Photo credit: Guy Glenn Jr. (left) and Mark Letham (right)

Baker Bay and Grays Bay: Community-Based Coastal Resilience Action

Overview

The Baker Bay and Grays Bay: Community-Based Coastal Resilience Action (referred to as the Bay to Bay project) was a three-year (2021-2024) initiative that sought to assist locally-led efforts to reduce changing water level’s impacts on people and habitats of Baker and Grays Bay, located in the Lower Columbia River Estuary. This project focused on the Washington side of the lower Columbia, looking at current flooding and potential future sea level rise impacts, how they relate to existing issues, and how to best respond to address present and future issues simultaneously in accordance with community visions and scientific information, in order to build a resilient system.

Read the Final Report

The final report was published July, 2024.

Click to view the following:

Main Report
Executive Summary

Appendices:

Bay to Bay project area encompassing Baker and Grays Bays, associated tidal streams, and associated floodplains.

Background: Project Approach

The Bay to Bay project was composed of three key phases:

  1. Outreach
  2. Community Workshops
  3. Project Support.

Phase 1 “Outreach” efforts began in 2022 and continued through the conclusion of the project in Summer 2024. Phase 1 “Outreach” included outreach to the community to gather local input, initial mapping of these outreach results, and a review of available documents related to sea level rise and associated impacts, other potential changes in water level (e.g. projections for future precipitation change), existing planning and projects, and related topics. Audiences included local, city, county, state, federal, and Tribal participants.

Phase 2 “Adaptation Planning Workshops” consisted of four public workshops in each bay, with the goal of further engaging the broad stakeholder group identified through Phase 1. Workshops occurred between spring 2023 and summer 2024.

Phase 3 “Project Support” occurred throughout the project and included the identification of feasible projects or next steps based on all the discussions and prior information throughout the study by the project team. The project team was a key partner in the development of six local resilience projects for each Bay.

Project Objectives

    1. Engage communities at risk of flooding and sea level rise in learning about and planning for risks posed by climate-induced sea level rise

      2.  

    2. Document the Columbia River estuary Resilience planning process online and communicate a locally-developed guiding framework for these projects to support community and habitat resilient throughout their life-cycle, allowing it to serve as a template for other low-capacity, at risk, and rural coastal communities in Washington and Oregon. Published these findings in a Resilience Strategy that scopes and prioritizes site-specific conceptual resilience projects that mitigate risks while furthering improvement of intertidal habitat for endangered and threatened Columbia River salmon and other fish and wildlife species based on community input from a multiphase workshop series

      3.  

    3. Identify project proponents and bring three prioritized conceptual projects to a point where additional assessment, design, and implementation funds can be sought

    Taking Action: Resilience Projects Supported

    Workshop participants identified the following projects (6 projects in each Bay), which were refined through direct support and engagement from the Bay to Bay project team. By moving forward with this network of interrelated proactive measures, local capacity can be built to safeguard critical infrastructure, ecosystems, and communities against the impacts of climate change. Projects that resulted in funding requests or other tangible next steps (as of June 2024) are marked with a star (⭐). For more details on each of these projects, see Appendix E and H of the Resilience Strategy.

      Relevant News Articles

      Workshop participants in Grays Bay discuss local resilience priorities. Photo credit: Chandler Countryman

      Project Partners and Funding

      The Bay to Bay project was led by the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership in partnership with the Washington Sea Grant and Pacific Conservation District.

      The project was primarily funded by a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s 2021 National Coastal Resilience Fund through support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Additional funds were provided by the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership and by the Washington State Legislature through the Coastal Hazards Organizational Resilience Team (COHORT) program.

      Contact

      For any questions or inquiries related to the Bay to Bay project, please reach out to Jackson Blalock, Marine and Estuarine Resilience Program Manager at Pacific Conservation District: jblalock@pacificcd.org or Chandler Countryman, Resilience and Adaptation Specialist at Washington Sea Grant: ccount@uw.edu.