This island creek once had a strong salmon run. Locals are trying to make it so again

A long degraded salmon stream is close to being restored after over a decade of hard work by some Pierce County residents.

Puget Sound’s Anderson Island is home to Schoolhouse Creek, which formerly had coho salmon and has seen their return in recent years. More formal restoration efforts at Schoolhouse Creek have been going on since the late 2000s as park district commissioners continue to work on the project’s final legs.

Schoolhouse Creek flows into Oro Bay and has historically been home to salmon runs and breeding grounds, according to a historical overview of the creek submitted alongside a February 2020 Washington House of Representatives transportation budget request.

Salmon were found spawning in the creek as late as the 1970s, but soon faced a slew of problems.

Culverts — tunnel-like structures that allow water to flow under roads or other structures — were put in as a part of county road improvements, which made it significantly more difficult for salmon to travel through the stream. The meadow a portion of the creek runs through was trampled by a landowner’s cattle, and invasive blackberries also began to overrun the area, according to the overview. The trampled meadow turned a portion of the creek into a marsh with no stream bed for the salmon to swim in. The blackberries completely covered other portions of the creek, making it hidden, and eventually led to citizen action.

Local and county restoration efforts

In the late 1980s, one island resident attempted to fix Schoolhouse Creek on his own after he was not given permission by Pierce County to restore the stream bed. The resident took a backhoe and turned what had become marshland into a ditch, bringing some salmon back despite it ultimately not being sustainable.

That man was Tom White, brother-in-law to Carol Paschal, who is still carrying on restoration efforts today.

“He was the kind of person that did what he thought was right, whether ... other people agreed with him or not — and he was a decorated Vietnam veteran,” said Paschal, who was formerly on the island’s park board for 14 years and submitted the 2020 historical overview. “He would help anybody.”

White worked with students at the island school to raise hatchery salmon fry to release into the creek, according to the overview. He also set up his own hatchery and began raising chum salmon in the creek. After White died in 2004 — consequence-free from digging the ditch in Schoolhouse Creek — Chuck Hinds, chair of the park commission, eventually took over his hatchery. Hinds has maintained White’s hatchery for the past seven or eight years, he said.

“He took this whole salmon thing on, and before he died, he told me that he felt like getting the salmon running in the creek again was the best thing he’d ever done in his life,” Paschal said. “I kind of took on this creek project as something that I felt like I had to get done.”

In 2009, more recent efforts to restore the stream received grant funding and wider support. Hinds said the commission received its first grant that year for restoration work at Schoolhouse Creek. The grant was $2,812 from the Aquatic Lands Enhancement Account, or ALEA, Volunteer Cooperative Grant program. Those funds mainly went toward the cost of tools and plants and allowed the commission and volunteers to repair the creek’s banks and put in native plants.

“That’s when we realized, ‘Oh, we got more of a problem than just, you know, the blackberries,’” Hinds said. “We needed to reroute the stream — instead of a straight line, put some curves in, and then put some woody debris in it.”

From there, commissioners began to increase the scope of their efforts on restoration. More grants were applied for, and the park district began working with Pierce County to replace two of the culverts that made expanding the creek — and salmon travel — difficult. Those two culverts were replaced by the county for $213,000 in 2011 with funding from the Salmon Recovery Funding Board and the Pierce County Surface Water Management fund, according to the overview.

In 2011, the park commission received a $38,500 grant to restore a 700-foot section of Schoolhouse Creek (which Hinds estimates is at least two miles long in total), improve passage of one of the upstream culverts and remove more invasive plants, among other items, according to information Hinds sent in an email. Work was completed in 2013.

Since then, additional restoration efforts and applying for grants have been ongoing processes. More coho salmon have been spotted again in Schoolhouse Creek since February 2018, according to information from Hinds. Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife Fish Biologist Darrin Masters also said in a statement that coho salmon have been documented at Schoolhouse Creek, along with chum salmon and resident cutthroat trout.

“Based on our observations, there is good habitat, particularly for juvenile coho,” Masters said in a statement.

Still, work on the remaining two culverts needs to be done.

Paschal said one of the remaining culverts, located near the old schoolhouse that gives the creek its name, is only 3 feet wide and on an uphill slant, making it nearly impossible for salmon to get through.

“That’s the one that’s really blocking salmon from going upstream and having access to a kind of a much bigger wooded area that’s really pretty pristine,” she said.

The last estimate for replacing the culvert that Paschal heard was $1.3 million. The original estimated cost for the project was only about $300,000, but Paschal said engineers feel work would have to be done on the road itself in addition to replacing the culvert.

On the restoration side, Hinds said the work is mostly done. More wood chips will be placed along the stream, and efforts will be focused on maintaining the stream in its current form. There is also property further upstream that may be obtained by the park district in order to ensure it can be properly maintained, he said.

After all the years of work put in, Hinds and Paschal are both glad to see tangible results.

“It’s really rewarding because, you know, I’ve seen it, what it was in the past,” Hinds said. “It’s just kind of nice to see it happening and you know, look forward to all the trees growing up.”

This story was originally published July 23, 2021 at 5:00 AM.