Snohomish County CFS Virutal Open House

We can provide eligible and willing property owners financial compensation for all or a portion of their property to be repurposed for agricultural use or habitat restoration.

Beginning in the summer of 2021, we will identify properties that are eligible for this acquisition process. We are doing this work in partnership with the Tulalip Tribes and Washington Farmland Trust to provide options for FARM, FISH and FLOOD uses on acquired land, and we will prioritize properties where there can be multiple benefits.

Floodplains by Design Acquisition Strategy

Washington Farmland Trust (formerly PCC Farmland Trust) has worked with local farmers to develop criteria to prioritize lands for protection through agricultural easements. (See Figure 1)

The county is currently developing an acquisition strategy, integrating the following information, to help guide multiple-benefit property acquisitions:

• WA farmland trust farmland conservation prioritization to guide the purchase of land for long-term agricultural conservation;
• Tulalip Tribes conservation priorities for the purchase of property for salmon recovery; and
• Flood risk reduction priorities identified by the recent flood hazard studies conducted by Snohomish County.

As part of this undertaking, we are developing a spatial tool that will allow us to overlay flood, fish and farm priorities to see where there is overlap to guide use of funds. Information will be available by summer 2021.

Skyview tracts neighborhood consisted of over 100 residential and recreational lots subject to repetitive flooding, with reported flood depths of up to ten feet. The few houses that existed in this neighborhood were built before the county adopted the National Flood Insurance Program, which now prohibits building permanent structures in river floodways.

Over the past two decades, Snohomish County used a variety of funding sources to purchase Skyview tracts property from willing landowners. The most recent cleanup effort was completed in 2016, removing 792 tons of debris and contaminated soil for proper disposal. County efforts at this site protect citizens from future flood damage, the river from waste contamination and conserve public open space that provides recreation and restoration opportunities.

Farmland Conservation Assistance

The Washington Farmland Trust's mission is to protect agricultural land for farming. To accomplish this, WFT works with landowners to purchase their farm’s development rights. WFT uses tools like agricultural conservation easements (process described above) which are designed to limit future development and non-farm uses without restricting agricultural operations. To help ensure the land remains affordable to future generations of farmers, WFT can include additional restrictions designed to increase the easement’s value to the existing landowner and lower the land’s future purchase price for a farm buyer.

In some circumstances, WFT also purchases at-risk farmland with the goal of returning it to private ownership by selling to a local farmer. This approach is called “buy, protect, sell”. The Trust works with willing farmers to buy the property, remove the development rights and place the property in long-term agricultural conservation. When the Trust is ready to resell the farmable area, they will accept applications to purchase or lease the property. If there is an existing tenant on the property, the Trust will give that tenant the first opportunity to purchase the property.

FEMA Financial Assistance

To reduce future disaster claims, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) maintains programs that provide funding to state and local governments for eligible mitigation (corrective) activities. Qualified activities include home elevations, home relocations and the acquisition and removal of structures in high-risk areas. To learn more, visit our Technical Assistance webpage.

Streamside Landowner Technical Assistance

Snohomish County provides a variety of resources to streamside landowners in unincorporated areas including technical assistance, restoration guidance, educational workshops, print materials and site visits customized to the needs of your property. All resources are designed to help improve water quality and aquatic habitat, and to reduce downstream impacts such as flooding, erosion and pollution.

The CFS team can connect you with the people and resources to help.

Protecting our viable agricultural land from conversion so farmers can provide for our community’s needs into the future is a critical component of the Agriculture Resilience Plan.

SCD is leading the design and development of capital projects in the Snohomish and Skykomish River basins that will increase agricultural resilience. Additionally, SCD is supporting programs to assist farmers in applying resilience Best Management Practices (BMPs). Changes in flooding and groundwater levels could result in needed infrastructure improvements for drainage and protection from flood waters and rising sea levels. In addition, changes in snow accumulation and the timing of precipitation and runoff could necessitate drought resilience improvements.

• Drainage improvements could include improved pumping options, upland water storage, protection from flood waters, dike improvements and ditch cleaning
• Drought resilience improvements could include water rights acquisition/banking, water storage, irrigation efficiencies and groundwater infiltration and recharge projects
• Funding will be solicited for project design and construction

This work promotes the FISH in our mission to protect FARM, FISH and FLOOD uses.

Dikes, bank armoring, roads, railroads and bridges have confined rivers, disconnecting them from their floodplain and side channels. Side channels and floodplains are important habitat for salmon.

With assistance from our partners, we are restoring natural river processes by designating areas where the river can reconnect to its historic floodplain, allowing the river room to create and maintain natural habitat through anticipated channel movement and side channel formation. We are restoring natural river function by removing invasive species and promoting natural vegetation growth. We do this by using tools like acquiring land, removing impediments to natural river movement and restoring side channels and native vegetation that will provide salmon habitat.

This work has also never been more important – salmon populations are at historically low levels across most species, so we need to do what we can to recover their populations by providing adequate habitat.

Chinook are the main food source for the Southern Resident Orca.

If the Chinook population continues to decline, the Southern Resident Orca population will follow.

Chinook salmon were federally listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1999. In 2005, salmon recovery partners approved a salmon recovery plan and identified habitat restoration targets to track their progress on restoring salmon habitat to support the recovery of salmon populations. Salmon habitat restoration along the Skykomish River falls into the “Mainstem Primary Restoration” category noted in the graphic above. This graphic shows that since the adoption of the 2005 salmon recovery plan, progress is being made on our habitat restoration target, but much more work is needed, particularly with restored edge habitat (bank armoring removal) and with restored off-channel habitat (floodplain habitat). Source: Snohomish River Basin Salmon Conservation Plan Status and Trends (Dec. 2019)

Within the Snohomish River Basin, the highest concentration of Chinook use is in the Skykomish and Snoqualmie mainstems. Our efforts focus on restoring habitat for salmon; habitat where salmon can rest, hide from predators, forage for food and seek refuge from fast river currents as they make their way downstream to the salt water. Source: Snohomish River Basin Salmon Conservation Plan (June 2005)

Recovery of the Southern Resident Orca population largely depends on our ability to restore and protect habitat for Chinook salmon, the orcas’s primary food source. Source: Southern Resident Orca Task Force – Final Report and Recommendations (Nov. 2019)

We have identified upcoming projects and infrastructure modifications to support our efforts to protect FARM, FISH and FLOOD uses.

Phase I consists of a $4.8 million award, leveraging $1.93 million of local funding. The goals of the projects in this phase are to:

EXAMPLE ACTIONS: CFS partners aim to improve the movement of flood flows by replacing failed culverts and raising sections of roadway.

The blue and purple stars on the maps show areas we have identified as good locations for projects that integrate FARM, FISH and FLOOD priorities.

Click graphics to expand.

We are working to secure funding for a second phase of the Community Floodplain Solutions program.

Potential multiple-benefit actions and approaches for this phase are described below and will be included as part of project feasibility analyses for all areas identified with blue stars (see the maps for Subreaches 4 and 5):

• Side channel reconnection is generally proposed in areas that are too wet to support agricultural practices. Side channel reconnections can be packaged with levee setbacks to protect agricultural areas that are farther upland from the re-routed streamflow and provide a multiple-benefit approach.
• For agricultural stability, controlling river migration and bank erosion are understandable objectives and may be the only option to protect private property in some locations. However, traditional back armoring approaches are challenging to permit and involve costly mitigation. Additionally, traditional bank armoring can transfer flood related risks to your neighbor downstream. This program instead focuses on building feasible projects that give the river more room while supporting multiple land uses that provide a public benefit. Actions like bio-engineered bank plantings are cost effective measures that provide a public benefit. See Q&A document for more on this.
• For restoration of salmon habitat that naturally forms as a result of channel migration process, several locations with limited, compatible, or willing adjacent agriculture could be enhanced by allowing for channel migration process to support salmon recovery objectives.
• Re-creation of previous channel forms can provide additional routes for water to flow and lessen the impacts to agriculture and other land uses during flood periods. These projects can also be used to reduce erosion for landowners on the opposite riverbank or can be planned to influence flows and processes farther downstream.
• Flood risk reduction efforts can also benefit long-term salmon recovery goals as well as supporting farming in the reach. For example, flood fencing keeps flood debris off agricultural fields, builds a natural berm and vegetated riparian zone to improve water quality and prevent erosion, and creates roughened edge habitat. Additionally, setting levees or revetments back reconnects floodplains that provide new access to habitat, reduces flood hazards to landowners as well as the need for long-term maintenance, and avoids the high costs of rebuilding or constructing new revetments along the river’s main channel.
• Incentives for providing ecosystem services can allow agricultural operators to balance economic pressures and maintain natural resource lands.

EXAMPLE ACTIONS: The planting of vegetation and installation of flood fencing can replicate natural processes that build river banks, catch wood and sediment before they enter farm fields, and protect mature vegetation. The installation of vertical arrays in the active river channel accelerates natural processes that build sand and gravel bars, as the structures accumulate sediment and/or wood.

Click graphics to expand.

CFS Phase II would further the integrated floodplain management approach funded in 2019 and leverage additional funding sources to expand the scope of existing projects. With a total cost of over $16M, the project would generate over 260 new or sustained jobs and roughly $35M – 40M in total economic activity, of which $28.2-32M would stay within Snohomish County.

The CFS virtual Open House is no longer accepting comments, but we welcome your questions any time via email or phone. To start a conversation, please call 425-262-2443 or email CFS.info@snoco.org. And, if you haven’t done so, please sign up to stay informed about future meetings and updates.