Butte-Silver Bow (BSB) developed approximately 57 acres of open space land, near Hillcrest school, owned by BSB into an open space park with a children’s fishing pond. The open space area was damaged by historical unauthorized overland vehicle traffic, ATV traffic, and illegal dumping. The abuse resulted in a network of trails that created erosion and sediment issues, stream channel degradation, weed infestation, and litter and debris issues. BSB developed the open space into a park to secure and reclaim the open space area and prevent future abuse. WET was hired by BSB to complete a site investigation, write a Natural Resource Grant (NRD) grant application for park construction, complete the park design, and provide construction oversight.
The site investigation confirmed clean surface and ground water resources existed to supply a children’s fishing pond. Investigation data was used to develop a conceptual park design with a pond. The conceptual design was used to obtain a $1,200,000 NRD grant for design and construction of the park. The grant application was approved and construction of the park proceeded in 2012-2013.
Project tasks included stream restoration, revegetation, pond construction, channel reconstruction, bridge installation, large scale re-contouring and reclamation, trail and parking lot construction, utility construction, and park amenity construction. Permitting included the Federal Clean Water Act (404 Permit), Montana Natural Streambed and Land Preservation Act (310 Permit), Montana Floodplain and Floodway Management Act, and compliance with the Butte-Silver Bow Storm Water Engineering Standards.
Specific work for floodplain permitting included a Conditional Letter of Map Revision (C-LOMR) and Letter of Map Revision for Tramway Gulch. Tramway Gulch was remapped in its entirety and the C-LOMR included existing mapped culverts, existing but not mapped culverts, and proposed bridge crossings. Reese Canyon Creek was remapped for a 0.6 mile reach length and included a No-Rise, No Hydraulic Impact report and a LOMR after project completion. The work included three bridge crossings, stream restoration, the confluence with Tramway Gulch, and a successful tie-in to the regulatory Duplicate Effective model. The engineers involved in this project worked closely with FEMA region VIII, the Butte-Silver Bow Floodplain Administrator, and the engineering consultant to FEMA and DNRC.