SALMON RECOVERY GETS $1 MILLION BOOST

Wednesday, May 31, 2000
By KATHIE DURBIN, Columbian staff writer

A state board has approved spending slightly more than $1 million to pay for nine salmon habitat recovery projects in Southwest Washington.

    But a regional salmon recovery official lamented that many other proposed projects proposed for the region were not funded.

    Topping the Salmon Funding Recovery Board priority list were land purchases in the Grays River and Chinook River watersheds near the mouth of the Columbia. They will protect and restore critical estuaries where juvenile salmon from rivers throughout the Columbia Basin adjust from fresh water to salt water before entering the ocean.

    The Vancouver-based Columbia Land Trust was awarded $83,000 toward the Grays River land acquisition and $131,000 toward a separate project to acquire and restore streamside habitat near the Washougal River.

    Fish First, a Clark County-based conservation group that works in the Lewis River system, got nearly $200,000 for three stream restoration projects on Lewis River tributaries.

    The state funding board allotted the money last week in Wenatchee. The 1999 Legislature established the board to review salmon recovery projects throughout the state and distribute $18 million in federal money and $37 million in state dollars.

    The Southwest Washington Fish Recovery Board, which represents Clark, Skamania, Wahkiakum, Lewis and Cowlitz counties, had submitted 24 projects for funding with a total price tag of $4 million.

    Jeff Breckel, the board's executive director, said he had hoped to do better.

    "I was disappointed, frankly," Breckel said. "The Salmon Recovery Funding Board staff had recommended $1.5 million worth of projects" submitted by his board and had asked him to submit additional projects for consideration, he said. "When we appeared before a regional technical panel, they were quite complimentary of our process."

    Among projects that didn't make the cut were:

• A request by Clark County for $500,000 to halt erosion and improve fish passage on Salmon Creek at the Highway 99 freeway bridge;
  
  
• A $333,000 proposal by the Underwood Conservation District to restore a section of channel and riverbanks on Trout Creek in the Wind River watershed;
  
  
• A request by landowner Don Swanson for $114,000 to begin developing chum salmon habitat on his land along Mason Creek, a tributary of the East Fork of the Lewis River.

    In all, the board awarded more than $13 million for 84 habitat restoration projects statewide in this round. It awarded about $2 million last spring and will consider a third slate of proposals next November.

    Lawmakers from Southwest Washington pushed through legislation creating the five-county fish recovery board in 1998.

    They hope to provide a coordinated approach to salmon recovery in the region and allow it to compete more effectively with powerful Puget Sound interests for state and federal salmon dollars.

    But urban Puget Sound hardly got everything it sought. Project sponsors in King, Pierce, Skagit and Snohomish counties requested funding for 69 projects totaling $15.2 million in this round.They got funding for 16 projects totaling $4.1 million.

    Statewide, applicants for the money included citizen watershed councils, conservation districts, tribes, local governments, environmental groups, timber companies and individual landowners.

    William Ruckelshaus, the former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator who chairs the state board, said project sponsors "did an excellent job of providing the board with a good list of projects from which to choose."

    The board reviewed 245 grant proposal with a total price tag of $42 million.

    Of the 84 projects funded, 19 will help pay for buying important salmon habitat; 47 will focus on in-stream work like installing fish screens; 14 will work to improve stream corridors; and four will support projects in the upper reaches of watersheds.