A construction project expected to take two years will bring multiple kayak launches and open public access to the Eel River Estuary Preserve. ###Down a winding levee road, deep into the marshy flats near the mouth of the Eel River, the landscape suddenly turns to an expanse of brown sludge. It’s at the roughly 1,500-acre Eel River Estuary Preserve, a narrow stretch of beach and marshland between Centerville Beach County Park and the mouth of the Eel River. It’s shaped by the wily Eel River, tectonic activity, sea level rise and legacy dikes and levees put in by ranchers generations ago. “Once the pastures are flooded with salt water, it kills the fresh water grass species,” he said.