Further tidelands restoration planned for Smokehouse Floodplain

Fish or farms.

Why not both?

That’s the approach taken by the Skagit River System Cooperative and its project partners, who for more than a decade have launched measures designed to restore estuarine habitat within the Tribal-owned Smokehouse tidelands area at the north end of Swinomish Channel, a scenic location that abuts productive farmland.

A tractor worked a nearby field as SRSC Director of Habitat Restoration Steve Hinton led a tour Monday afternoon show earlier efforts coordinated with the Swinomish Tribal Community that have reclaimed several acres of salt marsh and opened up more than five miles of intertidal channel habitat to fish.

“It’s a nice marriage between land and water,” said Hinton, while pleasure craft passed by en route to Padilla Bay. “The two can exist together.”

It was the second such tour this summer. Hinton had previously guided Channel Drive residents on a hike, where SRSC is planning future restoration over the course of five or six years.

Hinton said initial steps are being taken to secure funding for design work on a proposed dike set-back project estimated to be a near $7 million investment.

“The next big step,” he said, “is opening up a big chunk of ground and giving it back to Mother Nature.”

The ultimate goal, he said, is to create additional habitat for fish while not impacting agriculture – a game plan that has been in effect since the early 2000s.

“It was pretty controversial at that time,” Hinton said. “There were questions about letting saltwater and fish back into farmland.

He said collaboration with local farmers was a key element.

“We worked with the Thulen family,” he recalled. “They’re wonderful people.”

Between 2005 and 2008, four top-hinged, “flap style” tide gates in the Smokehouse Restoration area were replaced with self-regulating tide gates that restore tidal flushing. The old gates had inhibited the movement of fish and water. Two bridges were also installed across tidal channels, said Hinton, to replace smaller culverts, greatly improving fish access.

Since then, native species of grass have colonized nearby, and conifer trees are growing next to the farm acreage, this year devoted to potato production.

Hinton, joined by project manager and La Conner High alum Catey Ritchie, began the Monday tour by offering a brief history on the evolution of the Smokehouse tidelands.

He said they were once within a channel system that was a complex distributary for the north fork of the Skagit River, comprising a network of intertidal sloughs dotted with salt marsh, mud flats, wetlands, and uplands. Indeed, the channel was akin to a third river branch.

The landscape was altered in 1937, said Hinton, when dredging by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers created the Swinomish Channel as we now know it, a major route for commercial and recreational navigation whose impact on the La Conner area’s economy can’t be overstated.

In the process, however, the tidelands were morphed into a drained and diked setting, limiting fish access and burying intertidal habitat beneath dredge spoils.

“This used to be a rich fishing area before the navigation project,” said Hinton.

His own history is intertwined with the local tidelands restoration campaign.

“It pretty much tracks the trajectory of my career here,” he said. “It’s been since then that the Tribe acquired the land and embarked on an ambitious ecological project here. It’s been an exciting place to work and learn.”