Drafter
Clerk 07/09/2012
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AN ORDINANCE authorizing the county executive to execute a Project Partnership Agreement between the Department of the Army and King County for construction of the Duwamish/Green Big Spring Creek restoration project.
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STATEMENT OF FACTS:
1. In 1994, King County and sixteen cities in the Duwamish/Green watershed, also known as Water Resource Inventory Area 9 ("WRIA 9"), initiated cooperative work with the United States Army Corps of Engineers ("the Corps"), a division of the United States Department of the Army, on the large-scale, multiphase Duwamish/Green Ecosystem restoration project, to restore the ecosystem of the watershed through planning and construction of significant habitat restoration projects.
2. The Duwamish/Green Ecosystem Restoration Project Feasibility Report was completed in October 2000 and recommended forty-five sites in the watershed for habitat restoration, among them the Big Spring Creek restoration project ("the project"). The project is located on the Enumclaw Plateau at river mile 6.2 of Newaukum Creek, and is intended to restore approximately one mile of Big Spring Creek and twenty acres of adjacent wetland.
3. Also in 2000, the seventeen WRIA 9 jurisdictions formalized their participation on the WRIA 9 Forum to jointly fund, plan, prioritize and conduct watershed planning and protection efforts, especially those aimed at protecting endangered Puget Sound Chinook salmon. Through the forum's scientific work, the Big Spring Creek project site was identified in the 2005 WRIA 9 Salmon Habitat Plan as one of the top priorities for restoration due largely to Big Spring creek's contribution of cold water to Newaukum creek, which is critical for juvenile salmon seeking safe habitat in the summertime. The rearing and refuge habitat created through the project is critical to juvenile fish in order for them to grow and become strong prior to migrating to the ocean.
4. Between 2001 and 2009, the county a...

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