CLE ELUM — Construction is slated to begin soon on a first-of-its-kind fish passage for the Cle Elum Dam, and supporters of the project gathered at the reservoir on Thursday to celebrate the groundbreaking.
The $100 million project is part of the $4 billion to $6 billion Yakima Basin Integrated Plan, a collaboration between state, federal, tribal and local groups to improve water management in the region for fish, farms, and communities over the next 30 years.
Officials from the Bureau of Reclamation, the Yakama Nation and the state departments of Ecology and Fish and Wildlife celebrated the progress on a project that will allow salmon, especially sockeye, access to the reservoir and the cold headwaters.
The Yakama Nation is already rebuilding a sockeye population in the reservoir and tribal officials say the planned passage structure at Cle Elum and eventually at all the region’s reservoirs is key to restoring healthy salmon populations in the Yakima Basin.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s engineers had to get creative to design the passage because the water level in the reservoir fluctuates too much for traditional fish ladders, such as those found on Columbia River dams, to work.
For juvenile fish migrating downstream, the passage has three parts: a stepped inlet to let fish swim in at varying water heights, and a spiral water slide that quickly lowers the fish to a tunnel past the dam that delivers them to the river. For returning adults, the plan is to trap fish below the dam and drive them in tanker trucks up to the reservoir for release.
The first phase of the project is a $4.5 million road and bridge across the Cle Elum River so that the passage facility can eventually be built on the far side of the dam.
Construction of the full facility is expected to last about five years. Congress still needs to authorize funding before the next phase of construction can proceed. It’s included in the Integrated Plan authorization introduced by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., earlier this summer.
