Goat Creek Fan Restoration Final

This project seeks to address limiting factors of cover, floodplain connectivity, off-channel habitat, and pool quantity and quality for ESA-listed fish by developing a final restoration design focused on levee removal and the placement of instream mainstem and off-channel wood. The conceptual design includes selective excavation to remove areas of the levee and reconnect high-flow channels along 0.5mi of the river; mainstem wood structures along roughly 0.75mi of river; and high-flow channel wood structures. A final design and permitting would be completed in 2024 for anticipated construction in 2025. This is a high priority AU and these reaches of the Methow are used by spring chinook and steelhead spawning and rearing, as well as bull trout feeding, migrating, and overwintering. This project would help restore natural processes of floodplain connection as well as improve current habitat conditions in the mainstem river, providing immediate benefit to all three ESA-listed species. 

The goal of this project is to develop a design to address some of the limiting factors identified for the two project reaches, improving habitat conditions for nearly all lifestages of spring chinook and steelhead, as well as for subadult and adult bull trout. This project would improve floodplain connectivity and expand high-flow off-channel habitat through targeted levee removal along 0.5mi of river, improving habitat quality and increasing habitat quantity for juvenile and adult fish. Instream wood placement would create pools, provide cover, increase floodplain connection, and encourage lateral channel migration in both high-flow channels and the mainstem Methow, creating immediate habitat improvement and restoring or encouraging some of the natural processes that will create and maintain habitat in future.