We know that South Sound is dying. Squaxin tribal researchers recently conducted a study of how many coho salmon leaving streams in southern Puget Sound actually survive long enough to swim past the Tacoma Narrows. Coho populations have been dropping for more than a decade around here, and we’ve been studying them to understand why.

What we came up with was shocking. Only 3 percent of coho that originated in southern Puget Sound made it past the Tacoma Narrows. Typically around 2 percent of any given salmon run return as adults, so South Sound coho are practically seeing a lifetime’s worth of mortality in only a few miles.

Another reason the non-tribal community argues against restoring the Deschutes River estuary is there are other, more convenient places to restore. They can spend their restoration dollars in places they’ve already decided aren’t better suited for a yacht club or a port. But the Squaxin Island Tribe has no other place to go. The tribe is bound by tradition and by a treaty with the federal government to fish close to home in the same waters they have fished for centuries.

The non-tribal community can point to Budd Inlet and say, “this place is too important economically to ever restore the estuary.” But for the Squaxin Island Tribe, there is no more valuable place to restore than the Deschutes River estuary.

…a recent letter from the state Department of Ecology to the Department of General Administration (which owns the property around the lake and therefore manages it) sheds a lot of light on the water quality debate.

In short, the letter spells out the water quality problems in Capitol Lake are being caused by the lake’s very existence. Because the artificial lake is by its very design shallow, warm and sluggish it becomes a haven for algae growth that leads to its many water quality problems.

You can read the entire post here.

This Thursday morning, CLAMP will discuss how the restoration of the Deschutes Estuary would impact recreation around where Capitol Lake is now.

A draft chapter of our Alternatives Analysis outlines the options. It pretty basically says that certain docks would be high and dry during low tide and that different sorts of fish would be available because a freshwater lake is different than a estuary. For example, the non-native bass that prey on salmon smolts wouldn’t survive in an estuary.

One thing the chapter doesn’t spell out is the benefit to fishermen, most obviously hook-and-line sport fishermen. Anyone can take a look at the crowds along the estuary of nearby Kennedy or McLane creeks in the fall and see the interest that those fishing opportunities generate. Access to these tidelands, which would increase if the Deschutes Estuary were restored, would benefit sport fisherman access to returning salmon. Over 10,000 chinook returned to the hatchery on the Deschutes River this last year (here’s a pdf of the state’s hatchery report).

You can read the entire draft chapter here or download it here.

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The City of Olympia is already talking about how to engage their citizens in the process. You can read more about that here, here and here.

CLAMP’s agenda’s are regularly posted on the website of the Thurston Regional Planning Council. Here is this month’s agenda.

There have been regular reports presented to CLAMP covering various broad topics, such as how the various options presented to CLAMP would impact wildlife, flooding, public restoration, among other topics. I’m going to try to over the next few months go back to these papers and blog a bit about how restoring the estuary would be a benefit.

This month we’re going to talk about public recreation and how it would be impacted by the eventual fate of the estuary.

The Squaxin Island Tribe is firmly committed to the restoration of the estuary. The tribe has always depended on the natural resources of the region and the Deschutes River estuary was a big part of supporting these resources.

You can go here to find out more about the tribe’s position on restoring the estuary.