Lummi Island Watershed Enhancement Committee

Community Volunteer Wynne Lee having fun planting this Oregon Grape on the ferry landing.

We are pleased to announce that we have reached  our project’s goals for this Year.

The Lummi Island Ferry Landing Restoration project has attempted to improve the quality of stormwater runoff from the ferry landing and new parking lot, improved the ferry landing shoreline buffer through erosion control, best management practices and planting of native vegetation, as well as have assessed the public shoreline to the North for future restoration work. We have also secured county and state permits, and Whatcom County Public Work’s approval for additional restoration work at the ferry landing site and the public shoreline to the North beyond the scope of this phase of the project and grant cycle through the year 2015.

Community Education And Outreach.

Surprisingly, much of our community education success came from over 300 one on one personal contacts with Lummi Islanders and visitors during our highly visible shoreline enhancement work which included community volunteers planting native vegetation along the ferry landing. And also, from our educational outreach including on site informational signage, publicized meetings, volunteer recruitment posters and announcements, and the continued support from many other Lummi Island organizations.

• We made 3 wooden hand painted signs: 1 Shoreline Restoration volunteer recruiting sign, 2 project informational signs. Displayed at the ferry landing.
• Community volunteers who worked at the ferry landing took personal ownership of our restoration work and became good stewards of the public areas around the ferry landing. Many other Islanders took pride in what we were doing as well. It was a great educational opportunity because it was hard not to engage with the public while working at the ferry dock.
• We continued to make announcements in the Tome, a local Community Association newsletter, to recruit volunteers and give our community updates on the project. (See above June 2009 Tome recruiting volunteers.
• We included Beach Elementary School Kids and the Island Girl Scouts where possible. The above picture is the Island Brownies potting up bare root plants to be planted out later.                                                We taught the Girls Scouts about the importance of water quality through videos, programs and hands on work.
• We spent many hours marketing our project and educating our community about shoreline stewardship. We had educational booths at community events: farmer’s market, Reef-Net festival, Civic Club plant sale. And certified 32 more Island Shore Stewards through the Washington state University Beach Watcher Program
• We continue to work on our blog: http://liwec.wordpress.com/ and will update it when we get the chance.
• We co-organized The Blue Thumb Workshop with the WSU Extension Shore Stewards Program. It was held at the Lummi Island Grange Hall on 9//27/08. We had over 42 attendants!

Reduce Marine Pollution From Storm Water

• We worked with the County to identify runoff problems in the new parking lot and they agreed to fix this one for us. Water was going around the drainage grid and pooling up in the street before going directly to the beach. (See above center photo)
• 8 inflows to rain gardens were enhanced with smart sponges installed in the new parking lot. (Pretreatment to filter hydrocarbons) (See above left)
• We enhanced 2 drainage outflows with smart sponges installed to filter surface water runoff from new parking lot. (To remove hydrocarbons)
• 1 catch basin insert was installed in existing catch basin designed to collect debre, reduce turbidity and hydrocarbons entering marine waters. (See picture above).
• We helped to install 1 new Contech Catch basin unit containing 3 sub-basins with 2 outflow filters designed to collect debre, reduce turbidity and hydrocarbons entering marine environment. The old catch basin was removed and the new unit installed by Whatcom County Public Works Dept. personnel.
• With help from the Lummi Island Community Association, we installed 2 Mitt Mutt Stations with signage. One at the Ferry Landing and one in the new parking lot. We are Monitoring/maintaining supplies.
• We put up 2 public information signs about Water Quality near ferry loading areas.

Shoreline Buffer Enhancement

• We planted over 402 linear ft. of marine shoreline buffer. The Lummi Island Ferry landing rock shoreline was enhanced with Native vegetation, native soils, woody debre and erosion control along the entire bank top (upper face and crest). Materials added: 107 yards native soils, 3 (6 yd capacity) truck loads of large to medium size rock, 6 (6 yard capacity) truck loads of logs/stumps, 50 plus mixed species wattles, 20 yards of aged bark fines, 6 yards forest duff/ small branches, 1 yard pea gravel, 2 yards coarse sand and 1 yard compost. The Ferry landing area was planted with over 1700 native plants, shrubs & trees,  added 5 lbs. mycorrhizae, 6 pickup loads of large and small woody debre (mixed species wattles and brush), seeded 25 lbs. dwarf fescue grass seed and installed 480 lin. ft. (3 ft wide) erosion control jute netting.  We also used 3 lbs. native plant seeds.

Extra work completed:

• We enhanced 55 linear feet of marine shoreline buffer along Nugent Road. We added erosion control mulch along bluff top and crest to act as a level spreader for storm water and planted native plants and shrubs including 10 trees.
• We enhanced 92 linear feet wildlife habitat along the south side of the ferry landing located within shoreline buffer between ferry parking areas and a wooden fence. Action: Mulched and pruned existing tree and 6 shrubs, we planted, mulched and maintained an additional 6 native shrubs and 5 trees.  Creating a hedgerow.
• We built a trail for access to present and future shoreline vegetation plantings

Additional Enhancement work:

We have assessments complete and permits granted for an additional 310 linear feet of shoreline enhancement work. Also, our feasibility study is done, plans ready and permits obtained for additional work. Plus, we have most of this work approved by the landowner, Whatcom County Public Works Department. (Although, some restoration work would need to be negotiated through a new scope of work.)  Our permits are secured for 5 years with extensions for up to 15 yrs.

Inkind – Matching funds & Community Volunteers

We were able to substantially exceed our goal for matching funds during this phase because we extended our project for 6 month without any additional financing. This substantially increased the volunteer time needed to complete our commitments. We engaged and assisted with over 280 hours of volunteer restoration work from community members most of which was 2 hours at a time.

We had a few exceptionally dedicated volunteers of which donated many, many hours of their time on this project. They are and have been actively engaged in helping out with all aspects of our project deliverables and are committed to continued stewardship of our work.  Without them, this project would surely not have been a success. Also, project lead Wanda Cucinotta with Forest Flor Recovery, volunteered more time and energy than anticipated to complete the project. She generously donated much of her time, many native plants, supplies and equipment. She volunteered for Saturday work parties all through the spring and summer working with and coordinating volunteers. Her commitment to the project’s goals and her additional commitment to 3 years of native vegetation maintenance and stormwater BMP inspections will continue to add to the success of our restoration work.