Tribe Fears For River

Leaders of the Hoh Indian Tribe say one of the state’s healthiest steelhead rivers is being put at risk by crews scrambling to repair the flood-damaged road to the Hoh rain forest.

“This is one of the last river systems in the state that has healthy (fish) stocks,” said Reggie Ward, tribe spokesman.

The Hoh River and its tributaries produce steelhead, coho and chinook salmon in sufficient numbers that the tribe has commercial fisheries year-round - a rarity these days.

On the other side of this debate is tourism. The winding road at issue, off U.S. 101 near Forks, offers tourist access to the rain forest in the Olympic National Park, which attracts more than 200,000 visitors a year. A 1,000-foot stretch of the road was washed out by winter flooding.

Jefferson County work crews began rebuilding the road two weeks ago. The county consulted with tribal leaders and officials of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, and is including steps to ease the impact on salmon, said Bruce Laurie, who is managing the project.

The emergency status meant forgoing some of the extensive planning that would usually be required. It exempts the work from state law that could have required an environmental impact statement.

Olympic National Park officials say they considered the possibility the repair could cause environmental damage, but decided it could be done safely.

The Washington Fish and Wildlife Department rejected a fisheries biologist’s recommendation that it oppose the repair, but persuaded the county to shift the road farther from the river, said John Conklin, department regional ecosystem director.

Timber roads closed

Inland Empire Paper Company has locked gates and closed roads for at least two weeks on about 40,000 acres of company lands in the areas of Twin Lakes, Mount Spokane and Spirit Lake, said Dennis Parent, forest operations manger.

“Wet weather has caused roads to be extreme erosion hazards and dangerous,” he said.

High spring flows

Heavy rain and warm weather have combined to cause unusually high spring flows in the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

The high flows have caused gas supersaturation in the rivers, which in turn causes gas bubble trauma in chinook salmon. Gas bubble trauma occurs when sair bubbles get trapped in the gills and tissue of fish.

This situation has forced federal, state and tribal officials to pursue options for managing flows and spills in the basin. Officials are holding back upstream flows, changing spill patterns and locations and operating turbines longer to lessen the amount of water that must be spilled.

“Now, at the height of the (steelhead) migration, the Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration are managing to make the river as lethal as it has been in 20 years,” said Fred Christensen, president of the Idaho Wildlife Federation.

, DataTimes