Dam relicensing drives Skagit County habitat restoration moratorium

On July 18, the Skagit County commissioners approved a six-month moratorium on offsite compensatory mitigation of salmon habitat.

“Offsite compensatory mitigation” means habitat restoration projects that mitigate for environmental impacts that are a considerable distance away.

The moratorium expresses the commissioners’ concern that Seattle City Light (SCL) may go on a spending spree purchasing land in the lower estuary of the Skagit River.

SCL is halfway through the five-year process of renewing its license for its three hydroelectric dams on the Skagit River that supplies electricity to the City of Seattle with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). To review the safety, cost, environmental and cultural impacts of the continued operation of the hydroelectric project, SCL is collaborating with 38 licensing partners to develop an application for a new 30 to 50-year license that will include requirements for protecting the environment and culture of the Skagit River watershed.

The 38 partners include federal and state agencies, Skagit County, regional U.S. tribes and Canadian First Nations, and non-governmental organizations like Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group and the Skagit Drainage and Irrigation District Consortium.

Mitigating the impacts of SCL’s three dams on fish, especially salmon, is a major issue.

The utility says it has spent about $100 million on environmental mitigation. Using those funds, over the years SCL has purchased almost 3,000 acres in the Skagit River watershed to protect threatened Chinook salmon and general fish habitat, and another 10,081 acres of conservation land, some in Skagit County, to protect wildlife habitat.

Last year, SCL created a $2.5 million fund to support endangered fish species in the Skagit River watershed. Another $1.5 million will be added to the new Skagit Habitat Enhancement Program before the current dam license expires April 3, 2025. The fund will be administered with input from area tribes and federal and state resource agencies SCL states in its newsletter, “Powerlines.”

This fund is what has Skagit County farmers and officials worried.

“Our community has worked and sacrificed for generations to protect the Skagit for agriculture, so it’s a problem when outside corporate interests look to mitigate distant environmental impacts by purchasing Skagit Valley farmland and taking it out of production,” said Skagit County Commissioner Ron Wesen, also a dairy farmer, said in a press release.

Allen Rozema, director of Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland, believes spending money on habitat restoration is a good thing, but using estuary farmland to mitigate impacts of dams 70 miles upstream is not.

Seventy miles is not very far for salmon, said Amy Trainer, environmental policy director for the Swinomish Tribe. “If you were a fish and you had to swim from the mouth of Skagit delta to the Gorge Dam, you’d swim 95 or 96 miles, and you could do it in a week.”

According to Trainer, salmon fingerlings born upriver need active estuary in the delta where they can “hang out, eat and get strong and ready to go out on their ocean migration.”

But about 80 percent of the historic Skagit River estuary has been lost as tidal lands have been diked, tiled and drained for farming.

“The 2005 Skagit Chinook Recovery plan estimated that we need 2,700 acres of estuary in the Skagit delta for the salmon to thrive,” said Trainer.

“About 700 acres have been restored. Basically, we need another 2,000 acres.”

The Swinomish have restored five miles of channel habitat and two miles of slough on reservation land. Now it is creating 17 acres of pocket estuary at Similk Beach.

“I like to say that Swinomish is definitely leading by example,” said Trainer.

Mitigation in the upper Skagit River is a primary concern of county commissioners and county attorney Will Honea.

An October 2021 resolution by the commissioners asked SCL to commit to a regionally equitable salmon investment in the Skagit that would include fish passage and habitat restoration.

None of the three dams provides ladders or other passage to get fish past the dams.

Skagit County also sued SCL for access to financial records documenting what the utility has spent in salmon protection and recovery in the watershed.

Meanwhile, at the relicensing table, licensing partners are reviewing over 3,000 pages of commissioned scientific studies covering 64 areas that include recreation, fisheries, water quality and river flow during the summer when irrigation is needed. Also under discussion is storing additional water behind the dams in fall and winter to prevent floods in the lower Skagit.

Study results will give partners a better understanding of what mitigation requirements need to be negotiated in order to develop the final set of mitigation goals to include in SCL’s license application.

The FERC relicensing process sets a geographical boundary for mitigation projects that includes the area of the dam reservoirs, the rivers, and the electrical transmission corridor that runs from the hydroelectric project to Bothell.

No SCL power reaches Skagit County, but just about everything in the Skagit River watershed below the dams falls within the county's boundaries.