Old Samish Road set to close through December for WSDOT salmon habitat work
Old Samish Road will close next week through the end of the year as a project to improve salmon habitat in streams that cross Interstate 5 enters a new phase south of Bellingham.
Wider culverts and bridges under the freeway will help migrating and spawning salmon, as required by a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that favored the state’s Indigenous tribes, who retained the right to fish in exchange for land under 1850s treaties. WSDOT is tackling a $160 million project to widen salmon-bearing streams under I-5 along a 6-mile stretch of road in Whatcom and Skagit counties.
South Whatcom Fire Authority Chief Mitch Nolze said the closure in the 1400 block of Old Samish Road will affect firefighters’ access to addresses between 1491 Old Samish Road and the Bellingham city limits.
“We are working with Bellingham Fire Department and (911 dispatchers) to coordinate an altered response model where Bellingham Fire Department Station 2 responds ahead of our own Fire Station 28 (at Samish Way and I-5) in the station order list for this particular area. We don’t anticipate needing any additional changes, and SWFA will still respond to specific incidents where we have specialized resources needed, or if BFD requests us to respond in addition. This is an effort to minimize the impact of a response delay due to the construction access restriction. We are also altering our plans for the Chuckanut Drive community to reduce delays from this project with a similar approach to having BFD Station 2 respond ahead of, or in conjunction with, Station 28,” Nolze told The Bellingham Herald in an email.
In addition to the Old Samish Road closure, overnight single-lane closures can be expected on I-5 from Bellingham south to the Skagit County line — except during the World Cup in June, WSDOT’s David Rasbach told The Herald in a phone call.
A total of 17 barriers to fish will be replaced with 10 new bridges and culverts that WSDOT said “improves stream connectivity” for unnamed tributaries to Friday Creek, Lake Creek, an unnamed tributary to Lake Creek and Chuckanut Creek where I-5 passes Lake Samish south of Bellingham.
It’s this part of the project that requires WSDOT to move the iconic Interstate 5 rock that has been a community message board for nearly 60 years.
For the project’s next phase, Washington State Department of Transportation workers will build a bypass road, which requires the closure of Old Samish Road where it crosses Chuckanut Creek toward the east end of the road near I-5.
That closure takes effect at 5 a.m. Monday, April 27, Rasbach said. About 2,600 cars and trucks travel on Old Samish Road daily west of the closure site, and about 900 cars and trucks daily east of the closure site, according to a 2023 city of Bellingham traffic survey.
When the southbound bypass road is finished in May, southbound I-5 traffic will shift to Old Samish Road, and northbound I-5 traffic will shift to the new bypass road, according to a WSDOT timeline.
Then work starts on I-5 bridges over Lake Creek and its tributary and the Old Samish Road bridge over Chuckanut Creek.
The WSDOT timeline includes the following key dates:
- Southbound I-5 traffic returning to normal on new bridge in July.
- Northbound I-5 returning to normal on a new bridge in October.
- Old Samish Road reopening with a new bridge over Chuckanut Creek in December.
This story was originally published April 21, 2026 at 5:20 AM.
