Tribes win ruling on salmon
State ordered to fix culverts for fish passage
The state has breached its duties to Indian tribes under treaties dating to the 1850s by failing to maintain the road system, cutting off salmon from spawning grounds and robbing tribes of fish they were promised, a federal judge in Seattle ruled Wednesday.
The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez puts the state under the gun for tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars' worth of repairs to culverts, the pipes that carry streams below roads.
It is the latest fallout from a controversial 1974 ruling awarding tribes the right to half of the annual salmon catch in the state. Martinez held that Indians have the right to "a moderate living" from fishing.
"That was a big one today!" declared Billy Frank, whose activism on Indian fishing issues got him arrested decades ago.
"The judge's order today said the fish have got to be there. If there's no fish, there's no fishing," said Frank, chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. "We're trying to get the salmon back, make that salmon whole again."
The state already was planning to spend $69 million over the next 12 years fixing state-owned culverts.
"Since 1991 we've been working closely with the Department of Fish and Wildlife to address this," said Melanie Coon, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation, which owns many of the faulty road-crossing pipes. "We're committed to fixing the culverts. We've been doing it for many years. We've been spending a lot of money on it, and a lot of time."
But not enough, the tribes say.
"It's clear that in Judge Martinez's eyes and the eyes of the people who negotiated the treaties, this is a real promise and it may require some real work and differences in the way people behave," said John Sledd, a Seattle attorney who represents 10 tribes.
Next week, the tribes will tell the judge what they think should be done, and they're sure to call for that culvert-repair schedule to be speeded up significantly.
By the state's own admission, the errant culverts are blocking more than 2,300 miles of streams where salmon could spawn. Since 1991, the state has opened up about 480 miles of streams by fixing the road crossings. Sometimes the big pipes are blocked. Others are positioned so high above the water that salmon could not jump into them to continue their trip upriver.
When the tribes signed treaties with then-territorial Gov. Isaac Stevens in the mid-1850s, "It was ... the government's intent, and the tribes' understanding, that they would be able to meet their own subsistence needs forever," Martinez said in a 12-page ruling filled with references to the historical record.
"It was thus the right to take fish, not just the right to fish, that was secured by the treaties," the ruling said. "... The Tribes were persuaded to cede huge tracts of land -- described by the Supreme Court as 'millions of acres' -- by the promise that they would forever have access to this resource."
Continue reading this article from the Seattle P-I:
Tribes win ruling on salmon
