A boy and a creek
In the 1980s, a boy called Tommy as a kid, his siter and friends ran across the street to Ravenna Park and disappeared for the day. They rode bikes, explored the woods and Ravenna Creek, that drains into Lake Washington. At the creek they built boats and floated them down the creek and waded in search of crawdads. As a student at Seattle University, where he got an ecological studies degree, Tom came back to the Ravenna Park and planted trees and built frog ponds for the parks department. “That work solidified what I wanted to do,” he says.
Caring for the Redmond Watershed
Tom Hardy now works for Redmond as a Senior Environmental Scientist and cares for the watershed of this place. His path of ecological stewardship was birthed as a kid playing in Ravenna Creek, was nurtured at college where he learned about ecological restoration, and, in particular stream restoration, began to be implemented at his first job at a non-profit called Adopt a Stream Foundation , where he implemented stream projects, educated people on everyday behavior they could do to improve their watershed, led volunteer planting events, went door-to-door doing outreach, removed fish barriers and installed habitat logs in streams. Their office, the Northwest Stream Center in McCullum Park near Mill Creek, where there is a trout stream exhibit and they host lectures on animals like wolverines, birds and salmon. Tom worked there for eight years. The last fifteen years he has worked for the City of Redmond where he constructs, monitors and maintains stream restoration projects that collectively cover over one hundred acres.
A lot has changed over the years. Tom’s early projects took a very engineered perspective and didn’t consider the functionality of that stream or the natural processes of that stream. “We didn’t let streams be wild,” he says. Years ago, scientists figured out that one of the components that salmon need is a complex habitat, like logs in streams to create eddies and pools where the salmon could rest and hide. Logs were put into the stream and anchored in place with a chain so that the log would never move. But Tom points out “That’s not how nature puts logs in the streams. Logs are allowed to move around, to shift with the floods.” Now when they place logs in streams, where feasible, they allow that natural process to take place. “That’s how habitat is created and recreated,” Tom says. “Now we let ‘streams be streams.’”
When the restoration project is done, it will mostly take care of itself. “You build it, then let the natural process take over. You let the stream do what it wants.” To assist that natural process, Tom manages a Washington Conservation Corps crew, an AmeriCorps group, who maintain the projects, taking out noxious weeds and planting native vegetation.
One big project he is working on with other city staff is the 15-Acre Evans Creek Relocation project. The project will take the existing ditched stream channel out of the industrial area of southeat Redmond and move 3,000-ft of it to a new meandering channel. The new stream location, scheduled for construction in 2025 and 2026 will provide improved instream habitat, connections to wetlands and a wide buffer. You can check out that project here. www.redmond.gov/1397
Another large project in Redmond, built in 2020 is on the old Keller farm Keller east of Avondale Road. It is a seventy-five-acre project bordered by Bear Creek on the east and south sides of the project. The project is a wetland mitigation bank that restores the floodplain by reconnecting new wetlands to the stream, planting thousands of native plants like willow spruce and sedges between the stream and the upland area as a buffer. The City of Redmond is a stakeholder in another big project, one that is going to modify the outlet where Lake Sammamish feeds the Sammamish River. The goals of this project are to improve the ecological function of the river itself and to reduce flooding along the lake for property owners. This is a King county project, and their webpage has tons of information on the proposed Willowmoor Project.
The Sammamish River
The Sammamish River is its own category and has changed too, over the years. In an 1889 survey, the river used to be thirty miles long. That was before the Army Corp of Engineers straightened and deepened the river to alleviate the flooding of farms and small towns along the river. The Drainage District #9 and Army Corp of Engineers modified the river over 100 years ago. Significant work was done between 1895 and 1986. The Army Corp consider the river a flood control facility. Now the Sammamish is about fourteen miles long. Cities like Redmond are built on the historic flood plain, complicating Tom’s job of restoring the natural process.
One of the natural processes, and challenges, are the beaver who live along the river. This is a tricky task. Tom wants the beavers to be around. If they trap and remove all the beavers, they’ve lost the ecological function and value they add to the system. So, they leave alders, willows and cottonwoods, trees the beaver like to eat, unprotected along the river. They protect the trees they want to save with wire cages. It can be frustrating finding the balance. Beavers will chew on just about anything. Some trees they eat for food and other trees they will use for building their lodges and dams. Tom says, “They are like sustainable farmers. They get rid of certain kinds of trees so that other trees and shrubs that they want will flourish.
Other wildlife beside beaver are sighted. Tom refers to the Woodland Park Zoos Carnivore Spotter where residents report wildlife sightings. “It will shock you what people have seen,” he says. Bears, cougars, bobcats, coyotes, otters, mink, nutria have all been spotted near the river. Among the winged creatures one can see are Eagles, osprey, geese, ducks, and heron. In the river there are salmon, lamprey, cutthroat and rainbow trout, peamouth, sculpin, northern pike minnow, stickleback, crayfish, large scale suckers, pumpkin seed, blue gill, bass and yellow perch (which are non-native fish) that are also present in Lake Sammamish.
Tom wants Redmond neighbors to know the Sammamish River is a special place that provides habitat to lots of different fish and wildlife. The city intends to restore the river throughout the city limits. In regards to the river, restore mean “enhance.” Tom points out that can’t restore to the river to pre-contact, pre-European conditions. He says, “Sometimes we use the word rehabilitate, or enhance. We’re not just restoring it for Chinook salmon, not just for the eagles, but also for people. When you walk along the river in the summer, you walk through the area we planted the temperature drops, the water is cooler, there are more bird and wildlife in that area. It feeds on itself. It’s a more enjoyable place to be then out in the blazing sun where there’s no shade and the water is warmer and there are less critters running around.”
Children and the River
Tom also wants kids to play along the Sammamish River and the neighborhood creeks of our watershed like he did so many years ago. He wishes that kids spent more time playing in and interacting with nature. “Sometimes I’m disappointed that I don’t see more evidence that kids are down near the stream, or out in the woods,” he says. He wants young people to advocate for the environment, participate in projects that enhance or restore the watershed. He wants adults to embrace their creeks and rivers and care for them. Tom wants to be a partner in the great dance between people and the place in which they live.
From a kid playing at a creek, to overseen young adults caring for a place, his life calling is integrated in his love of the creeks and rivers of our place. He knows that his life work has not been wasted, but well spent. He shares how his wife said, “you’re so lucky that you have this job. I can’t see myself doing anything else.” Of course, there are frustrations. But at the end of the day, when he has completed a restoration project, it feels like he has contributed to the greater good. I for one am thankful that that little boy fell in love with Ravenna Creek so many years ago, and that that love has borne fruit in over one hundred miles of creeks, streams and rivers in our watershed.
BRIDGES OF REDMOND ARTICLES
Here are past articles from the Bridges of Redmond project. Eventually these stories and others will be woven together to tell the story of the River and the people who live along and love it.