The Skagit Opens Up For Fish
After debate, Seattle City Light will install a fish passage in the Skagit River dams – but is that enough
Seattle City Light’s Gorge Powerhouse in the sunlight on Nov. 15, 2024
Story and photos by Ben Delaney
December 14, 2024
On Sept. 14, 1924, the Gorge Dam Powerhouse sent the first power generated on the Skagit south to Seattle. Since then, the three dams on the river have cut off salmon from natural spawning grounds.
A century later, in April 2023, Seattle City Light, the utility that owns and operates the dams, committed to ensuring safe passage for fish around their structures. But with the specifics unclear, scientists and indigenous peoples are asking: Will the type of fish passage that comes from the utility be enough?
Salmon live in saltwater until they migrate to freshwater to spawn. Steelhead are seagoing rainbow trout, and unlike salmon, they can survive spawning, returning to the ocean to possibly spawn multiple times. A fish barrier, like a dam, acts as a stopping point preventing fish from continuing upstream.
Any fish barrier is a problem, says Scott Schuyler, the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe’s policy representative for natural and cultural resources.
“In a perfect world, we wouldn't have dams on our river. However, at this point in time, necessity has led us down the path of negotiations,” Schuyler said.
Those negotiations have high stakes for the river, the fish, and the indigenous communities that rely on them – they’ll actually determine when water will return to a currently dry stretch of the river – and they’re coming to a head in the next six months, since the utility’s current dam license expires in April 2025. Plans for fish passage came as part of the utility’s relicensing process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and to finish that process, a debate will have to be resolved.
The debate centers around the terms and specifics of rewatering the dry stretch and plans for fish passage.
Seattle City Light Claims Barrier
The Gorge “Lake” and current Gorge Dam on Nov. 15, 2024. The buzzing power lines can be heard over the cars passing on the highway.
Of the three Skagit dams, the Gorge Dam (1961) is closest to the ocean. Next upriver is the Diablo Dam (1930), and the tallest and farthest upriver is the Ross Dam (1953). The commitment to ensuring fish passage resulted from a debate over the existence of a natural fish barrier on the Skagit River – a debate that resulted in multiple lawsuits filed against the utility by the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe for a lack of fish passage.
Seattle City Light’s Director of Natural Resources and Hydro Licensing, Chris Townsend, believes chinook, the largest and strongest salmon species, and steelhead were able to make it to Stetattle Creek, just below Diablo Dam, but no further.
“All of the best available science, that we filed with our application, indicates that fish were not able to pass beyond where Diablo Dam is built,” Townsend said.
A 2019 genetic study that the utility performed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service looked at bull trout populations above, below and in between the dams. The study concluded that bull trout in Ross Lake were genetically isolated from the species in the lower river, implying the existence of a natural fish barrier that blocked fish before the dams were built.
But many scientists claimed the 2019 study didn’t show the whole picture.
The study collected only samples from adult bull trout, but U.S. Fish and Wildlife claimed samples of juveniles from spawning areas are needed to understand the full genetic picture.
The Upper Skagit Indian Tribe agreed, in a comment writing that one study on one species doesn’t inform on all fish movement in the Skagit River.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife also wrote that the study’s “inadequacies” mean no conclusion regarding “fish population dynamics or genetics” can be drawn.
A Moot Point
According to Schuyler, while the tribes are not prepared to argue the exact point to which salmon didn't make it upstream, there are examples of salmon breaching waterfalls all over the country.
“Because nature is complicated and scientific practices differ, the resulting scientific claims are frequently hard to reconcile in an unambiguous way,” said Mark Neff, an environmental studies professor at Western Washington University. “It is rare for a scientific consensus to emerge prior to a decision that lowers the interest in scientific findings.”
This is what happened on the Skagit River when SCL committed to creating a fish passage.
If the scientific community agreed there was a fish barrier, then a passage wouldn’t be necessary, as fish never historically made it that far upriver.
Townsend said the question of a natural fish barrier became a ‘moot’ point since Seattle City Light committed to providing safe passage for anadromous fish.
However, Neff claimed that the lack of certainty was okay.
Neff wishes society did more decision-making even without scientific certainty. He highlighted that even though there is disagreement, the fish passage would be a precautionary measure, without any drawbacks.
“It makes something possible again that maybe hasn't been for generations,” Neff said.
Even without consensus or knowing if there was a natural fish barrier, acting and building a fish passage could be a better option than not acting and continuing to debate the question.
“Ideally, you know something is true if there are multiple forms and formats of knowledge, and there are some things we will just never know,” Neff said. “In a democracy, we should be able to say we value this understanding of the world even if there's no evidence.”
Giving Back the River
Schuyler pointed out that in the past, Seattle City Light claimed there was a fish barrier that stopped fish from reaching the lowermost Gorge dam.
“However, the salmon didn't read the study because we found salmon above the supposed barrier,” Schuyler said.
The barrier was in a stretch of river called the “bypass stretch” that the utility has drained dry for power generation. The water that should be flowing over the natural riverbed is diverted into tunnels that travel through a mountainside to the Gorge Powerhouse.
A dry river can’t hold fish, but when Seattle City Light releases water into the stretch after large rain storms or for maintenance of the powerhouse, it’s a different story.
Schuyler said all it took to find fish above the barriers was water in the river.
Another part of the utility’s current relicensing process is discussing the terms around rewatering this section of the Skagit.
On April 7, 2021, Seattle City Light released a statement saying they planned to restore flow in the section as soon as possible. As of November 2024, the section remains dry as the utility discusses the terms of rewatering with the Upper Skagit Tribe and other key parties.
“We've asked the city to rewater the Skagit because it's an egregious, cultural, traumatic offense to our people, having the water taken,” said Schuyler.
According to Townsend, the stretch probably won't have water until the utilityL is granted its new permit. Rewatering the section requires environmental reviews associated with the relicensing, including input from organizations like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“What we're talking about is a compromise from full dam removal to having some sustainable flows that will mimic the natural environment in the bypass area,” Schuyler said.
Schuyler says he will be apprehensive about fish passage until it’s complete. However, it will be a day of celebration when the river regains its connectivity through fish passage and rewatering.
“It took care of us since time immemorial, and so we walked into this license saying it's time to give back the river,” Schuyler said. “Five generations of our people have lived under the fact that the river has been harvested, let's face it, for money.”
Thinking About Removal
Due to a non-disclosure agreement, current negotiations about the fate of the dams have been hidden from the public eye and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife declined to interview.
Much of the negotiations are concerned with mitigating the impacts of the dams and climate change.
Rick Hartson has been a habitat biologist for the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe for almost 12 years and thinks the removal of Ross Dam should start now.
Much of the development in the lower Skagit River valley is built on floodplains, meaning Ross Dam provides lots of flood control for communities downriver. To remove Ross Dam, developmental planning and work should start now since the removal of the dam would mean more consistent flooding of the lower valley and delta.
“There's certainly some things you can try to do to mitigate those impacts, but they're really quite limited when it comes down to it,” Hartson said. “With large concrete structures on a river like that, the impact is extensive and far-reaching. There's only so much you can do.”
The Upper Skagit, Sauk-Suiattle, and Swinomish peoples have stewarded the Skagit, Sauk and other nearby river ecosystems since time immemorial and continue to do so today. Dramatic environmental change has only occurred in the last 200 years.
The Upper Skagit Tribe acknowledges that hydropower is one of the cleanest energy options out there.
“However, don't be blind to the fact that it comes at a cost,” Schuyler said. “Then who bears that burden of the cost? Is it the indigenous people that live here, the Upper Skagit, or is it the salmon that bears the burden of this cost?”