Two small dams on Clear Creek in Pierce County, Washington, relics of a mid-20th-century trout hatchery that no longer operates, are coming out. The removal will reopen a stretch of creek that has been blocked to fish for decades, part of a sweeping, court-ordered effort to restore salmon and steelhead passage across Puget Sound tributaries.
The dams sit on a former state hatchery site south of Pioneer Way East, near the rapidly urbanizing corridor between Fife, Milton and Puyallup. Once they're gone, crews will reshape the creek bed, install large woody material to create natural habitat structure, and replant the banks. The work is tied to the SR 509 corridor project, a major WSDOT highway extension where stream restoration is required to offset new pavement and habitat impacts.
The deeper backstory stretches back to 2001, when a coalition of 21 Northwest tribes sued Washington State, arguing that state-owned culverts and dams blocking salmon violated the Stevens Treaties of the 1850s. A federal judge sided with the tribes in 2013, and in 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that ruling in a 4-4 decision, leaving WSDOT under a court-imposed deadline to fix fish passage barriers in Puget Sound highway right-of-ways by 2030. The state has committed more than $3.8 billion to that effort, producing a wave of culvert replacements and stream restoration projects across the region.
Source: NationGraph.
Clear Creek's hatchery-era impoundments are a small but representative piece of that reckoning. The hatchery model, building ponds and dams to raise fish artificially, has given way to a scientific consensus that restoring wild runs and natural stream processes is more effective. The Puyallup Tribe, which holds treaty fishing rights on area waterways and has been an active participant in fish passage litigation, has a direct stake in what happens here.
This project follows similar work nearby. [Pierce County is also moving to remove the Chambers Creek Dam](articles/pierce-county-moving-to-remove-chambers-creek-dam-and-restore-puget-sound-estuary) to restore a Puget Sound estuary, reflecting how broadly the dam-removal effort has spread across the county.
Interwest Construction, Inc. is the prime contractor on the project, which is listed on the state's bid opportunity portal. With 300 working days allotted, the restoration work is expected to take the better part of a year once construction begins.
