The Middle Fork Nooksack River Fish Passage Project will benefit people, fish, and orcas
By Laura Blackmore, executive director
The Middle Fork Nooksack River Fish Passage Project will provide long-term benefits for people, as well as threatened and endangered fish species and orca whales.
This month, in-water work will begin on the Middle Fork Nooksack River Fish Passage Project, which will restore 16 miles of spawning and rearing habitat in the river for Puget Sound Chinook salmon, steelhead, and bull trout. The project will remove a water diversion dam that the City of Bellingham has used to augment its drinking water supply, relocate the City’s water supply intake, and establish fish screens in the intake to protect migrating fish. Not only will the project open up pristine habitat for three Endangered Species Act-listed fish species, but it also will ensure that the residents of the City of Bellingham have a reliable supply of drinking water for years to come.
This project’s beginning is truly a cause for celebration.
This project helps people in this time of COVID-19. It will create 224 direct and indirect jobs, delivering economic benefits to Whatcom County residents. The relocation of Bellingham’s water supply intake also maintains a reliable, long-term drinking water supply for approximately 100,000 residents, which represents an estimated 10-year economic benefit of about $40 million.
This project supports the spiritual and cultural well-being of the Lummi Nation and the Nooksack Indian Tribe. Returning spring Chinook, bull trout, and steelhead to this river will begin to deliver on our nation’s promise to these peoples to sustain their right to fish. In this time of nationwide grief over injustice and violence done to communities of color over the past 400 years, a step toward righting the wrongs of the past is welcome.
This project helps boost fish populations and feed Southern Resident orcas. We expect that regaining access to upstream habitat will increase the abundance of North and Middle Fork Nooksack spring Chinook salmon by 31 percent. This population increase will, in turn, help the Southern Resident orcas, who depend on Chinook salmon as their primary source of food. Coastal-Puget Sound bull trout will have access to 16 miles of upstream habitat, and Puget Sound steelhead will be able to access 45 percent of their historic habitat in the Middle Fork watershed.
This project required many partners working together to make it possible. It has taken 18 years to get to this point: the Nooksack Indian Tribe, the Lummi Nation, the City of Bellingham, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife began a formal partnership for this project in 2002. George W. Bush was president that year. As a nation, we were just beginning to recover from the September 11 terrorist attacks. The extraordinary amount of time, effort, and persistence from all project partners is commendable, and begs the question: what can we do to accelerate progress on projects like this, which deliver on our treaty promises, benefit the Puget Sound economy, boost fish populations, provide reliable drinking water, and feed endangered whales?
We at the Puget Sound Partnership are committed to doing all we can to accelerate recovery. We are working with the tribes, our sister state agencies, the environmental community, and our Congressional delegation to encourage investment of future stimulus funds in projects like these. We continue to help the Washington State Legislature understand how their investment of state capital funds in projects like these help their constituents now and into the future. We are taking steps down the road of environmental justice, seeking to understand how these projects can better serve historically marginalized communities. We celebrate progress where we can.
But we can’t do it alone. If you care about Puget Sound, its indigenous peoples, its native fish and orcas and waters, speak up. Tell a friend, a neighbor, or your local and state and federal elected officials, that the health of Puget Sound and all its peoples are important to you.
And celebrate with us. Celebrate the removal of this dam, the creation of jobs, the provision of a reliable water supply, the righting of a harm done to the Nooksack Indian Tribe and the Lummi Nation. Watch the fish swim back upstream. Hope that the Southern Resident orcas can catch and eat them. Celebrate life here in Puget Sound.
