The city may undertake several restoration plans on Eagle Harbor.Through all the runoff, the oil slicks, the septic leaks, the industrial pollutants, Peter Namtvedt Best’s vision is clear.

“Eagle Harbor holds the greatest restorative potential of any place on Bainbridge,” said Best, a city planner who has led numerous efforts for healthier island shores. “It’s the most impacted by development but had a great amount of diversity – kelp beds, coastal wetlands, eel grass meadows, mud flats, high bluffs and various estuaries and lagoons.”

Best plans to restore some of Eagle Harbor’s natural vitality with three projects aimed at replacing bulkheads and old pilings with more than 1,400 feet of natural shoreline.

The proposals, which have already received some state funding, would reshape Waterfront Park’s beach, fix a Bill Point road in danger of tipping into the sound, and turn walled-off tidelands into welcome mats for young salmon.

“I think it’s fantastic,” said island fisheries biologist Wayne Daley. “It’s really a neat switch, what he is doing, turning these properties into something that will make the harbor significantly better.”

The city-owned “Strawberry Plant” property is slated for one of the harbor’s most transformative processes.

Over the next year, Best hopes to see the city to tear out 250-feet of concrete bulkhead and dozens of creosote-coated pilings to create the type of a naturally sloping beach favored by young salmon and other marine wildlife.

The site, which was purchased with open space bond levy money two years ago, borders a small stream and estuary to the east and undeveloped shoreline to the west.

The property is slated to open to the public as a park within a year, while full habitat restoration may be achieved by 2012, Best said.

“The Strawberry Plant property is already beginning to recover and this will really help,” said Daley, who has recently observed salmon at the site’s estuary.

Best hopes his plan to replace much of a 23,500 square foot concrete slab with native plants will decrease runoff into the harbor and improve water quality.

“This site has marshlands, a sandy beach and a lot of diversity,” Best said. “It’s one of the biggest restoration projects we can do on Eagle Harbor, so I’m really excited.”

The estimated $800,000 project received a jump-start recently in the form of a state grant. At just over $77,000, the Salmon Recovery Fund grant won’t cover much. But Best foresees more support for this and other projects.

“We’re seeing $45 million coming in for projects like this from the governor,” Best said. “It looks like more funding is on its way – absolutely.”

The added state support is part of Gov. Chris Gregoire’s overall $220 million spending proposal to clean-up and protect Puget Sound’s waters and shores.

Best obtained an even larger chunk of the Salmon Recovery Fund for a similar project along the east side of Bill Point.

With $235,000 of state money in hand, Best is planning to tear out 500 feet of wooden bulkhead along a tall bluff.

Put in place by the Wyckoff company many years ago, large sections of the bulkhead are tipping over tidelands or have washed away. Recent storms have put Creosote Place, which rests above the bluff, in danger.

“We had a big slide on the south end of the road and still have orange fencing up there,” Best said. “That’s what triggered us to do something.”

The Environmental Protection Agency, which uses the road to haul contaminants out of the Wyckoff Property, also expressed concerns about the road.”

Best’s solution: move the road 500 feet west, tear out the bulkhead and allow the bluff to naturally erode and feed the shore with sediments favored by salmon and herring.

“With this project, we decided to work with nature rather than against it,” he said.

The $335,000 project is slated for completion in 2008.

The most visible project on Best’s list is the restoration of Waterfront Park’s 300-foot-long beach.

“That’s a really cool project because it will provide great habitat and be a beach with sand that people can lay on or walk on,” Best said.

A north shore lagoon and sand spit under what is now occupied by the ferry yard and a condominium formerly fed the park area with sand and fine gravel.

Starved of sediments, the park’s shore has turned to a “mucky mud beach,” according to Best.

Removal of the park’s bulkhead and an infusion of sand will give the area the nudge it needs. One casualty may be a waterfront portion of the park trail, as the shore takes on a more gradual slope, Best admits.

“I know some people may be upset about that, but I hope they’ll see that this is going to be a really nice place for people and a good beach for spawning habitat and forage fish.”

The City Council has adopted the concept of the Waterfront Park beach restoration proposal as part of a larger six-year workplan. While cost estimates are unclear, Best hopes to have the project finished by 2009.

In addition, Best is working on obtaining a $2.5 million boost for restoration efforts drawn from the trustees responsible for the former Wyckoff creosote treatment site. The money has long been earmarked for efforts that offset harbor contamination over the last century.

“We didn’t know the money was there until last year,” said Best. “The trustees were busy with other facets of the treatment site and didn’t really have an implementing arm in the local community.”

Best intends to be that arm.

“The priority for that money is Eagle Harbor, but it’s likely enough to fulfill our goals on other projects, such as removing some of the pilings and bricks at Blakeley Harbor Park,” he said.

Timing is key with the trustee money.

“The money is collecting interest at a lower rate than the rate at which construction costs are rising, so there’s advantages to spending this money as soon as possible,” Best said.

According to Daley, signs of the harbor’s ailing health are clear – disappearing eelgrass, closed shellfish beds, declining habitat and spiking human waste levels after heavy rains.

Still, Daley is hopeful that stepped-up restoration efforts can ease the long-suffered troubles of the island’s crowning waterway.

“We’ve got overflow putting chemicals straight into it, oil coming off the streets into it, pesticides from lawns, failing septics on the south side and we still haven’t resolved the problem of creosote at Wyckoff,” Daley said.

“Everything we do in Winslow and around the harbor is going in there. We’re seeing signs that it’s getting better, but we know it’s still at risk.”