State, counties and cities outline plan to remove fish‑passage barriers and prioritize culverts

Washington state and local officials told the Senate Local Government Committee that tens of thousands of stream crossings are limiting salmon and steelhead access to spawning habitat and outlined a multi‑agency, multi‑program approach to prioritize and fix them.

Tom Jamieson, Fish Passage and Screen Division Manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the committee that “the predominant barrier that is an obstacle to returning fish is road culverts,” and that the department’s inventory already contains roughly 18,000–20,000 known barriers, the majority of which are culverts. Jamieson said culverts account for about 84% of the barriers in the state's inventory and explained how undersized pipes can create excessive velocity, perched outlets and shallow flows that block migrating fish.

The issue has a legal dimension: Jamieson described a federal court injunction that requires the state to correct state‑owned culverts in a defined “case area.” “We have an injunction from the federal court that the state must create fish passable culverts or or remove the blockages,” Jamieson said, and later added that “the injunction requires the state to monitor and then, make passable all of our crossings within the case area forever.” The injunction, he emphasized, applies only to state‑owned culverts in the case area and does not extend to county, city or private crossings.

Why it matters: committee members and presenters said state corrections alone will not restore…