Picture This!
What's
new this week in transportation
'Fish window' opens for summer road and
bridge work
 Crews had just six weeks to replace the deteriorating Whitney Hill Bridge with a modern structure. They placed a trench shoring box (above) that
allowed them to remove and replace the bridge supports on both sides
without disturbing fragile salmon habitat in Newaukum Creek. Chinook, coho and chum salmon (right) successfully returned to spawn
upstream last winter.
A
window has just opened in King County--the short work window into which
King County Road Services crews must squeeze in all their work on roads and
bridges near salmon habitat.
The "fish window" is the short period between early summer when salmon migrate to the ocean and early fall when they swim
upstream to spawn. It can be as short as 45 days, depending on the
species of fish. On some King County projects, that clock is starting to
tick now.
During the past two years, the King County Road
Services Division completed
about 25 projects each year that directly benefited salmon and provided
roughly 25 miles of improved stream access. Last summer,
crews rebuilding the Whitney Hill Bridge between Auburn and Black Diamond successfully
preserved chinook, coho and chum salmon runs in Newaukum
Creek.
To take advantage of this summer's fish window, work
is planned on 13 construction projects including the Green River Gorge
Bridge east of Black Diamond. Road
maintenance crews will work on an additional 50 small culvert and drainage
projects on or near fish-bearing streams.
"Many of King County's bridges
date back to the days when the numbers of migrating salmon were so
plentiful in some waterways that old timers tell us you could cross the
river on the backs of the fish," said Linda Dougherty, acting manager
of the county's Road Services Division. "It was a time when people
viewed the region's natural resources as infinitely renewable, a commodity
to be used, an uncontrolled force to be tamed. But with our growth
in the past 50 years, that way of thinking has been detrimental to the
environment and the many native plants and animals with which we share the
Puget Sound region. Today, we're very committed to making our roadways
better neighbors to the fish and other wildlife in the streams and
rivers."
King County led development of the
Regional Road Maintenance ESA Program Guidelines. Those guidelines, responding to the U.S. Endangered Species Act, have become the model used by other counties and cities throughout Puget Sound. The goal is to minimize the impact to salmon habitat from road work, and
improving the habitat where possible.
The Best Management Practices
portion of the guidelines focuses on road maintenance techniques for
containing sediment and preventing erosion for stream and waterway
work. The guidelines represent a collaboration of federal and local
governments, Puget Sound area tribes, environmental
interest groups and business groups.
The Whitney Hill Bridge was the first road project to
receive approval from the National Marine Fisheries Service
under the guidelines of ESA.
Related links
King County Roads Regional
Road Maintenance ESA Program Guidelines ("Best Management
Practices")
King County Salmon Cam (will go live again when fish
return in the fall)
King County Endangered Species Act
(ESA) Progress Report, 1998-2000
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