Historic improvement to Green River watershed helps salmon

For the first time in nearly a century, in 2007 we released salmon into the upper Green River watershed—a move that will prepare that part of the river for salmon spawning and survival well into the future.

Salmon have not had access to the 100 miles of river and streams in the upper Green River since we built our system in 1911. With the completion of the Second Supply Project pipeline, we modified our system to allow for fish passage. We can now move fish that have swam up the newly constructed fish ladder into holding tanks to a fish transport truck for release into the upper watershed.

The Green River fisheries co-managers, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, have identified several goals for releasing salmon into the river:

· Provide nutrients to benefit the aquatic food chain and upper Green River watershed ecosystem.

· Begin turning over and cleaning streambed gravels to reduce fine sediment levels and improve conditions for egg incubation.
· Provide the opportunity for Tacoma Water to operate its new adult fish passage facility.

We initially released pink salmon into the upper Green River to test our fish passage facility, and hope to see passage of other types of fish in the future. The timing of the passage of these salmon species depends upon the completion and evaluation of downstream fish passage facilities currently under construction at the Howard Hanson Dam.

Howard Hanson Dam is an Army Corps of Engineers flood control project located about three-and-a-half miles upstream of our intake. The reservoir behind the dam is about four miles long. We will release the fish into the Green River upstream of the reservoir. The release is far enough away from the municipal water diversion that we anticipate no adverse impacts on drinking water quality.