Yet even after all this work, salmon wouldn’t be able to swim up most of the stream.
As WSDOT races to replace hundreds of culverts by 2030 to meet a court deadline, lawmakers and at least one tribal leader are asking whether projects like this make sense.
That’s how this project on White Creek landed on the state’s list. By the state’s math, the culvert replacement would open nearly 4 miles of “potential” habitat. But the court-ordered calculation doesn’t account for other problems that affect salmon, including a polluted old mill site, a partial blockage downstream on Ennis Creek and 10 more blockages upstream of the motel.
In reality, many salmon wouldn’t even be able to access White Creek, the state’s own survey shows. Near the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a city-owned concrete slab blocks fish passage under most conditions, according to the survey.
Now lawmakers and tribes are reexamining the court order, proposing new ways to target salmon restoration funds — a delicate “balancing act,” as one tribal leader put it.
The state’s culvert repair program is its largest salmon recovery effort ever, with $3.95 billion already allocated to replace salmon barriers with natural streambeds. To meet the looming deadline, WSDOT last fall asked for up to $4 billion more, prompting fresh skepticism from legislators, who’ve grown increasingly concerned that the state plans aren’t always the best way to help salmon. And just last month, the department revised the request to $5 billion to account for culverts that have structurally failed over the past year.
A Seattle Times investigation this spring highlighted how WSDOT spending is creating stranded restoration projects with limited value today because the state program doesn’t fix other problems in the same watersheds, like barriers owned by other parties. White Creek is a classic case, with its other salmon-blocking barriers upstream and downstream of the state’s culvert. And the potential spectacle of demolishing the motel has raised the question of whether other restoration projects would be more effective and a better use of taxpayer money.
“While we are fixing mistakes of the past, you do it in a more surgical way. You don’t do it with a bulldozer approach, you don’t do it with a meat cleaver,” said W. Ron Allen, chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, whose traditional territory includes White Creek. The tribe was among those who sued the state and won the federal court order. Allen holds firmly to that victory but also sees the need for a flexible and creative approach to realize its benefits for fish.
“My view is, work out an agreement with the state and the court … let’s step back and reprioritize, figure out which ones are the ones that are the most important right now and zero in on that,” Allen said.
He said he also understands there is only so much money and that the public has many needs, as do the tribal nations. “There is that balancing act … and we don’t want to turn the public against salmon.”
Lawmakers are also saying they don’t have $5 billion more to spend now. But even if they found the money, it would be logistically impossible to finish the list by 2030, as required in the court injunction, state leaders have told the tribes.
Rep. Steve Tharinger, D-Port Townsend, said he is using the motel project, which is in his district, to call for change because “it’s a high cost with little fish return.”
“It’s the classic poster child of what we shouldn’t do,” he said. (...)
The motel
Chintu Patel, co-owner of the Olympic Inn & Suites, didn’t even know there was a stream or a culvert under his motel until WSDOT told him about it. Maple trees block the view to the south, where the creek flows through a ravine 30 feet below and into the concrete tunnel in question. To the north, an RV dealership and trees obscure any hint of water, as the stream transitions into lowland vegetation.
Patel and his business partner bought the rundown property in 2020 for $6.25 million and soon started fixing it up. They ripped out carpet, remodeled bathrooms and repainted the 115-room motel tan with burgundy accents. “We’ve completely renovated the property,” said Patel, who employs roughly 20 full- and part-time employees at this motel and has ownership interest in 15 other hotels or motels in the state.
After he received a letter from WSDOT two years ago, he was surprised to learn about the plans to replace the culvert. If he had known, “We wouldn’t have put in all the renovations,” he said.
Patel said WSDOT hasn’t yet broached the subject of eminent domain, the state’s legal power to seize property. But the agency has taken private property to replace culverts and compensated the landowners. He’s concerned an appraisal wouldn’t capture the property’s potential value. (...)
WSDOT may pursue the project anyway, despite the high cost and the stream’s other habitat problems. Otherwise, it would have to replace multiple culverts elsewhere to hit its 2030 target, at potentially even greater cost, WSDOT fish passage manager Kim Rydholm said.
White Creek has “little production potential” for salmon because of its many culverts, according to the management plan by the area’s official watershed planning group. The 10 upstream obstructions are owned by private parties or local governments. Technically, any barrier to potential salmon migration violates state law, but the Department of Fish and Wildlife generally doesn’t require owners to remove them. The department is working on new enforcement rules.
WSDOT asks for $5 billion more
Like stormwater rushing into a swollen creek, revelations about problems in WSDOT’s fish passage program kept pouring in over the past year.
In November, WSDOT unveiled its massive budget request to lawmakers. Then The Times investigation spotlighted some culvert projects, costing tens of millions apiece, that are essentially useless without further, big investments. This summer, Inslee and WSDOT leaders told tribes they were probably not going to hit the 2030 deadline. And now the cost estimates are even higher. (...)
They are rethinking how the state fulfills the court order while still honoring tribal treaty rights and the intent of the federal judge’s ruling. All that while navigating intratribal politics, in which each of the 21 sovereign tribal nations that are a party to the federal case can stake their own position.
U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez in 2013 ordered WSDOT to identify its Western Washington culverts blocking 200 meters or more of potential upstream habitat. Then, by 2030, WSDOT is required to open up 90% of the habitat above those culverts.
But the calculation ignored other culverts and similar barriers on those same streams, including blockages owned by cities, counties and private parties.
Tharinger, the Port Angeles-area state representative, said he recently realized that WSDOT’s list of culverts wasn’t well-vetted, causing him to reconsider the funding and strategy. (...)
“We don’t have the money,” said Tharinger, chair of the House Capital Budget Committee. For what the state does allocate, he sees it in simple terms: “How do we spend the money to recover the most fish, to create the most habitat for fish? That’s really the question — not what the court tells us.”
Instead of plowing ahead according to the court order, Tharinger hopes the tribes and state can agree on a strategy to open up the most actual habitat, taking into account the other barriers on the streams. And he wouldn’t limit it to just culvert replacements. Larger projects, such as entire flood plain restorations, should be on the table, he said.
by Mike Reicher and Lynda V. Mapes, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: Fiona Martin, Mark Nowlin; uncredited
[ed. Gotta love it. How could a massive program like this ever get started without these types of issues being anticipated and resolved from the very beginning? It's beyond belief. Any halfway competent fish biologist would tell you: there's no one-size fits all solution for culverts that are everywhere, beneath buildings and roads, in various stages of disrepair, and blocked in countless ways . Which brings up the US Supreme Court's recent decision re: the so-called Chevron Deference (NRDC):
"The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling today in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo dealt a severe blow to the ability of federal agencies to do their jobs by ending the 40-year-old precedent of “Chevron deference.” Instead of deferring to the expertise of agencies on how to interpret ambiguous language in laws pertaining to their work, federal judges now have the power to decide what a law means for themselves. As a result, despite not being accountable to the people, judges will now be able to expand their role into the realm of policymaking."See also: Removing WA salmon barriers surges to $1M a day, but results are murky (Seattle Times).]
