Gales Creek Clear Creek Confluence Project
The Gales Creek Clear Creek Confluence project is the second phase of three restoration treatments to Clear Creek, an important cold water contributor to Gales Creek. The purpose of the project was to provide summer rearing habitat and cold water refugia to juvenile salmonids migrating upstream.
This project consisted of edge-oriented large wood placements along both Gales Creek and Clear Creek for the purpose of creating scour pools and improving channel roughness, floodplain connectivity by way of side channel reconnection on the Gales Creek mainstem, and additional thermal refuge in backwater habitat and side channels on four acres of floodplain located between Gales Creek and Clear Creek. Conifer plantings were implemented in the floodplain to support long-term instream wood contribution and recruitment. A manmade dike was removed in order to allow high stream flows in the winter to access the four acre floodplain and side channels.
This project complemented several previously implemented projects including the main stem Gales Creek riparian plantings by Tualatin SWCD, stream crossing replacements by Washington County, restoration projects constructed along upper Gales Creek and North Fork Gales Creek, and the large wood placement project constructed in upper Clear Creek on the City of Forest Grove property in 2012.
This project was also meant to serve as a complement to the future removal of the upstream Balm Grove Dam. This project was a collaboration with Clean Water Services and three private landowners and was made possible by funding from an OWEB restoration grant award.