Rooted in restoration: Bitterroot Restoration Inc. of Corvallis helps heal wounds of a century of mining on Upper Clark Fork

A Corvallis restoration business has been awarded a four-year contract to restore a Superfund site northwest of Butte.

Bitterroot Restoration, Inc., http://www.bitterrootrestoration.com/ was recently given the go-ahead to proceed with the restoration and revegetation work it has been doing for the last four years on Silver Bow Creek, a riparian and wetlands area contaminated by more than a century of mining and, since 1983, part of one of the largest EPA Superfund sites in the U.S.

By ROD DANIEL Staff Reporter

http://www.ravallinews.com/articles/2004/03/11/news/news01.txt

According to Len Ballek, vice-president in charge of marketing and business development at BRI, the company has successfully bid on restoration jobs on the Silver Bow site for four years on a yearly basis, but wanted to secure a more long-term contract in order to take a more comprehensive approach to the project. The new contract carries an option to renew for an additional three years.

"We’ve won the bid on Silver Bow each year for four years," Ballek said, "but last year we went to the state and negotiated a long-term contract. It gives us an opportunity to collect seed and take a longer-term approach."

Such a comprehensive, multi-year approach is what has made BRI the leader in scientifically-based ecological restoration in the West, including management of native ecosystems and production of native plants.

The 18-year-old business, according to company founder and president Pat Burke, tries to integrate the entire ecosystem in its restoration work, including soil, microbes, vegetation and hydrology.

"Our approach starts with site-specific project design and planning, includes growing and planting site-adapted seedlings, installing erosion controls and creating specific habitat, and ultimately includes a long-term monitoring project," Burke said.

Armed with a forest ecology degree from the University of Montana, Burke started what was then Bitterroot Native Growers in 1986, and at first, he said, the company’s work was limited to strip mines that were mandated by the federal government to be restored to preexisting conditions.

"We were a pretty strange and different idea for a business," he said. "No one was doing what we were doing in the early 90s; now the comprehensive approach to ecological restoration has become the norm."

As the idea of ecological restoration took root, he said, BRI broadened its base, managing complex projects involving Superfund sites, national parks, mining operations, high-altitude scenic highways, wetlands and riparian areas. Today, most of the work the company does involves regulatory-driven projects either for private companies or government agencies.

According to Ballek, about 35 percent of their business is with state or federal agencies such as the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Army Corps of Engineers, while the other two-thirds is for private entities such as mining or utility companies.

"Many of these companies are mandated by law to mitigate impact on sites," he said, "but they have no idea how to do it. They often dump tons of money into these projects without really knowing if it’s doing any good."

One such utility company, San Diego Gas and Electric, has severely impacted the coastal sage scrub communities in southern California, Ballek said. Required by law to restore the desert plant ecosystems, the utility company spent a tremendous amount of money hiring landscape companies to do the work but had no way of knowing if the projects were successful. That’s when BRI stepped in.

"We came to them, took what was in their filing cabinets and put it into a data base," he said. "Now we’re able to provide documentation and proof that these projects are working. So we’ve saved them a lot of money. This kind of data base has huge potential for utilities across the country."

Currently BRI has two state-of-the-art nurseries – one in the Bitterroot on Quast Lane and the other outside of Sacramento, Calif. – and employs a full-time staff of almost 50 people. Seasonally during the summer months, they add about another 90 employees. Last year they opened a Seattle, Wash., office to attract business in that area.

Their main office for the last three years has been the historic Summers-Quast Homestead on the corner of Quast Lane and the Eastside Highway. The turn-of-the century Victorian house, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, provides a nice setting for entertaining potential clients, Ballek said, and the fact that it’s hooked up to a T-1 Internet connection makes it perfect for BRI’s advanced data base.

Located in the basement, the giant data base includes detailed information on sites all over the western United States, some of which was gathered specifically by BRI workers for their projects and some that was compiled by BRI for other agencies. Such a comprehensive information system, Ballek said, allows people involved in restoration work to plan and monitor their work more efficiently.

"That’s probably the biggest change in the restoration industry," he said. "We’re dealing more with information handling than ever before."

Besides collecting site-specific seeds and plant material, BRI employees are involved in all aspects of restoration work, from research and development to site design to monitoring.

As vice-president of consulting, research and development, Tim Meikle has had great success at obtaining research funding for BRI. Meikle’s many projects include one funded by U.S. Department of Transportation for native sod-growing techniques for erosion control on roadsides.

"The goal of the eco-sod project is to grow native sod in different substrates," Meikle said, "in order to eliminate the weight problem, potential weed problem and environmental impact of growing it in soil."

Another research project Meikle is proud of involves inoculating seedlings and soil with myccorhizae so they will have better success when transplanted to sometimes-sterile soils.

"Mycorhizal research has been going on for years in the lab," he said. "But we’re applying it to real growing situations. The success rate has been phenomenal."

Dave McAdoo is BRI’s only landscape architect and has worked for the company for nine years. For the last several years, the California-born McAdoo has worked with design teams in his home state on a comprehensive restoration project for Yosemite National Park.

"The team I work with is well known for their design work for lodges and college campuses," McAdoo said, "but they’re not familiar with native plants. So I lend them expertise on the native restoration aspect of the job. Yosemite requested our involvement, and basically we’re blending native restoration with landscaping."

One notable project he worked on involved removing a diversion dam in Yosemite National Park and designing a system to restore the area. By bringing all the major players in the project together in the same room, project designers conceived of a diverse project that included bioengineering, floodplain and riparian planting, upland planting and seeding and ecological monitoring.

The bioengineering aspect of the project involved stacking rock boulders along the eroded stream bank, placing willow cuttings in between the boulders and filling the crevices with a soil slurry, he said.

"As far as I know, the techniques we came up with had never been used before," McAdoo said. "It will be interesting to monitor the project to see how well they work."

The real challenge of the dam-removal project, McAdoo said, was working with a dynamic river system doing something that hadn’t been done before. He hopes what they learn from the California project may be applicable to the upcoming task of removing the Milltown Dam near Missoula.

"The Cascade Diversion Dam is very similar to the Milltown Dam," he said, "only without the toxic sediment."

Up the road on Quast Lane from the office on Eastside Highway are the many greenhouses where millions of native plants have been started from seed. On Wednesday, Gil Reich selected about 20,000 seedlings of Utah service berry, buffalo berry, rabbit brush and other drought-tolerant native plants to be shipped to a client in New Mexico.

After spending the winter in the spacious, one-acre, passive-solar greenhouse, the seedlings will travel by truck to Trees of Corrales, near Albuquerque. Reich, who has worked in the nursery at BRI for 10 years, said he’s sure the customers will be satisfied with his picks.

"We’ve never bought plants that were as nice as the ones we send out," Reich said.

Adjacent to the soon-to-be-traveling service berry seedlings are what’s left of the 3 million sage plants BRI grew for a multi-year, Crop Reserve Program planting in Washington state.

Ballek, who was the first employee hired by the company in 1986, said the future of BRI is one of great potential. This year, he said he projects the company to increase its sales by about 15 percent, and 10 years from now he expects the Montana-based business to be involved in huge ecosystem restoration projects bigger then anything they’ve dealt with before.

"It’s a booming industry," he said. "And we’re proud to be serving an ecologically significant role while employing local people and adding to the economy of the region."