Overview of the Deschutes Estuary Restoration Project
Project Lead Ann Larson gives an in-depth overview of the project, which will transform Capitol Lake back to a natural estuary, improving water quality and providing a better habitat for local wildlife.
The Deschutes Estuary Restoration Project is working to bring back natural habitats in downtown Olympia, Washington. This involves restoring 260 acres of estuarine and salt-marsh land at the mouth of the Deschutes River. A key part of this effort is removing the 5th Avenue Dam, built in 1951, to restore the natural tidal flow.
To keep up with the project and find out how you can get involved, sign up for the newsletter or visit DeschutesEstuaryProject.org.
The video below features Deschutes Estuary Restoration Project Lead Ann Larson, who gives an overview of the project and why it's important for the local community.
Video transcript
I'm Ann Larson, I'm the special assistant to the Director. I work for the Department of Enterprise Services for the state of Washington, and I'm overseeing the estuary restoration that we've been working on for almost a decade.
So, DES has a really cool role in that we have the care and custody of the Capitol Campus. You know, the estuary is part of that, and the 260-acre water body is part of that.
We have our Buildings & Grounds crew that actually maintain all the parks around here. The current lake right now is in the middle of and part of our unique Capitol Campus.
We're really being transformative here. We're working closely with our partners, the Port of Olympia, the City of Olympia and also the (Squaxin) tribe.
This is a really cool area. This is the UNA Retirement Memorial. This has been Squaxin Island tribe's area and working close with them, we're restoring some of their tribal rights.
We are bringing economic benefit to the city of Olympia, but also we're creating an opportunity for recreation. There's opportunities for civic education.
We look at this as a kind of an extension of our Capitol campus and the opportunities to tell the story of the Squaxin Island tribe, tell it to tell the story of the history of the state of Washington, all of those opportunities are here. So, I think it's unique. We see an estuary.
This is the largest estuary restoration in an urban setting in the nation. That's exciting. And it's happening at our state Capitol Campus, and the opportunities that we have to share the state of Washington's story and to educate people about not only the historic state history, but also the natural history of what we have here in the state of Washington is such a cool and exciting opportunity.
What we're going to see in the future is a restored estuary, and one of the biggest complaints is that we've had to close the lake to any kind of use. A cool thing about the estuary is we're going to restore that.
We're going to restore the ability for people to get out on the water, active recreation, a mile's worth of boardwalk. We're going to restore boating back on the estuary as well.
There's going to be a new bridge with pedestrian access. It's interesting if you travel through here now, it's actually not a very safe area to walk through.
What we're envisioning is going to be something really, really cool. We're working closely with the City of Olympia to design that bridge. We're working closely with the Squaxin Island Tribe to design the estuary.
It's really going to be a transformative space. And I think we're going to see a lot of people in the city of Olympia come here.
You know, we're trying to bring growth and economic development here in the city of Olympia and I think really spotlighting this is going to be a jewel for the city of Olympia and our Capitol Campus.
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