Washington’s U.S. Sen. Patty Murray is elevating the alarm over a brand new spending plan by the Trump administration that doesn’t embody $500 million in funding for a fish-passage challenge on the Inexperienced River close to Seattle.
Murray and others have for many years advocated for fish passage for threatened Chinook salmon on the federally owned Howard A. Hanson dam. They could want to attend even longer.
Below a Biden administration earmark, the challenge was to obtain $500 million in funding within the U.S. Military Corps of Engineers building price range, however the work plan proposed this week by the Trump administration has zeroed out the challenge, based on Murray.
“I’m livid that this administration plans to unilaterally defund building on the Howard Hanson Dam … This can be a staggering betrayal … and an incredible, unacceptable setback within the necessary work to safeguard our water provide, shield our communities from harmful flooding, and save our salmon,” Murray mentioned in a information launch.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell additionally mentioned funding for the challenge is important and criticized the reduce.
“Setting up fish passage at Howard Hanson Dam was key to reopening a minimum of 60 miles of prime salmon and steelhead habitat, practically doubling Inexperienced River spawning grounds for endangered salmon and steelhead,” mentioned Cantwell. “Withholding funding for this challenge is a stab within the again to tribal, business, and leisure fishing households. It additionally quantities to an abandonment of our dedication to tribal treaty rights, and ignores federal legislation supposed to guard salmon.”
The Seattle district workplace of the Corps of Engineers didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark concerning the funding.
Murray, a Democrat, has been amongst a bipartisan refrain of Washington lawmakers urgent the Corps, which constructed and operates the earthen embankment dam, to make fish passage a precedence. Murray helped safe $220 million for the Howard Hanson Dam Fish Passage Facility Undertaking via funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation in 2022, and an extra $50 million to assist the Corps proceed design and award the development contract.
Murray secured within the fiscal yr 2025 appropriations invoice she wrote as Chair and handed via committee in August 2024, in addition to in Home Republicans’ fiscal yr 2025 invoice. The funding was wanted for the Military Corps to execute a building contract choice this yr, permitting building to start in 2026 as scheduled
The dam is on the Inexperienced River, which flows from the Cascade Mountains north of Mount Rainier. It meanders via Flaming Geyser State Park, Auburn, Kent after which on to Tukwila, the place it turns into the Duwamish, Seattle’s solely river. The higher Inexperienced River has been inaccessible to Chinook and coho salmon and steelhead because the Tacoma Headworks Diversion Dam went into operation within the 1910s.
The diversion dam, about 3 miles downstream of Howard Hanson, has been upgraded to permit grownup salmon to be trucked above the dams to the higher watershed as soon as the Howard Hanson fish passage challenge is full. However till then, salmon stay blocked from about half of the Inexperienced River — and all of its finest remaining habitat.
The Howard Hanson Dam, accomplished in 1962, is meant to scale back flood danger within the Inexperienced River Valley, the place prior to now floods have been a extra common incidence. Within the 70 years earlier than building, the valley flooded greater than 30 occasions, closely damaging lands and buildings.
Murray’s feedback have been in response to the discharge Thursday of the Corps’ work plans, detailing the way it will spend the funding offered by Congress below Republicans’ yearlong persevering with decision for fiscal yr 2025.
The plans present how Trump’s Military Corps of Engineers intends to zero out or considerably reduce funding for important initiatives in Washington state and throughout the nation, based on Murray’s workplace.
Materials from Seattle Instances archives was used on this story.
