The Seattle Times today has a good article on the ongoing work of culvert replacement. Titled “Removing WA salmon barriers surges to $1M a day, but results are murky” it investigates the results of the hundreds of millions being spent. (Be aware it’s behind a paywall). You likely have been impacted by the work to replace these culverts to save the remaining salmon stocks as you drive 101 from here to Port Angeles.
The Times article focuses on whether the enormous expenditure of almost $7.8 billion over a decade is going to actually help the salmon returning to spawn and save our greatest natural resource. As someone who has watched and studied this project since before the Tribes were successful in federal court, getting the mandate to force the state to spend the money, I have to say that I too, find myself concerned about the efficacy of this project overall.
As the Times points out, many streams are only going to recovered at the point where the streams cross state and federal highways. The projects often don’t seem to make sense, recovering a stream at one point but not upstream of the blockage, essentially simply moving the point that the salmon are blocked.
We have seen successful recovery efforts over streams such as Jimmy Come Lately creek on the land owned by the Jamestown S’Kallam. I have seen many fish there, as a fish ladder is used by the Tribe to count the fish going upstream. It appears to be a very successful recovery effort and the bridge over the creek is a small thing but wide enough to provide the necessary water and slope to help the fish on the journey.
The Times reports “A Seattle Times analysis of available project design reports found that for every barrier WSDOT fixes, nine others upstream and two downstream partially or fully block fish migration. The state or other owners may fix some of them, but most are not scheduled for removal.” This is not a recipe for success.
It’s clear that to the Tribes, this is all part of the “seven generations” approach that has been so successful in reversing many environmental issues on the Peninsula, including recovery of the Dungeness River flood plain, Jimmy Come Lately Creek, Sequim Bay shellfish, and many other projects that the Tribe has provided grant management, project management and leadership to complete. Unfortunately, Washington tax payers do not think in terms of seven generations. They often think about today’s paycheck. It is clear that with our underfunding of schools, hospitals, mental health, child care, foster care and other critical services, there are many who would just rather fund those immediate needs and let the chips fall where they may for salmon. The unfortunate situation we find ourselves in is that for the majority of Washington residents, they no longer have a memory of the enormous salmon runs that our predecessors took for granted. We once had an almost unimaginable source of high quality free food in the salmon runs, all for the cost of a fishing rod, a fishing license and maybe a small boat. It sustained many people on the verge of starvation as late as the 1950s in this state. I’ve interviewed them in my video, “Voices of the Strait” in 2010. Now, almost everyone who eats salmon pays a high price and it comes primarily from Alaska, where they have done a better job of managing the stocks, and their rivers and habitats have been less destroyed. As the article states, the WSDOT knew as early as 1949 that the culverts were a problem, and yet did nothing to change the practices.
Another frustrating truth that the article points out is “The state doesn’t really know if fish are even getting through its new stream crossings, nor is it required to by the court order. It could try, by studying salmon returning to those streams, but it rarely even counts them.”
Governor Inslee recognizes the problem of the federal government forcing this on the State: “There is a federal judicial decision … which has ordered the state ..to do this work on a designated number of culverts,” Inslee said in an interview. “If you want to criticize the prioritization of these investments, you need to focus your criticism on the federal judicial system — not the state.”
The article also points out that the remaining need for $4 Billion dollars would be the equivalent of buying an entirely new electric ferry fleet. As a citizen of a peninsula needing ferries for our basic commerce, and having seen the cancelations that impact that commerce, this seems like an incredibly problematic decision and one that would likely not be approved if put to a vote of the people.
Reading this incredibly detailed article by the Times investigative team, it is clear that huge errors in judgement and project choice have been made with virtually no payback in terms of salmon recovery in any rational timeframe. It seems that seeking a lawsuit to force the judge and Tribes to extend the period of culvert replacement and focus on projects that have the highest possibility of successful salmon recovery and creating a lower priority for those that won’t, would help actually recover salmon, and show some solid results to the taxpayers funding this.
We all want to see salmon recovery, but we want it done in a way that does not waste it on low chances of success.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Filed under: Around the Salish Sea, Around the Sound, Environmental Law, Environmental Protection, Environmental Science, Olympic Peninsula | Tagged: fish culvert, Salmon | 8 Comments »
