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[ Birds chirping ]
SHORT: The Jamestown S'Klallam tribal reservation
is located on the southern shore of Sequim Bay
on the north Olympic Peninsula of Washington state,
about 2 1/2 hours by car and ferry from downtown Seattle.
It is here that the Jimmycomelately Creek
runs through tribal land
as it drops from its source in the Olympic Mountains
and winds down into Sequim Bay.
The landscape appears pristine,
with the forest-covered mountains
and the deep blue of the bay.
But since the late 18th century,
the Jimmy, as it is locally known,
has undergone a complete transformation
from its original, natural state.
The creek has been relocated, channelized,
and a logging operation
with a storage yard, shingle mill, and log pilings
operated on its banks until the early 1990s.
In 1981, the Jamestown band of the S'Klallam tribe
achieved federal recognition.
The tribe purchased a two-acre plot
close to an historic Jamestown village
on the south shore of Sequim Bay
and designated it as their reservation.
They built a tribal center
and began to acquire lands adjacent to their reservation.
Their land holdings grew from the original two acres
to over 1,000 acres by 2010.
In 2001, the Jamestown S'Klallam tribe
purchased an old log yard near their tribal center.
The property included uplands, tidelands,
and, unfortunately, more than 100 creosote-treated pilings
that occupied valuable tidelands
once part of the Jimmycomelately Estuary,
which had historically been rich in eelgrass and mudflat habitat,
supporting shellfish, salmon, and waterfowl.
The log-yard property contained roads
that had been built across the estuary and salt marshes
of the Jimmycomelately Creek.
The wetlands had been drained and filled.
The estuary no longer functioned
as a nursery for migrating salmon
or a haven for water birds, eelgrass, and shellfish.
My name is Randy Johnson,
and I'm a habitat restoration planner
with the Jamestown S'Klallam tribe.
I'm standing on what was once the bed
of Jimmycomelately Creek,
where water used to flow and salmon used to spawn
right where I'm standing at the moment.
One New Year's Eve, a heavy rainstorm blew through,
caused flooding all over the Olympic Peninsula.
And someone said, "Yeah, and this isn't the first time
"this has happened, either.
This creek requires routine maintenance dredging."
Lower Jimmycomelately Creek
is inhabited by imperiled summer chum salmon,
which are listed for protection
under the Endangered Species Act.
They would spawn in this section of Jimmycomelately Creek.
So this cycle of the creek filling in
and then flooding and being dredged back down
was really bad for these imperiled salmon, too.
You know, I think if we're ever going to break this cycle
that nobody likes,
we're gonna have to restore the creek to its estuary.
So we speculated, "How in the heck can that be done?"
Well, at the time,
the Washington State University's extension service
had a program where they would connect landowners
with governmental agencies
for the purpose of engendering good stewardship
of creeks and rivers here in Clallam County.
That was the beginning
of the Jimmycomelately Ecosystem Restoration.
Landowners formally requested
that the tribe and the agency folks
form a technical committee of scientists, engineers, planners,
figure out how to do this,
how to restore this ecosystem down here,
figure out where the money was gonna come from,
and then the landowners would support that group
and would restore this ecosystem.
My name is Byron Rot,
and I'm the habitat program manager
at Jamestown S'Klallam tribe.
This project really benefited from its bottoms-up approach.
We worked to resolve a community problem,
a problem of flooding
that the landowners next to the creek were experiencing,
and the resolution of that problem
also served to recover fish populations, as well.
So the restoration project
really was driven from the bottoms up,
driven by a community need,
which always makes for a much stronger project.
So we had this vision of un-development
to remove the human infrastructure and stressors,
restore natural processes.
The end result of this project was a successful project.
It was a big project --
one of the biggest in Puget Sound at the time.
We spent four years
doing restoration work -- four summers --
many years in preparation planning for it.
And there's a lot of actually large-scale projects like this
that are going on right now,
and we felt it was very important to get the word out.
What were our problems? What were our lessons learned?
And so with EPA funding,
we were able to write a lessons-learned report,
which has been well received by the restoration community.
But, you know, the interesting thing
was this was not a tribes project.
This was a community project, really.
There were so many folks involved
that it really had that community imprint on it.
And that's really another lesson learned --
On these large-scale projects,
you have to get everybody involved.
One agency, one government
cannot make all those decisions for other people.
Otherwise you're gonna run into problems down the road.
Hi. I'm Kurt Grinnel from the Jamestown S'Klallam tribe.
My Indian name is...
And I'm a tribal councilman here at Jamestown.
I'm also the natural-resource policy coordinator here.
Jamestown has been involved with several watershed projects
throughout the years in the Dungeness watershed.
And it was in the 1990s
that the tribal leadership here in Jamestown
realized that we had some real problems
right here, near our reservation,
in the Jimmycomelately Creek and its estuaries.
And so at that time, the Jamestown tribe
decided to go ahead and take a leadership role
on getting the meetings together and getting the people together
and the money, the funding for this project.
In 1999, we only had seven fish return,
summer chum return to the creek.
So at that time, they were listed as threatened.
Well, by 2004,
after much work and dedication by the partnerships,
we finally were able to get some fish back to the stream.
We had 1,700 back, which is a monumental proportion
compared to what we had before.
In 2009, in fact, we've had over 2,500 fish return.
So that's really been an accomplishment.
On July 8, 2005,
we had what's called a first salmon ceremony,
and what's significant about that
was all the partners were invited
to come over to the mouth of the Jimmycomelately Creek
and participate in this event
that hasn't taken place in well over 100 years.
And we were all able to celebrate together
with all the hard work and dedication
where we celebrated together the accomplishment
and the restoration of the stream.
You know, this really showed that the Jamestown tribe
can take a project,
a complicated project with all its inherent problems,
and really see it through to the end.
They've really taken a great leadership role.
We have great leadership that hires great people,
and they worked very *** this project.
And today we have a great run of fish coming back,
and we're very proud of that.
My name is Lyn Muench,
and for many years, I worked for the Jamestown S'Klallam tribe
in shellfish and water quality,
environmental health and public health.
My role for this Jimmycomelately project focused on the log yard,
both acquiring all the tidelands for shellfish
and also removing the creosote pilings,
which were a serious water-quality concern we had.
The specific issue we had here
was the Jimmycomelately Creek was restored,
the estuary was restored, the tidelands were purchased,
and we were stuck with more than 100 heavily creosoted pilings
that had been left over from the log yard.
And we needed to get rid of them somehow.
So we applied for an EPA Brownfields grant.
We used the EPA Brownfields money
specifically to remove the pilings.
Once we were awarded the grant,
removed the pilings successfully,
and they were taken to a disposal site
actually in the state of Oregon,
which is equipped to receive creosote piling waste.
One thing that might be interesting
is the way we were successful
in applying for the EPA Brownfields project.
The way we were successful in applying for the grant
was that we did have economic development,
because we were going to be creating
a new harvest opportunity for our shellfish harvesters
and also new ceremonial
and subsistence harvesting opportunity,
which has an economic development.
But another criteria for Brownfields grants
is green space.
And we said, "We're not creating green space.
We're creating blue space."
So that in addition to the benefit to tribal members,
there's a strong community benefit
for kayaking and bird-watching and all the other activities
which can go into a beautiful piece of water
which is not obstructed with hundreds of creosote pilings.
SHORT: When the project was completed in 2004,
tribal members were able to harvest shellfish
in the tidelands of the former log yard.
This proved to be an added bonus of the project.
MUELLER: Fish and shellfish
have always been their traditional diet.
This is what they have had as their resource
so that over the last few years,
with the more access that we have had to harvesting
and getting back into our native foods,
and that's largely in part
due to our natural resources department,
who have been so diligent
in bringing back the fish and the shellfish for people.
And then, of course, our health programs that we have
has lowered our diabetes
down from the national average of other American Indians.
I think the national average of diabetes
in American Indians is 15%,
where Jamestown, we're now at 8%.
So I think that that's quite a significance
in the change that we have seen
with our people getting back into using the shellfish
in their traditional diet.
SHORT: By 2006, the estuary had been undeveloped,
the creek relocated to its more natural bed,
the log road, fill, and pilings had been removed,
and the area planted in native vegetation.
The summer chum had returned to the creek.
In 2009, the number of spawning salmon had increased to 2,500.
The shellfish were being harvested by tribal citizens.
Blue space had been created.
But the Jimmy had one more secret to reveal.
One of the other surprises that we encountered
was that we actually unearthed a shellfish midden.
And a midden is an archaeological area
that were used by Native Americans in the past.
And we didn't expect to find it.
We came across it and all of a sudden saw a tremendous amount
of shellfish and charcoal pieces, et cetera,
that led us to believe that there was something there
that we should not be excavating.
We called out the tribal cultural resource officer.
She agreed with us.
We then brought in archaeologists
and were able to modify the grading plan of the project
to be able to avoid any further impact to the midden.
ROT: I think one of the best things, heartwarming things
that I come away with is the positive feedback
that we continue to get from the community.
This is a very visible project, folks driving by on 101
or walking on Olympic Discovery Trail.
And we get comments all the time about how they like the project
and really thank us for doing it.
And that is very warming to hear that feedback.
So I'd like to, you know, say that,
hey, come on out and check out this project.
You've got the Olympic Discovery Trail you can walk on.
You can see it. See for yourselves.
Bring your binoculars.
If you like to watch birds, there's plenty out here.
So come out and see us. Thank you.