Restoration with a twist at Russian River resort

The days are good at Odd Fellows Park, a privately owned retreat where 214 cabins, restaurant-store, teen center, outdoor theater and 336 acres of woods embrace the southern bank of the Russian River between Forestville and Guerneville.

But one winter day in February 2008 was especially bad at the 81-year-old camp, when an employee discovered that a massive chunk of riverbank, about 60 feet long and 100 feet deep, had fallen away overnight.

The blowout came within feet of ripping away the buried 10,000-gallon septic tank that’s an essential element of the camp’s sewage treatment system. Were that sewage tank to be unearthed and to tumble down into the river, an all-out public health crisis would follow.

Stabilizing the riverbank near the tank became an urgent problem for members of the Odd Fellows Recreation Club, born in 1928 when a group of Odd Fellows Lodge members purchased the former sawmill property from the Fairfax Lumber Company.

But the blowout near the tank wasn’t the club members’ only problem. For several years, other sections of their one-mile stretch riverbank also had been sloughing off. Odd Fellows Park officials had been wrestling with how best to halt the bank failures that were eating away at the camp.

In the not so distant past, the preferred solution to disappearing riverbank was to fill the gaps and eroding areas with old cars, great boulders, chunks of concrete — anything that might protect the bank. Odd Fellows Park has taken a far more enlightened approach.

As the winter rain season nears, employees of a pioneer Mendocino County bioengineering firm are finishing a $2million restoration project at Odd Fellows.

It’s the most complex project of its type ever undertaken on the Russian River, said Evan Engber, co-founder of Bioengineering Associates, Inc. of Laytonville. The project involves reconstructing the failed sections of bank with secured layers of soil, gravel and rock — most of it planted with branches and trunks of living willow tree.

“Willow is really the magic plant of river restoration,” said Engber, who brought the ancient practice of live-plant riverbank restoration to the North Coast 28 years ago.

The willows embedded in the fill material — and the redwoods, bays and other native trees that will be planted on top — will take root and grow, and over time will strengthen the restored bank.

“In five years, this will all be a willow forest,” said Jack Davies, executive director of the Odd Fellows Recreation Club, as he gazed over one of the large sections of newly constructed bank.

Though rip-rap or rock used for bank protection can break down or shift over time, Davies said, “this is not only going to stabilize our bank, it will restore what we lost. And it gets stronger over time.”

Bioengineer Engber and his firm have completed many ecological bank restoration projects on the Russian and Napa rivers and their tributaries, most often for vineyard owners. The Odd Fellows project was the most complex to date because four adjacent areas of bank were involved. And in between the damaged areas were sections of what

Engber called “nice, old riparian growth that we didn’t want to disturb.

“We had to tiptoe in and out,” he said.

Davies, a retired dentist who directs the Odd Fellows Recreation Club, said that getting the restoration project permitted and under way in time to beat the current rainy season required the help and support of many people.

He singled out Dick Butler of the National Marine Fisheries Service and Pat Rutten of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He said the offices of Rep. Lynn Woolsey and state Sen. Pat Wiggins were of assistance, too.

Davies credits also the more than 500 members of the club who agreed to personally cover the $2 million cost of the bank restoration work. As required by club rules, those members and cabin owners belong also to Odd Fellows, Rebekah, Masonic or Eastern Star lodges. Only about 50 members live at the park year-round.

Live-bank builder Engber said that because the work his firm did at Odd Fellows Park included so much willow, he looks forward to coming back to see how it’s growing.

“I can hardly wait until next summer,” he said.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.