The beleaguered salmon will soon find it easier to maneuver several Kitsap streams, including Anderson Creek.
Fish-blocking culverts will be replaced by larger box culverts beginning this month on four state routes: 16 and 166, plus Anderson Hill Road, in the Gorst area; and 104 and 307 between Kingston and Poulsbo.
Your patience is respectfully requested. The project will require detours, road closures, and speed limit reductions. The projects are expected to be completed in November.
Why replace culverts? In 2013, a federal court injunction required the state to significantly increase its efforts in removing state-owned culverts that block salmon and steelhead access to spawning areas and other habitat. The state Department of Transportation’s Fish Passage Barrier Removal Program identifies fish-blocking culverts under state highways and provides for their replacement.
WSDOT will install three 18-foot-wide culverts under SR 16, 166 and Anderson Hill Road to improve fish passage in Anderson Creek to Sinclair Inlet. The box culverts are built wider than the existing stream channel, and are sloped at a similar grade as the natural stream. The box culverts will increase fish habitat by approximately one mile.
Culvert replacement in the Gorst area will cost $9.5 million; $793,000 in funding will be provided from gas taxes.
Lorraine Loomis, chairwoman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, writes in a column this week that salmon populations have been declining steadily for decades because habitat is disappearing faster than it can be restored.
“Some say ‘just stop fishing’ and that will fix the problem. It won’t. From birth to death, habitat is the single most important aspect of a salmon’s life. The non-stop loss of salmon habitat in western Washington must be halted so that our habitat restoration efforts can successfully increase natural salmon production.”
Replacing culverts is only one step in the effort to rebuild our wild, non-hatchery salmon populations (dam removal, shoreline protections, spill prevention, cleaning our stormwater, and changing how we build are a few others). But it’s a big step. The work will be over in a few months, but the environmental rewards will be forever.
