Illabot Creek of the Skagit

Visited a new project site on an alluvial fan in the Skagit valley today that is going to be a lot of fun. Illabot Creek is a high value tributary to the Skagit River that supports numerous runs of anadromus fish including coho, chinook, steelhead, pink and chum salmon. In the 1970s a section of the creek was channelized with levees and riprap to improve flow conditions into bridge leading to a degradation and loss of habitat.

The goal this project is to build 1-2 more bridges and remove the constraining levees to allow the stream channel access to its historical floodplain. This is a picture of the large erosion area along the rock levee at the upstream extent of the channelization and is essence the creek attempting to do the same thing as the intent of our project.

Lesson of the day - Streams and river generally don't prefer straight lines and will work against efforts to control their form.