It’s no secret to envi­ron­men­tal­ly aware Pacif­ic North­west­ern­ers that Cas­ca­di­a’s salmon are in grave dan­ger and need human­i­ty to act urgent­ly to ensure their sur­vival. Today, acknowl­edg­ing the threats salmon face, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee trav­eled to Skag­it Coun­ty and unveiled a new salmon recov­ery strat­e­gy at an event on the banks of the Swinomish Chan­nel with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of trib­al nations.

The mul­ti-pronged strat­e­gy con­sists of sev­er­al facets. Those are:

• Pro­tect and restore vital salmon habitat.
• Invest in clean water infra­struc­ture for salmon and people.
• Cor­rect fish pas­sage bar­ri­ers and restore salmon access to his­tor­i­cal habitat.
• Build cli­mate resiliency.
• Align har­vest, hatch­eries and hydropow­er with salmon recovery.
• Address pre­da­tion and food web issues for salmon.
• Enhance com­mit­ments and coor­di­na­tion across agen­cies and programs.
• Strength­en sci­ence, mon­i­tor­ing and accountability.

The gov­er­nor is propos­ing that the state com­mit $187 mil­lion in total to salmon recov­ery efforts. The Leg­is­la­ture should appro­pri­ate much more than that.

“We are on a mis­sion. Pro­tect­ing and restor­ing our salmon is per­son­al to me — it’s a lega­cy left to us by pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions and we should do the same for our grand­chil­dren,” Inslee said from under­neath a large Swinomish Cedar Hat.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee announces his 2022 pro­pos­als for salmon pro­tec­tion and recov­ery on the banks of the Swinomish Chan­nel, which the Swinomish peo­ple have called home since time immemo­r­i­al (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

“I’m com­mit­ted to tak­ing greater steps to ensure their sur­vival. I will work close­ly with trib­al part­ners and oth­er lead­ers through­out the state to get the job done. It’s a mis­sion that requires coor­di­na­tion across our gov­ern­ment and a com­pre­hen­sive approach — and my bud­get and pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties reflect that.”

The cen­ter­piece of the strat­e­gy is the Lor­raine Loomis Act, guber­na­to­r­i­al request leg­is­la­tion that seeks to cre­ate a new salmon habi­tat stan­dard “based on the height of trees that grow in that area to cre­ate the right size of ripar­i­an zone.”

In addi­tion to pro­tect­ing habi­tat, Inslee also wants to reduce pol­lu­tion from stormwa­ter and waste­water treat­ment plants, deal with tire chem­i­cals, and increase the use of reclaimed water, along with get­ting rid of more of the thou­sands of cul­verts and bar­ri­ers that block salmon passage.

The pro­pos­al includes just $654,000 for fish pas­sage pro­grams (about half of which would go to rule­mak­ing). That’s a fig­u­ra­tive drop in the buck­et, but the gov­er­nor and leg­isla­tive lead­ers are cur­rent­ly nego­ti­at­ing a trans­porta­tion pack­age that could appro­pri­ate a lot more mon­ey to fish pas­sage programs.

The state and its local gov­ern­ments spent decades erect­ing bar­ri­ers to fish pas­sage (includ­ing dams as well as cul­verts). Now, to save our salmon, the region will need to move quick­ly to build a lot of new fish-friend­ly infrastructure.

Many bar­ri­ers to fish pas­sage are under the juris­dic­tion of local gov­ern­ments that lack fund­ing to remove and replace them, as The News Tri­bune’s Alex­is Krell report­ed yes­ter­day in an arti­cle that focused on the sit­u­a­tion in Gig Har­bor.

The state Depart­ment of Fish and Wildlife’s fish pas­sage map iden­ti­fies city-owned cul­verts that need to be fixed.

There are fourteen.

Like sim­i­lar work hap­pen­ing across the state, that won’t be cheap.

Carl Schroed­er with the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Cities said there’s cur­rent­ly an esti­mat­ed 1,600 city-owned cul­verts in Wash­ing­ton that are bar­ri­ers to salmon recov­ery, and that it’ll cost rough­ly $2.9 bil­lion to fix them.

“Cost is very site spe­cif­ic, how much fill, or how deeply buried the cul­vert is, length of the cul­vert, what sort of cor­rec­tion is need­ed such as a large box cul­vert ver­sus a bridge, that sort of thing,” Schroed­er said via email. “We have cities who own cul­verts of salmon bear­ing streams that stretch for over a mile under devel­oped area of town, some­thing like that would be very expen­sive to fix.”

The arti­cle goes on to cite this fact sheet from the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Cities, which explains that the state’s efforts thus far to fix state-owned cul­verts won’t be enough. “Fix­ing only state-owned cul­verts will make the state’s invest­ment incom­plete at best and inef­fec­tive at worst,” the AWC argues.

“On aver­age, there are two down­stream and five upstream cul­verts asso­ci­at­ed with each state bar­ri­er. Invest­ing only in state-owned cul­verts with­out address­ing all bar­ri­ers will not achieve the goal of salmon recovery.”

The AWC is cor­rect. So are our trib­al nations, who have been sound­ing the alarm for many years now and try­ing to get the region’s attention.

The speak­ing pro­gram was pre­ced­ed by the offer­ing of a tra­di­tion­al wel­come by the Swinomish Canoe Fam­i­ly (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Wash­ing­ton needs an invest­ment in the bil­lions just to address the bar­ri­er prob­lem alone. The good news is that by mak­ing such an invest­ment, we can also solve a lot of oth­er prob­lems at the same time. We can make our infra­struc­ture more flood-resilient and seis­mi­cal­ly safe. Such an invest­ment needs to be pro­posed and includ­ed as part of the Leg­is­la­ture’s next trans­porta­tion package.

Gov­er­nor Inslee is also propos­ing that the state strength­en its mon­i­tor­ing of recre­ation­al and com­mer­cial salmon har­vests, with tougher enforce­ment for fish­eries crimes. $6.9 mil­lion is pro­posed for salmon har­vest mon­i­tor­ing, $1.2 mil­lion for fish­eries enforce­ment, and $852,000 for envi­ron­men­tal prosecution.

You can see all of the pro­posed invest­ments list­ed at the end of this pol­i­cy brief:

Wash­ing­ton’s senior Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray hailed the pub­li­ca­tion of the pol­i­cy brief and praised the new plan unveiled by Inslee’s office.

“Sav­ing our salmon is absolute­ly essen­tial to Wash­ing­ton state’s econ­o­my and cul­tur­al her­itage — it is an urgent under­tak­ing that will require fed­er­al, state, local, and Trib­al part­ner­ship. I com­mend Gov­er­nor Inslee for his lead­er­ship in sup­port­ing the Pacif­ic Northwest’s vital salmon pop­u­la­tions, and I am going to make sure the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is doing its part to recov­er our icon­ic salmon runs,” said Mur­ray, who will face Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers in 2022.

“I’m glad we were able to secure impor­tant fed­er­al invest­ments in the [Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act] to help bol­ster salmon pop­u­la­tions, such as mon­ey for cul­vert repair, the Pacif­ic Coastal Salmon Recov­ery Fund, and impor­tant habi­tat restora­tion efforts. And I’m push­ing for fur­ther invest­ment in Build Back Bet­ter because we have got to do every­thing we can to save our salmon.”

The invest­ments Mur­ray is hop­ing to secure in the Build Back Bet­ter Act include $1 bil­lion for Pacif­ic salmon restora­tion and con­ser­va­tion, $300 mil­lion for salmon hatch­ery infra­struc­ture, $500 mil­lion for salmon stock assess­ments, and $6 bil­lion for “projects that con­serve, restore, and pro­tect coastal and marine salmon habi­tats and increase cli­mate resilience of coastal communities.”

All of the afore­men­tioned fed­er­al invest­ments would be chan­neled through NOAA, the Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion. NOAA would, in turn, pro­vide grants and direct fund­ing to state, local, and trib­al governments.

Our team at NPI is pleased that the gov­er­nor made salmon pro­tec­tion and recov­ery a key theme of his 2022 bud­get roll­out. But the Leg­is­la­ture should go even fur­ther by increas­ing the size of these pro­posed invest­ments. We are run­ning out of time to save our salmon. We need bold action now. Law­mak­ers must rec­og­nize that we’re at a per­ilous moment and respond accordingly.