Regional Planning

2023 Mouth of the Columbia River Regional Sediment Management Plan

For the past decade, the 2011 Regional Sediment Management Plan (RSMP) detailed below and developed by the Lower Columbia Solutions Group (LCSG) has guided the beneficial use, monitoring and research of dredged material placement projects at the Mouth of the Columbia River (MCR). The 2011 RSMP was updated in 2023 by the LCSG to capture program accomplishments, scientific findings from research and monitoring, and the evolution of the program’s direction. The RSMPs can be found on the MCR Regional Sediment Management Plan page.

In 2008, the stakeholders of the Lower Columbia Solutions Group signed a Declaration of Cooperation to collaboratively develop a comprehensive Regional Sediment Management Plan for the long-term implementation of a beneficial use approach to dredging activities on the lower Columbia River. After four years of work dedicated to drafting this plan–and over ten years of collaborative deliberation on sediment management more generally–the Mouth of the Columbia River Regional Sediment Management Plan (MCRRSMP) was signed into support for implementation by the stakeholders in January 2012. These final documents (the plan and associated Declaration of Cooperation) can be found on the MCR Regional Sediment Management Plan page. Materials below include planning documents and progress reports developed in the process of creating the final MCRRSMP, as well as a few resulting from the early stages of implementing the plan.

The overarching goals of the ongoing regional sediment management planning are to: