People, salmon and even the ESA can coexist

By RAMON VANDEN BRULLE
Washington Trout

In fights over salmon preservation, one story you'll hear often, at community meetings, public hearings or in letters to editors, comes from long time Seattle area residents recounting how the little creek out back or up the street would fill with salmon every year. It was part of their lives, and now it's nearly gone. They speak with a mixture of sadness and confusion. They're bewildered at what's happened, and they wonder if there isn't a way for people to live in this place without losing a part of it.

It isn't just nostalgia. Salmon are part of the equation that makes up the thing we call The Northwest. As we subtract out parts of the equation, the "Northwest" loses value, not just aesthetically and culturally, but economically. People come here in part to live the Northwest lifestyle; if "Northwest" means less, fewer people will come, and economic growth will slow.

The fact is, people and salmon can coexist. At any rate, we will have to learn to try, now that we have the Endangered Species Act to live with as well.

Washington Trout is a statewide, wild fish conservation organization based in Duvall. We work with landowners, government, tribal agencies and businesses to identify and repair salmon habitat problems. More importantly, we identify productive fish habitats before they are damaged, and help to guide land use practices in salmon-friendly directions. One rule we all need to keep in mind, as we struggle with ways to meet the needs of salmon and the needs of a growing regional economy, is that preservation is less expensive than restoration. As any manufacturer knows, doing something right is always cheaper than doing it twice.

For developers and builders, this means understanding the needs of salmon and their habitats, and getting in front of the curve on new regulations and requirements triggered by ESA listings.

Know where you're working

First and most importantly, know where you are. If work is being done on or near a watershed, find out as early as possible what kind of watershed you're dealing with. Do fish live there? What kind? Don't take anything for granted. You can't always rely on existing information from state agencies. For example, the Department of Natural Resources classifies Washington streams into five types. Types one through three are classified as fish-bearing; types four and five are non-fish-bearing. Each of the five types qualifies for different levels of protection and carries different regulations. The problem is that DNR's typing maps are notoriously inaccurate. Washington Trout has demonstrated that DNR's water typing data underestimates the actual miles of fish-bearing streams in Washington by almost half.

Any citizen or group in Washington can survey a stream, and if it is shown to be fish bearing, petition DNR to have that stream's classification upgraded, perhaps qualifying it for greater protections and a different set of regulations. If a project starts under one set of regulations, and then an affected stream's classification changes, a builder could be held to new restrictions, particularly if the stream is shown to hold an ESA-listed species. The costs of having to go back and re-plan a project, or even stop construction and re-do work, or repair damage, could easily exceed the cost of meeting appropriate regulations.

If a project is set in an already developed area, don't take for granted that affected streams won't hold salmon. On contract to Seattle Public Utilities, our organization recently completed a survey of five urban creeks, all within Seattle city limits. We found salmon in all the creeks, including small tributaries where they had been previously unrecorded, and we found previously undocumented chinook salmon, currently listed under ESA, in Pipers Creek, at the north end of the city.

If you can't trust existing data, where do you go? It could easily save time and money in the long run to contract out a stream typing survey before beginning a project. Or contact an organization such as ours to use work we may have already completed. We're not always the enemy.

Little things make a difference

Large scale and costly salmon recovery proposals like dam removal get a lot of press, but it's often the little things that can make a big difference. Some of the biggest limiting factors to salmon in King County are simple road culverts. Too many are not designed with fish passage in mind. The good news is that repairing culverts can be reasonably inexpensive and cost effective. Redesigning and replacing a single culvert can often re-open an entire sub-basin of habitat, dramatically increasing a watershed's salmon productivity. The better news is that culverts are rarely more expensive to build correctly in the first place. In fact, it is often less expensive, in a number of ways.

Culverts that are poorly designed for fish passage are often poorly designed, period. Bad culverts can result in future costs and liabilities well beyond salmon recovery or ESA issues. A culvert that blocks fish passage often will not stand up well to a flood, sometimes resulting in road failure. Communities and services can be disrupted for days or even weeks, bringing costs beyond just the road repairs.

Washington Trout has worked with businesses and landowners to analyze and replace culverts in several western Washington drainages, reopening miles of salmon habitat, and providing better flood control. We offer a course called "Culvert College," a two-day workshop on culvert design for developers, planners, and water and land use agencies. We have helped many agencies, landowners and businesses design and build better culverts, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Weyerhaeuser, Seattle City Light and the Tulalip Tribes.

While no one can claim it will be simple or painless, saving salmon from extinction doesn't have to mean the extinction of profit. But if people are looking for this all to go away or for salmon recovery to come free, they may be disappointed.

We will need to rethink how we value, use and develop land and watersheds in western Washington, and consider issues like fish passage, water quality, stream volumes and the spread of impervious surfaces and non-point source pollution, as we make room for an expanding population and economy.

Salmon can coexist with a growing Seattle, but probably not with business as usual.

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