Donut Hole win can guide transboundary strategy

March 2, 2023
Derek Moscato

Commentary: There are many good reasons for protecting the Skagit River headwaters; high on the list is the ongoing health of the larger Skagit watershed, a defining element of the region’s geography and cultural heritage.

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Pollution cleaned up, Anacortes shoreline preps for development

January 31, 2023
Kai Uyehara

MJB Properties proposes residences, retail businesses and restaurants, and an event center on the once pollution-contaminated shoreline of Fidalgo Bay.

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Bulkheads: protecting property at what cost to the environment?

January 5, 2023
Kai Uyehara
Armoring the shoreline aims to protect property from high tides and erosion — the same natural forces that nourish shorelines for forage fish spawning and juvenile salmon rearing.
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Tacoutche Tesse, the Northwest’s great ghost river — Part 5: The bleeding Heart of the Fraser

January 5, 2023
Eric Scigliano

Gravel beds in the Heart of the Fraser — called one of the “most productive stretches of river on the planet” for spawning fish — are threatened with large-scale wetland destruction.

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Tacoutche Tesse, the Northwest’s great ghost river — Part 4: The death of a thousand cut-offs

December 16, 2022
Eric Scigliano

The plight of wild salmon and the waters that support them is about big issues, but also a lot of little, unassuming places: creeks and sloughs and flooded fields and braided side channels.

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Tacoutche Tesse, the Northwest’s great ghost river — Part 1: Not the Columbia

November 4, 2022
Eric Scigliano

Salish Current is exploring in a series of articles the Fraser River and its rich, varied and threatened life. This week, Part 1: Not the Columbia.

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Researchers, growers face the challenge of acidic ocean water

November 3, 2022
Rena Kingery

Salish Sea waters are acidifying faster than ever before, but researchers in Washington are leading the world in addressing the looming disaster.

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Claims about Nooksack water rights must meet fact test

November 3, 2022
Fred Likkel

Commentary: Collaboration is the only way to solve the twin problems of too little water at one time, too much at another, in the Nooksack Basin.

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Understanding water rights adjudication

October 5, 2022
Rick Eggerth

Commentary: Recent letters to editors and from local officials demonstrate misunderstanding of “water rights adjudication.”

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Collaborate, adjudicate to settle Nooksack water issues

August 4, 2022
Eric Hirst

Summer streamflows in the Nooksack Basin have been declining for decades, while the need for irrigation water grows as summers get hotter and rainfall diminishes.

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Grant to fund collaboration plan for solutions to Nooksack Basin water issues

April 15, 2022
Clifford Heberden

Interested parties hope Solutions Table funding approved by the Whatcom County Council this week will spark collaborative work toward holistic solutions for water availability in the Nooksack River basin.

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Streamside shade: fish and farm advocates struggle to find common ground

February 24, 2022
Lauren Gallup

Salmon recovery is a priority for many in Washington who see vegetated streamside buffers as important to salmon-friendly habitat. But some in the state’s agricultural community see the threat of loss of productive farmland from proposals such as the Lorraine Loomis Act discussed earlier in this year’s legislative session.

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photo: Amy Nelson © 2021

Second phase of fish passage work underway on Padden Creek

May 7, 2021
Mike Sato and Alex Meacham

When work is completed by the fall of 2022, coho, chum and chinook salmon will have access restored to 2.7 miles of Padden Creek from its mouth in Bellingham Bay near the ferry terminal.

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Community Voices / Thoughts on the Puget Sound Partnership and recovering Puget Sound

February 17, 2021
Al Bergstein

An apparent focus on reducing the ongoing costs of recovery of Puget Sound rather than recovery efforts themselves worries some who are concerned about the health of the ecosystem.

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photo: Washington State Department of Ecology © 2020

Community Voices / Whose water is it in Whatcom County?

October 9, 2020
Eric Hirst

This may surprise you: Water, even in wet Whatcom County, is a scarce resource.

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Grassroots groups work to save habitat, keep streams cool for Nooksack salmon

January 7, 2020
Kimberly Cauvel

As local streams get less water from lower snowpacks and grow warmer during hotter summers, some local grassroots organizations are working to reverse or soften the damage to habitat and the fish that rely on colder water.

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