West Council Creek

The removal of degraded infrastructure restores functional, stable habitat to a creek and its floodplain.

The West Council Creek Berm and Foot Bridge Removal was a voluntary aquatic wetland and stream habitat restoration to remove infrastructure and restore ecological function to the creek and associated floodplain wetlands on Metro land.

Biohabitats removed unnatural fill from an old road/berm, retaining walls, and concrete slab within Council Creek to restore natural conditions and improve in-stream and wetland habitat functions. After fill material was removed to the proposed grades, the surface was stabilized with jute matting. The concrete slab at the channel bottom was replaced with an engineered stream bed, and the concrete retaining wall on the right bank was restored with a roughened rock toe and wrapped soil lifts. Two beaver dam analogs were incorporated into the project design to repair channel incision, and habitat structures consisting of small conifers were extracted from an off-site Metro-owned location and installed within the wetland areas as habitat structures. An underground concrete cistern was also filled with rock to allow spring water to express to the creek and prevent a safety hazard.

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• Construction