Corvallis Wetlands TMDL

The City of Corvallis investigated options to treat its wastewater using constructed wetlands. The Orleans Natural Area site was chosen as the preferred location for this facility. GreenWorks collaborated with Kennedy Jenks to design a facility of approximately 30 acres, consisting of emergent/scrub-shrub wetlands, ash forests, and infiltration ponds. The purpose of these wetland areas is to reduce the temperature of the wastewater as well as remove nutrients before the water is released back to the Willamette River. Interpretive elements and park features like pathways and plazas are also being proposed.

A Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) is a regulatory term in the U.S. Clean Water Act (CWA), describing a value of the maximum amount of a pollutant that a body of water can receive while still meeting water quality standards.

Lacamas Creek Pump Station

GreenWorks and our team members developed a conceptual design to integrate a park, trailhead, and parking area at Lacamas Creek Trailhead to a pump station.  We also designed landscape improvements to the pump station itself, as well as one at nearby Baz Park, in Camas, Washington.

The Lacamas Creek Trailhead is the beginning of a regional trail connecting several parks including Lacamas Lake and Round Lake. The team’s design includes a picnic area, flush restrooms, trailhead signage, and paved parking; as well as recommendations for invasive plant removal and native plant restoration as mitigation for impacts to the land while constructing the pump station and trailhead.

GreenWorks also provided arborist services, including inventory, evaluation, and recommendations for existing trees on park sites and along pipe routes from the new pump stations.

Willamette Water Supply Program Raw Water Facility

GreenWorks is working with Black & Veatch team to provide landscape architecture services for Willamette Water Supply Program’s Raw Water Facility. The existing park at the treatment plant will be restored after construction, including a replacement overlook at the top of the riverbank, plus trails along the riverbank leading to two smaller overlooks. A new electrical building in the upper site will be screened with a combination of tall berms and vegetation, in consideration of neighbors and users of two adjacent multi-use paths. GreenWorks is also designing large mitigation planting areas, to compensate for natural areas disturbed by construction. GreenWorks developed graphics to illustrate the park improvements on the riverbank, for use in permitting and public meetings.

Willamette Water Supply Program Water Treatment Plant

GreenWorks is providing landscape design services for the WWSP WTP in Sherwood for Willamette Water Supply. Greenworks is working closely with team to ensure site security by laying out and detailing walls fencing and plantings around the plant. The plant will have an administrative building with a courtyard for employees and the public. GreenWorks is designing the courtyard as well as incorporating interactive education component that leads to a boardwalk where there is a preserved kolk pond created over 15,000 years ago by glacial floods. Other tasks GreenWorks is providing includes landscape design for plant entries stormwater facilities and interior landscape.

Ridgewood View Park Reservoir

GreenWorks aided Tualatin Valley Water District (TVWD) in replacing an outdated reservoir with a new one adjacent to Ridgewood View Park in Beaverton. The new water project required extensive piping and construction staging on the Tualatin Hills Parks and Recreation District (THPRD) park site. In turn, TVWD needed to upgrade the amenities in Ridgewood View. GreenWork’s proposed new park elements including open lawn, paths, parking, picnic shelters, access to natural areas, playgrounds, and a bocce ball and tennis court on top of the reservoir. Innovative elements for the project included terraced rain gardens that treat and convey stormwater from the roof of the reservoir. The park’s new rain gardens help screen the 15’ wall of the reservoir in the park and provide an educational resource for TVWD, THPRD, and the residents of the neighborhood.
 

Oak Harbor Clean Water Facility

Photo by Thomas Harris

Photo by Thomas Harris

GreenWorks is part of a multi-disciplinary team that renovated this regional wastewater treatment facility in historic downtown Oak Harbor, Washington. Situated in Windjammer Park, on the shores of Oak Harbor, the facility takes advantage of technological updates to modernize the facility, integrate it with the surrounding environment, and reduce its visual and olfactory impacts.  

“… the facility takes advantage of technological updates to modernize the facility, integrate it with the surrounding environment, and reduce its visual and olfactory impacts.”

Routes for cars and people on either side of the facility provide easy access from downtown Oak Harbor to Windjammer Park and the waterfront. The site plan requires the creation of strong physical and visual links along these axes. The planting and hardscape reflect the coastal setting, with the inclusion of rolling dunes planted with coastal grasses and perimeter sidewalks, emulating local wooden docks. Parts of the facility are exposed to the public, offering opportunities for interpretation along the two main thoroughfares.

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Photo by Thomas Harris

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Fernhill Wetland Master Planning and Design

Fernhill Wetlands is part of a 748 acre parcel near Forest Grove, OR, owned by Clean Water Services and managed in partnership with Forest Grove.  The site, located within the Tualatin River Watershed, consists of agricultural fields, wastewater treatment and other public utility facilities, and several pristine wetlands which are open to the public and draw birders from far and wide who come to observe the many rare migratory bird species that stop at the wetlands during their journey.
With future plans to integrate the wetlands into the wastewater treatment process as part of a natural and sustainable cleansing and cooling approach that preserves the site’s ecological and recreational significance, Clean Water Services commissioned GreenWorks as consultants who bring extensive experience in constructed wetland and green infrastructure design.  In collaboration with CWS, GreenWorks developed a master plan vision for the site which included an overall site layout consisting of treatment wetlands, roads, trails, overlooks and other public spaces; a graphic representation of the water circulation path from wastewater treatment facility all the way to the Tualatin River; accompanied by a collection of artistic photorealistic renderings from various vantage points, which will collectively be used to clearly convey design intent throughout future project phases.

The Unified Sewerage Agency contracted with GreenWorks as part of a team of engineers, biologists, and hydrologists, to develop wetland development concepts for a large-scale wetland mitigation bank, along Gales Creek in Forest Grove. The concept plan recommendations included the establishment of ash forest wetland, emergent marsh and scrub-shrub wetland, wet meadows, and oak woodland upland buffers.

Zidell Green Infrastructure

The 33-acre Zidell Yards site offers the first holistic, comprehensive opportunity in Portland, Oregon to identify solutions for applying green infrastructure to manage stormwater on one of the largest brownfield remediation and redevelopment sites in Portland.  The goal of this effort was to develop a range of comprehensive green infrastructure scenarios consistent with the constraints of a recently remediated brownfield that can be implemented within the framework of a 15- to 20-year development master plan.

Chambers Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility

As part of ongoing development at the 930-acre Chambers Creek Properties, GreenWorks developed schematic design and construction documents for long-term sustainable stormwater strategies integrated with perimeter landscape buffers for the existing Chambers Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant (CCWTP) wastewater treatment plant and planned expansions. Working closely with Pierce County staff, Brown & Caldwell engineers, and Michael Willis Architects, GreenWorks developed the landscape buffer concept to visually and physically screen the treatment plant.

The buffer serves to blend the treatment plant area harmoniously with the dramatic landscape of south Puget Sound, surrounding land uses and future development on and off the plant site. The design incorporates stormwater management facilities that treat plant runoff, provide new recreation trails that connect with existing trail networks, and improve wildlife habitat. The buffer must also accommodate support facilities for bus traffic and large crowds attending the 2010 PGA US Amateur’s Open and the 2015 US Open to be held on the adjacent Chambers Creek Golf Course. In addition to the perimeter buffer, GreenWorks is working on the redevelopment of the plant entrance to improve visibility and enhance circulation.

Lake Oswego and Tigard Water Treatment Plant

The Lake Oswego – Tigard Water Treatment Plant is being expanded  to serve future demands forecasted for the Lake Oswego and Tigard service areas. GreenWorks provided landscape design for stormwater management and to address visual impacts for components of the plant that could be seen in residential areas as well as providing amenities for neighborhood use. Amenities included a neighborhood trail, public open space for neighborhood use,  and native woodland enhancement. GreenWorks  actively met with the adjacent neighbors to hear their concerns about the project and with the broader community at workshops to describe landscape / site design elements for public comment.

Oregon Zoo Stormwater Retrofit

GreenWorks developed a Stormwater Retrofit Master Plan for the Oregon Zoo at the request of the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services in partnership with the Oregon Zoo. The Oregon Zoo is one of Oregon’s top tourist attractions and is ideally suited for public education related to environmentally-responsible and sustainable site design. Subsequently, GreenWorks was contracted by METRO to implement parking lot and Greenstreet improvements, at this major tourist attraction, to treat and detain surface runoff, provides public education and creates aesthetic improvements. GreenWorks was part of a design / build team to implement strategies that included stormwater filtration for street runoff and flow-through stormwater planters for parking lot runoff treatment. The project was funded by an EPA grant.

Gabriel Park Water Quality Project

The Fanno Creek watershed is heavily impacted by urbanization. Urban streams are suffering from increasing impervious surfacing that results in increased runoff and higher stream velocities. Gabriel Park is symptomatic of these factors: swales have become unsafe gullies; forest groundcover vegetation is absent; park lawns have become severely compacted through overuse and provide little infiltration. The Vermont Tributary of Fanno Creek, which runs through the park has been severely impacted by those factors. GreenWorks developed several concepts to improve water quality for surface runoff in the park and presented these to three neighborhood groups. We provided schematic designs for various stormwater mitigation options, including: a wet pond/marsh treatment system; forest ground-floor revegetation; biofiltration swales; and creation of a wet meadow. GreenWorks provided final design and bidding documents.

Willamette Stormwater Control Pilot Program

GreenWorks was contracted by the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services to develop hand –illustrations of various stormwater facilities for a variety of Bureau uses. The illustrations included parking lot swales/infiltration facilities, courtyard infiltration facilities, rooftop disconnect infiltration facilities, and stormwater planters.

Mt. Scott Creek Restoration

GreenWorks and Inter-Fluve recently helped Clackamas County Water Environment Services prepare an application for METRO’s Nature in Neighborhoods Capital Grants Program. This lower section of Mt. Scott Creek has been characterized as a high-priority for instream restoration of rearing habitat for Coho and Steelhead Trout. The requested funds would finance enhancement the installation of large woody debris within the creek channel to increase ecological functions and diversity in the creek for fish habitat. The project also included enhancement of the confluence of Mt. Scott Creek and Camas Creek and installation of two public education overlooks to increase watershed health awareness and provide community stewardship.

Gresham Fairview Creek Regional Stormwater Facility

As a subconsultant for this regional water quantity and quality control project, we were responsible for design development of the four acre water quality facility, which includes a sedimentation pond with a wetland treatment facility. The wetland treatment facilities incorporates an emergent marsh, scrub-shrub community, and a riparian forest. Our tasks included preparation of graphic illustrations for a public meeting, at which we were present to answer questions.