
(This is the second post of a three-part series on our cleanup, restoration, and preservation efforts at Port Gamble.)
- Contributing partial funding to purchase 535 acres to create Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park. This was a large community effort to protect 1½ miles of shoreline, tidelands, and uplands with fish-bearing streams.
- Providing full funding to Kitsap County to protect and conserve 1,355 acres of the Port Gamble Forest Block. Under a 25-year timber deed, Pope Resources will be able to harvest trees before the land is fully transferred to Kitsap County, and added to the Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park.
- Restore two acres of eelgrass in the southern bay to support Pacific herring, fish, and crab. Eelgrass habitat is essential to fish and other marine species. Port Gamble Bay has lost a significant amount of eelgrass habitat over the past 20-30 years. This restoration effort will expand existing habitat and help inform future restoration efforts.
- Enhance nine acres of Olympia oyster habitat on the western shoreline and in the southern bay to diversify the types of shellfish in the bay, restore native species, and improve water quality. Shellfish are an important resource to the tribes, community, and visitors. This project builds on other efforts to improve shellfish resources throughout the bay.
- Replant 1½ acres of trees and shrubs at former landfills on the western shoreline in the Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park. Riparian habitat is important to upland and marine species. This effort will help create a connected, forested shoreline along about 1½ mile stretch of beautiful beach.
- Remove 296 tons or 591,600 pounds of debris from beaches and tidelands – tires, nets, derelict boats and a steel barge, and creosote-treated pilings. This effort builds on other cleanup projects occurring at the mill site. That earlier work removed pilings and associated contaminated sediment and potential sources of contamination (for example, a sunken barge with lead paint) that are harmful, hazardous, or displace desirable marine life from the bay’s beaches.
- Pope Resources/Olympic Property Group for cleanup.
- Pope Resources/Olympic Property Group, Kitsap County, the Port Gamble S’Klallam and Suquamish tribes and community organizations, such as the Kitsap Forest and Bay Coalition, for land purchases.
- Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe for cleanup, debris and derelict piling, and vessel removal, eelgrass restoration, and Pacific herring and shellfish studies.
- Washington’s Department of Natural Resources and Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Washington Conservation Corps, Kitsap County Parks, and community groups for eelgrass restoration, riparian restoration, and Pacific herring and shellfish studies.
- Puget Sound Restoration Fund and Washington Conservation Corps for shellfish enhancement.
- Pope Resources and Kitsap Public Utility District for construction of a new wastewater treatment plan that will allow 90 acres of geoduck tracts to reopen. Pope Resources will remove an existing sewer outfall on Hood Canal by January 2019.
- The Washington State Legislature for providing funds to help restore and protect the bay.