WSDOT State Highway Culvert Replacement Program
Under a federal court order affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018, WSDOT is replacing hundreds of fish-blocking highway culverts statewide. Corrected culverts restore access to hundreds of miles of upstream spawning and rearing habitat.
Project Overview
For decades, thousands of undersized and poorly designed culverts beneath Washington State highways blocked or impeded salmon from reaching spawning and rearing habitat upstream. In 2001, 21 treaty tribes filed U.S. v. Washington (the Culverts Case), arguing that the State's failure to maintain passable fish passage violated the implicit habitat protection guarantee of the 1855 treaty fishing right.
After years of litigation, the U.S. District Court ruled in favor of the tribes in 2013, ordering the State to correct all barrier culverts on state highways within 17 years. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling in 2016, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld it by an equally divided 4-4 vote in 2018 — a landmark legal victory for tribal treaty rights. The court found that meaningful access to fish requires meaningful access to habitat.
WSDOT is now in the multi-decade process of replacing or retrofitting hundreds of barrier culverts across the state. Priority is given to sites that provide the greatest habitat gain per dollar invested — typically those blocking access to large reaches of cold, intact headwater habitat. Each corrected culvert is designed to pass the 100-year flood flow and allow safe passage for all life stages of salmon. WDFW tracks corrected culverts and the stream miles re-opened as part of the Washington Salmon Recovery Dashboard.
Project Details
2013
Year Started
Washington State Department of Transportation, WDFW, Washington Tribes (21 co-plaintiffs)
Partner Organizations
active
Project Status
Watershed Data
This project operates in the Nooksack River watershed (North Sound). View current salmon health indicators and environmental conditions.