Butano Creek Backfield Floodplain Improvement Project

The Butano Creek Backfield Floodplain Improvement Project restored natural floodplain function along a highly altered reach of Butano Creek, using a process-based approach that integrated flood resilience, habitat restoration, and watershed recovery. RDG's designs reconnected the creek to its floodplain through strategic grading, channel reconfiguration, and removal of legacy constraints, allowing flows to spread, slow, and infiltrate across the landscape.

Restoration features included expansive floodplain benches, engineered overflow swales, seasonal backwater habitat areas, and low-flow channel enhancements that together re-established more dynamic hydrologic and sediment processes across the site for the benefit of of steelhead trout and coho salmon. Large wood habitat structures and roughened channel elements introduced geomorphic complexity.