KING COUNTY,
WASHINGTON

FISH AND HABITAT CULVERT
INSTALLATIONS

Issaquah Fall
City Road & 308th Ave. SE

This is a recently installed
fish and habitat culvert (07-07) under a county road that is a corrugated
pipe, flattened so that it is 6.67 feet high and 9 feet wide, half filled
with gravel and rock.  The water
width is about a foot, with less than two inches of depth.  As one can see, there is no way a
mature salmon of any size could "swim" up this rivulet to spawn.

The estimated cost to install
this culvert was in excess of $60,000, paid for by rural landowner road
levy taxes.  That price
doesn't include the cost of lowering the 16" high-pressure gas main to
well below the lowest depth of the culvert, paid for by the ratepayers.

A similar fish and habitat
culvert was installed at the same time on another small rivulet, about a 100
feet East of the above culvert, with an estimated cost
of just under $60,000.  Again, paid for by the rural property owner's road levy tax.

Issaquah Fall
City Road & 322nd Ave. SE

This is fish and habitat
culvert (installed
July 2005) under the same county road that is a 6 by 8 foot
concrete rectangular pipe.  There
is no water in this streambed at all.
It's completely dry.  Again
there is no way a mature salmon could "swim" up a "dry"
rivulet to spawn, nor could smaller trout live here.  The entire channel is choked with
small alders, grass and weeds.

The estimated cost to install
this culvert was in excess of over $65,000, paid for by the rural
landowner road levy taxes.
Again, that price doesn't include the cost of lowering the 16"
high-pressure gas main to well below the lowest depth of the culvert, paid
for by the ratepayers.

There are over 40 such fish and
habitat projects in King County alone that have been or are planned to be
installed in the next few years.  We
added up over $8,000,000 in actual and estimated costs for just 14 these
projects, paid for by the rural landowner road levy tax.  Salmon recovery is purely for a public
benefit.  Rural landowners should
not have to pay of these culverts.
It should be born by all the citizens of Washington State, or all the
citizens of the United States.

Ron Ewart, President,
National Association of Rural Landowners