The Port of Grapeview is a small recreational/fishing port located near the town of Allyn on Case Inlet in Puget Sound. The Port’s boat launching facilities serve both recreational boaters and commercial fishing crews. The Port’s old concrete boat ramp was built in 1960, and after over 50 years of use, was cracked, broken, uneven, and needed to be replaced.
This view shows the damaged condition of the old boat ramp as well as the quarry rock that covered the beach.
The Port of Grapeview received a grant from the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office to replace the ramp, construct an associated dock, and provide upland facilities including improved parking and ADA accessible restrooms. Given the nature of grant funded projects, the Port was under tight time restrictions to get the project permitted and completed.
Concerns about threatened Pacific salmon and endangered Orca whales within Puget Sound have made the permitting of in-water projects, particularly new overwater structures, increasingly complicated. SVC secured all necessary environmental permits, completed Shoreline, Critical Areas, and ESA Assessments and a Habitat Management Plan, and developed a compensatory mitigation plan. We accelerated the Federal permitting process by preparing the Coastal Zone Management analysis – a task usually undertaken by agency staff.
The new boat ramp was installed in January 2018 and is made of pre-cast concrete sections. After demolition of the old ramp, the new sections were lifted into place. This new ramp is now the only boat ramp available to the public that provides water access at low tides within this north end of Case Inlet.
The waterward end of the new boat ramp is made up of pre-cast concrete sections which were hoisted into place.
The project also includes a new ADA compliant floating dock which will allow temporary moorage for users of the boat ramp, an access gangway, and sidewalk. These features were installed in early February 2019. The new dock is made of 20’ long x 8’ wide pre-fabricated fiberglass sections that are grated to allow sunlight to pass through to the water below. At 165 feet, the new dock is longer than the usual community dock. Because this is a floating dock, at very low tides most of the dock will ground. The extra length is needed so that at least a portion of the dock can reach waters deep enough to keep a docked boat afloat without the risk of the vessel grounding. But, even with the extra length, the Port of Grapeview dock does not interfere with boat navigation in the channel.
The new ramp and dock offer the only public boating access to this area of Case Inlet.
Compensatory mitigation for shoreline impacts which may result from this new overwater structure include removal of a dilapidated bulkhead that is made of old creosote piles. Angular (quarry) rock is also being removed from the shoreline and will be replaced with native sands and gravels which will restore the natural beach substrate and support the growth of macroinvertebrates like snails, clams, crayfish, and insects that provide food for migrating fish. Shoreline restoration at this location will also include soft-shoreline stabilization and plantings of native shoreline vegetation. The mitigation plan was designed by SVC.
What is left of an old, decaying creosote pile bulkhead will be removed and replaced with soft-shoreline stabilization as part of the mitigation plan designed by SVC.
The new Port of Grapeview boat launch and floating dock are part of a public access project funded in part by the Washington State Office of Recreation and Conservation (RCO), HHJ Architects, and Taylor Shellfish.
