish passage protection.  Upon completion, the Skagit Environmental Bank will provide 2.8 miles of new or restored riparian rearing and refuge habitat for salmonids and 396 acres of forest, scrub-shrub, emergent, and aquatic bed wetlands and upland environments.