OLYMPIA, Wash. — Tribes across Washington state are getting millions of dollars to clear blocked salmon culverts and passageways.
Grants totaling $39.4 million from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will go towards nine different projects, from Olympia to Yakima, Port Angeles to Yelm. For a complete list of projects, click here.
In the south Sound, the Nisqually Tribe is getting $5.8 million to remove and replace a culvert that’s blocking salmon from reaching six miles of Brighton Creek, a tributary of the Nisqually River in Pierce County.
The culvert was part of a road construction project completed in the 1950s.
“There wasn’t much thought put into that culvert,” Nisqually Natural Resources Manager James Slape said. “We have a lot of super fish, not that super.”
Slape said replacing the culvert with a 42-foot-long passageway will boost the number of winter chum salmon found in the Nisqually River.
He said that could take 30 years.
“Hopefully, my children will see the chum recovery,” said Slape.
The Squaxin Island Tribe is getting $6.4 million to go towards the removal of Olympia's 5th Avenue Dam, part of a project to restore the manmade Capitol Lake to its original state, an estuary.
The lake is home to invasive species and is off-limits to human contact.
”We’ve lived among these waterways for thousands of years,” said Squaxin Island Chair Kris Peters. “We had to sit back and watch it be destroyed, even though we knew it was the wrong thing to do."
Peters said the federal funding will restore and improve natural habitat across the state.
”It’s not just for Indigenous people, it’s for everybody. This is going to benefit everyone, including all the community and your grandchildren and their grandchildren,” said Peters.
Since 1991, the state of Washington has repaired or replaced nearly 400 fish barriers.
The state is required, by federal court order, to improve another 350 culverts by 2030.
According to the state’s Department of Transportation, the work is expected to cost close to $8 billion.