Great Blue Heron in Tigard's Summer Creek. Metro has awarded $1.9 million in Nature in Neighborhoods capital grants to five local projects that will preserve and restore natural areas. The grants are designed to involve the community in innovative projects that incorporate nature in their neighborhoods as the region grows. Since the program began in 2008, Metro has handed out $3.3 million in capital grants.
Recipients must match Metro awards with outside funding or in-kind services worth at least double the amount of the grant. Criteria for the grants include "re-naturing" neighborhoods by improving their ecology, restoring rare habitats, demonstrating cost-efficient design solutions and providing public access.
"This program helps nurture new projects, giving them the best possible shot at funding," said Sue Marshall, volunteer chair of the capital grants review committee. "Today, we're recognizing five groups that had the right mix of creativity, resources and momentum."
The third round of Nature in Neighborhoods capital grants were awarded by the Metro Council on March 18 and support everything from natural area acquisition to creek restoration to public structures:
Re-Greening Park Avenue Park & Ride
Recipient: TriMet, Urban Green
Partners: North Clackamas Parks and Recreation District, Oak Lodge Sanitary District, North Clackamas Urban Watershed Council
Grant amount: $349,305
Total project cost: $1 million
Finding inspiration in Metro's Integrating Habitats design competition in 2008, this project will create the region's first sustainable, habitat-friendly light rail station and park-and-ride. When TriMet's new orange line pulls up to the station at Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard and Park Avenue in Milwaukie in 2015, commuters will be in for a unique experience. They will find a re-created riparian forest, a natural stormwater treatment system and many other green features including a parking garage with plants built into it. Agencies and community groups are collaborating to showcase development that balances design excellence, ecological stewardship and economic enterprise. Project partners hope to restore the Courtney and Kellogg creek basins and promote low-impact development throughout the McLoughlin corridor - showing community members, Trolley Trail users and thousands of MAX riders how to restore ecosystems in a built environment.
Trillium Creek Restoration Project
Recipient: City of West Linn
Partners: Mary S. Young Volunteers, Willamette Riverkeepers, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Harris Stream Service, Robinwood Neighborhood Association
Grant amount: $55,330
Total project cost: $179,000
Trillium Creek flows from upland areas in West Linn through a wooded ravine into Mary S. Young Park and down to its confluence with the Willamette River. It should offer a welcoming habitat for plants, fish and other wildlife but contamination, channel and bank erosion as well as storm damage have taken their toll. The Metro grant will help bring students, volunteers and other community members together to rehabilitate 1,045 feet of the creek by re-establishing its natural channel and floodplain. The stream bed will be filled with cobble and gravel materials, and bio-engineering measures will be used to provide temporary erosion control until permanent vegetation can take root. Invasive species will be removed and hundreds of native plants and shrubs will be put in to stabilize the banks and return Trillium creek to a healthy urban waterway.
Baltimore Woods Connectivity Corridor
Recipient: City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services, Three Rivers Land Conservancy
Partners: Portland Parks & Recreation, Friends of Baltimore Woods, Audubon Society of Portland, SOLV, Port of Portland
Grant amount: $158,000
Total project cost: $475,000
The Metro grant will help purchase parcels, totaling one acre, within the Baltimore Woods corridor in North Portland. This acquisition will protect rare Oregon white oak trees that provide homes for a number of unique species including acorn woodpeckers and the western grey squirrel. These parcels are part of a larger 30-acre corridor that the Friends of Baltimore Woods, city agencies, land trusts and non-profit organizations plan to restore and preserve. This woodland corridor will enhance the nature experience for bicyclists, walkers, joggers and even commuters who will someday use a future trail along this section to connect with the region's Willamette River Greenway Trails system.
Crystal Springs Restoration Partnership
Recipient: City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services
Partners: Johnson Creek Watershed Council, Friends of Crystal Springs, Portland Parks & Recreation, Reed College
Grant amount: $311,480
Total project cost: $968,000
Crystal Springs Creek in Southeast Portland is fed only by springs, leaving the water free of the urban runoff that taints so many urban streams. The clean water, along with a constant year-round flow, low temperatures and little changes in gradient make this a potential sanctuary for the area's threatened salmon. This project, partially funded by Metro, helps realize the stream's potential by removing barriers that block juvenile fish passage and restoring the floodplain and riparian habitat along the creek. The Lower Columbia chinook, the coho and the steelhead, all listed under the Endangered Species Act, have been documented in Crystal Springs and are expected to thrive once the stream is rehabilitated. There's even the possibility that the Columbia River chum, which has died off in the Portland area, could be reintroduced to the creek after the restoration.
Summer Creek natural area acquisition
Recipient: City of Tigard
Partners: The Trust for Public Land, Tualatin RiverKeepers, Tualatin Watershed Council, Fans of Fanno Creek, Washington County, Clean Water Services.
Grant amount: $1 million
Total project cost: $5.4 million
Metro will contribute to the acquisition of 43 acres of wetlands and mature forests at the confluences of Summer and Fanno creeks. The property is a high-profile natural area, the best remaining unprotected land in Tigard and, soon, the city's second largest park. The site has functioned as an outdoor lab for students at Fowler Middle School who test the water quality and stream flow, learn about the trees and vegetation, track and study birds and even release newly hatched fish into the creeks. With the help of several community partners, a Summer Creek Environmental Education Program will be established that will allow children throughout the area to come experience and study nature first hand.
These latest grants come shortly after Metro surpassed the halfway point toward its goal of protecting 4,000 acres with the region's natural areas bond measure, which was approved in 2006 by voters in Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties. Combined with a 1995 bond measure, Metro has acquired more than 10,000 acres.