Place of Circling Waters - Industrial Land to Habitat Site

The Place of Circling Waters project represents the Port of Tacoma's largest habitat restoration to date and illustrates the Port's continued effort to restore Hylebos Creek to a thriving salmon stream and wildlife area. The nearly-30-acre habitat site is especially valuable because of its location at the mouth of the tidally-influenced Hylebos Creek and its proximity to several other previously-restored, adjacent habitat sites. The new consolidated habitat site fulfilled five separate habitat mitigation obligations, including advanced mitigation to offset impacts from future Port projects. This project was much more complex than most habitat restoration projects, as the mitigation was performed in tandem with a significant 255,000-ton remedial excavation clean-up. Restoring this blighted former gravel mine and inert waste landfill site to its original natural condition required removing up to 20 feet of existing heterogeneous upper fill soils that had been deposited above the original native surfaces. Design required constant balancing of the often competing needs of cleanup requirements and habitat mitigation obligations in order to maximize high-value, intertidal habitat while controlling construction costs.