Kayak Point Park Restoration Feasibility Study
Kayak Point County Park is a popular destination for picnics, boating, fishing, and supports a wide variety of marine life. While it is one of the few remaining areas of relatively unaltered shoreline in the area, the site suffers from erosion on the southern beach and facilities damage due to a bulkhead. In an effort to restore normal sediment transport processes and reduce the need for ongoing road repairs, the Snohomish County MRC worked with the local community and partners to develop a restoration plan for the park.
Restoration Planning
The MRC worked with Snohomish County Parks and Recreation and People For Puget Sound to develop a plan to restore habitat and habitat-forming processes at Kayak Point Park.
The restoration planning process began in 2009 with a public visioning workshop to find out what park visitors valued most about the park and what they would like to see in the future. The feedback from this workshop was incorporated in the planning process.
To inform the restoration planning, WSU Snohomish County Beach Watchers completed three years of pre-restoration monitoring. Data on the beach profile, substrate composition, and intertidal organisms was collected.
Coastal Geologic Services (CGS) completed a preliminary restoration design in early 2010. The design included the removal of a portion of the bulkhead, relocating the existing road further landward, installing a storm berm to mimic natural shoreline processes and facilitate sediment transport processes, and guidelines for restoring the backshore area with native plants.
In March 2010, the second of two visioning workshops was held to gather public input on three restoration and redevelopment design options. From this workshop, two conceptual designs options were proposed. One design includes a barrier lagoon and the other does not include this feature.
In response to concerns over the possible inclusion of a lagoon, the MRC and People For Puget Sound funded a study to assess the feasibility of this restoration option. Coastal Geologic Services completed the study in mid-2011. The study indicated that the interface between Puget Sound and the proposed 0.6 acre lagoon would likely open and close intermittently and thus not provide the intended benefit to juvenile salmon.
Snohomish County has been using these ideas to inform the design as the County prepares for construction at the Park. The current plan (see schematic below) calls for reconfiguring the day-use area, which will provide additional recreation space. Parking will be moved away from the shoreline, and the boat launch will be improved with habitat improvements. As part of implementing these changes, park infrastructure will be replaced (e.g. failing water lines and buckling asphalt) and the park will be positioned for many more years of enjoyment. 60% design has been completed and 90% design is underway. It is planned that the project will be constructed in a series of phases, due to the overall cost of the project. Grant funds are being sought currently and, if successful, the first phase of construction is set to start in 2021.
Day Use Area - Draft Schematic Plan (2017)