PORT ANGELES — Clallam County has joined a multi-agency effort to study marine bluff erosion between Port Angeles and Sequim.
The three commissioners Tuesday approved a memorandum of agreement with the Coastal Watershed Institute to implement the Puget Sound action agenda.
The nonprofit institute is a sub-recipient of a $320,000 grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to implement the agenda under the Puget Sound Marine and Nearshore Protection and Restoration grant program.
Clallam County will be reimbursed a maximum of $18,933 and provide a $4,000 in-kind match to study the physical processes of marine bluffs and the ecological and economical functions they support.
It also will help the county with its ongoing, state-mandated update of its Shoreline Master Program, the county’s shoreline plan.
County Planning Manager Steve Gray said a major part of the study is to glean a “better understanding of how the bluffs are regressing — the amount of sediment coming off the bluffs that feed into the Elwha drift cell and also the Dungeness drift cell.”
A drift cell is the area where sediment transport occurs.
“Another key component of the project will be an economic valuation of the natural infrastructure out there,” Gray added.
“This will certainly answer some of the questions we’ve received from the community.”
One example of such questions is, he said: “Why is it important, at least in terms of those bluffs?”
Images of bluffs
State Department of Ecology officials will take light detection and ranging, or LIDAR, images of the bluffs from a boat, Gray said.
The state Department of Natural Resources will use that information to survey bluff regression.
“The scientists will get together and figure out, based on all the information that’s out there, a better understanding of bluff regression, a better understanding of how much volume’s coming off those bluffs and where that sediment is going and what that sediment is good for,” Gray said.
The EPA grant runs through December 2013.
Community Development Director Sheila Roark Miller said some of the data may be useful in the Shoreline Master Program update, “but it’s going to be something that goes on beyond that Shoreline Master Program update to try to get some kind of assessment of what the bluffs actually look like at this point in time.”
Series of meetings
The Coastal Watershed Institute will lead — with multiple partners, including Clallam County, participating — a series of public forums, symposiums and workshops.
“In a way, it’s good for property owners to know the dynamics, the functions of the bluff, what’s going on in there — either owning property or finding some property,” Commissioner Mike Doherty said.
“That’s what this will do, to get more scientific information on what’s happening with the bluffs.”
The next public workshop has not been scheduled.
The economic study will be performed by Earth Economics.
Economic valuation
A preliminary ecosystem economic valuation should be available within the next month or two, Gray said.
Commissioner Jim McEntire asked for a staff report on the preliminary economic analysis.
“I am a skeptic, to put it mildly, on ecosystem services valuation,” McEntire said.
“It’s all about how you make the assumptions, and those can get really squirrelly.”
Commissioner Mike Chapman thanked Roark Miller for her work on the state-mandated task.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345 ext. 5072 or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
