‘Removing the Middle Fork Nooksack dam is one of the most important salmon restoration projects’
A small dam that channels Nooksack River water into Lake Whatcom will be removed next year in an effort to help endangered salmon and, by extension, southern resident killer whales, proponents said.
The city of Bellingham’s dam has been diverting water from the Nooksack’s Middle Fork since 1962 to supplement its main source of water, which is Lake Whatcom — the drinking water source for nearly 100,000 residents of Bellingham and Whatcom County.
The diversion is intermittent and occurs primarily during winter and spring, the city of Bellingham said on the project website.
Located about 20 miles east of Bellingham, the dam will be history in 2020.
“Removing the Middle Fork Nooksack dam is one of the most important salmon restoration projects in Puget Sound,” Wendy McDermott, Puget Sound and Columbia Basin Director for American Rivers, said in a statement.
American Rivers, a conservation group, is a key partner in the project, which will include moving the city’s intake of Middle Fork water upstream.
The state Legislature recently set aside $10.5 million in its capital budget, providing a big chunk of the estimated $16 million-plus needed for the project, according to Stephen Day, project engineer for the city of Bellingham’s Public Works Department.
The dam is about 25 feet tall and 150 feet wide.
Water from the Middle Fork is carried to Mirror Lake via a 1.6 mile-long tunnel and 9.5 mile-long pipe. From Mirror Lake, the water flows into Anderson Creek, which ends in Lake Whatcom.
The dam’s presence cuts off access to spawning and rearing grounds for spring chinook salmon, steelhead and bull trout. The three are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Chinook are the main source of food for the endangered orcas, whose numbers have dropped to just 74 — alarming scientists and others who love the Pacific Northwest icons.
Removing the dam will allow the salmon to once again gain access to 16 miles of habitat in the Middle Fork and its tributaries, according to a project overview.
The salmon and the whales are cultural symbols — and, in the case of salmon, an important food source — for the Nooksack and Lummi tribes in Whatcom County, who are among the public-private coalition working to remove the diversion dam.
The Nooksack and Lummi tribes approached the city in 2000 about removing the dam that was blocking the fish.
Breaching the dam here isn’t the only such effort to take out dams as part of decades’-long, at times frustrating, efforts to save endangered salmon and orcas. It’s being considered for the lower Snake River dams, and the proposal is being criticized by some lawmakers and farmers.
With other funding already in hand, the state dollars provide much of the money needed for the dam’s removal on the Middle Fork of the Nooksack River.
Other parts of the project include:
▪ Redesigning the way in which the city pulls water from the Middle Fork.
“The existing intake system at the dam site will be removed when the dam is removed. A new intake structure will be installed on the south bank of the river, approximately 700 feet upstream of the existing dam location,” Day said.
“The new intake system is configured such that it will not block the river or impede fish passage,” he added.
▪ Building a fish screen to protect fish by keeping them out of the intake structure.
This story was originally published May 20, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
