Water Resources

The Salt River Ecosystem Restoration Project is located in Humboldt County, near the City of Ferndale. This watershed-based, ecosystem-scale project is designed to restore ecological and hydraulic functions in the Salt River watershed. The objectives of the project are to restore and enhance habitat, support the recovery of special-status species, improve water quality, alleviate flood risks, and sequester carbon.

H. T. Harvey & Associates provided restoration design and planning services for 7.7 miles of the Salt River channel and more than 400 acres of tidal salt marsh on Riverside Ranch. We assisted the Humboldt County Resource Conservation District as a subcontractor.

Our work for this project reestablished a free-flowing channel that is connected hydrologically to its floodplain. The channel design concept focused on:

• restoring hydraulic capacity, fish habitat, and water quality in lower Salt River and lower Francis Creek;
• benefiting native species by reestablishing natural ecological processes;
• improving drainage, fish passage, and water quality by restoring hydraulic function;
• addressing challenges associated with sediment sources in headwater areas of the watershed;
• restoring wetland and salt marsh habitat in the lower Salt River; and
• increasing the tidal prism (the volume of water exchanged on each tidal cycle) into the Salt River, as well as the extent of estuarine habitat, through restoration on Riverside Ranch

Our landscape architects, restoration ecologists, and fish ecologists assisted the project engineers in all aspects of this project, from planning and design to permitting and implementation.