$8 million will fix this Gig Harbor salmon barrier. Construction may close Harborview Dr.
An $8 million project will fix a major salmon barrier in Gig Harbor near Donkey Creek Park. It will also affect traffic on Harborview Drive for many months during construction.
At its April 10 meeting, the City Council unanimously approved a $1.3 million contract with Parametrix for design and permitting to remove the culvert under Harborview Drive.
The city applied for a $4 million federal grant that’s pending. They expect an answer by the end of the year. If they get it, that’d cover about half the total cost of the project, Public Works Director Jeff Langhelm told the Gateway.
Langhelm told the council Parametrix is the same company that handled the “daylighting” of Donkey Creek just downstream. That 2012 project removed a nearby culvert, built an 80-foot pedestrian bridge on North Harborview Drive to open up the creek, and installed a footpath underneath along the water. A one-way bridge for cars was built, which also has a bike and pedestrian path.
The new project will look a lot like the “daylighting” of Donkey Creek to visitors when it’s finished, Langhelm said. It’ll replace the culvert by turning Harborview Drive into a bridge, and it’ll include a walking path underneath the road, along the creek.
Langhelm said the bridge design will also allow a roundabout to be built nearby at the intersection of Harborview Drive and Austin Street.
Salmon currently have to jump about a foot to make it into the culvert underneath Harborview Drive. Then, without any places to take a break, they have to swim about 60 to 70 feet upstream to make it into North Creek on the other side. Replacing the culvert will make that journey easier.
Langhelm said the plan is to start construction in 2025, and that the work will take about two years.
“But there’s a lot of work to do,” he told the council. “There’s a lot of permitting to do.”
Carl Schroeder with the Association of Washington Cities told the Gateway at the end of 2021 that there were an estimated 1,600 city-owned culverts in Washington that are barriers to salmon recovery, and that it would cost roughly $2.9 billion to fix them.
He said cities weren’t “under a court order or direct regulatory push” like the state is to fix their barriers, but “there is a law making it illegal to own a fish-blocking structure. We have been spending years trying to understand the scope of our challenge and how to prioritize our corrections.”
Harborview Drive traffic
The Gig Harbor council wanted to know how construction along Harborview Drive to remove the culvert will affect traffic.
Council Member Jeni Woock said she thinks residents will be “very happy” with the project when it’s done. She doesn’t think they’ll be happy with traffic while the work is underway, she said at the meeting.
“Is there going to be some kind of outreach to our community to let them know what’s going on and what it’s going to look like afterward?” Woock asked.
Langhelm said they’’ll have public meetings in the next year to talk about the design and the impact the construction will have on traffic.
“Traffic control during construction will be a major discussion with the public, with the business owners, property owners,” Langhelm said at the meeting.
The project will affect traffic on Harborview Drive for months, he told the Gateway, possibly for a year. They’re still deciding whether to close one lane or all of Harborview Drive.
“We’re going to come back and have these discussions with council and have discussion with the public to see what their opinions might be,” Langhelm said at the meeting.
He noted that “there was a lot of outcry” last year when a lane of Harborview was closed for a couple months to build a roundabout at Harborview and Stinson.
“I’m excited that we’re involving the public a lot more in these types of conversations so that they’re well-prepared in advance,” Mayor Tracie Markley said at the meeting.
