Blocked Culverts Continue to Plague Washington Salmon Habitat

An article by KUOW takes a closer look at the engineering of culverts (i.e., the "metal pipes or concrete boxes that carry streams beneath the roadbed") in the Pacific Northwest—the source of perhaps a surprising amount of controversy after lawsuits and a historic court decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The article takes a tour of the Skagit River Valley in Washington with Steve Hinton, director of habitat restoration for the Swinomish Tribal Community and the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe. Examples of problematic culverts include those that are too small, "constricting the creek and making the current too fast for a fish to swim against," others that are "filled with sediment, leaving no room for fish," and some that have eroded, leaving "a lip of concrete that looks like a knife’s edge almost — a broken knife’s edge."

In total, according to the article, there are "between 30,000 and 40,000 culverts in the state of Washington that block fish as they try to get upstream." The state is responsible for 2,000 of that total.

"In his proposed budget, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee included about $700 million for culvert repair over the next 16 years," according to the article, but tribal and wildlife advocates say that's far from enough. Dean Moon, the fish passage manager for the Washington Department of Transportation, is quoted in the article saying that will correct about 170 culverts. "The state would need to repair three times that many culverts in order to give salmon access to 90 percent of the upstream habitat that’s currently blocked," adds the article.