The Puyallup Tribe of Indians is building a library of genetic material from coho salmon to better understand the different populations throughout the Puyallup River watershed.
“The data behind how all these fish are related can give us a pretty clear picture of how many populations are actually here,” said Russ Ladley, resource protection manager for the tribe. “Are populations that have different run timings independent of each other, or do they interbreed?”
A winter coho is sampled for genetic material on the White River, a tributary of the Puyallup.
Winter run coho migrate through the Puyallup as late as February or even March while the earliest run fish are often seen as soon as July. “There isn’t much time when coho aren’t moving into the freshwater to spawn,” Ladley said.
“I would like to collect an adequate sample so we have a background from which to compare,” Ladley said. “I want to know, for example, if the late time coho we see in the White River are different from early coho we see there.”
“Thirty years ago the state Department of Fish and Wildlife sprinkle planted coho fry throughout the watershed, so I would like to find out if the fish are all the same or are still diverse,” he said.
Much of the Puyallup coho’s historic habitat has been degraded in the past century and is still disappearing, making an analysis of interrelationships vital. Coho salmon spend an extra year in freshwater as juveniles compared to other salmon species, making them more vulnerable to declines in freshwater habitat.
For example, low summer flows have been dropping throughout the watershed for decades. “Coho are their most vulnerable when we get to summer low flows,” Ladley said. “Despite a prohibition of new water withdrawals, we’ve seen a continual decline in summer flows because of unregulated wells being allowed to spread across the watershed.”
Low flows reduce the amount of habitat available for coho rearing and can cut fish off completely from valuable habitat. “When it comes down to it, fish need water to survive,” Ladley said.
“Currently, we see a fairly broad range of return timing and coho utilizing habitat from near sea level to 3,000 feet of elevation in Mount Rainier National Park,” Ladley said. “It will be interesting to learn if this is one homogenous stock or whether clear genetic differences exist.”
“This genetic data will give us a clearer picture of exactly how diverse they are, and hopefully give us information we can use to better manage the stock,” he said.
More information on the decline in salmon habitat in the Puyallup River watershed can be found at: http://go.nwifc.org/puyallup and for all of western Washington, here: http://nwifc.org/publications/sow/
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For more information, contact: Russ Ladley, resource protection manager, Puyallup Tribe of Indians, (253) 845-9225. Emmett O’Connell, South Sound Information Officer, NWIFC, (360) 528-4304, eoconnell@nwifc.org
Emergency response on-scene Information Center. Photo: Washington State Patrol.
BY MYNORTHWEST.COM on March 23, 2014 @ 11:10 am (Updated: 8:45 am – 3/24/14 )
Snohomish County’s hotline about reunification, evacuations, and shelters is 425-388-5088.
Residents impacted by the mudslide near Oso are urged to register on the Red Cross website safeandwell.org to list themselves as “safe and well” or to search for other people who are already registered.
You can donate to the Red Cross, any amount is helpful. Call 1-800-RedCross or donate online. You can also text the words RedCross to 90999 and $10 will be charged to your cell phone bill.
Snohomish County says a group of volunteers is helping people affected by the slide move their livestock and pets. The volunteers are located throughout Camano Island, Stanwood, Everett, Arlington and other cities.
Killer whales swimming in Prince William Sound alongside boats skimming oil from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Scientists report that orca populations there have not recovered and oil is still being found. | credit: (State of Alaska, Dan Lawn)
25 years ago today the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, Calif., ran aground in Prince William Sound.
11 million gallons of oil spilled out, polluting 1,300 miles of Alaska’s coastline.
At the time it was the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
Gary Shigenaka and Alan Mearns responded to the Exxon Valdez, and they’ve been studying oil spills ever since. They’re scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle.
They told EarthFix’s Ashley Ahearn about their experience responding to the Exxon Valdez all those years ago.
Alan Mearns: Some places we’d go ashore and you’d see starfish that looked like they were sick, they were just kind of drifting around in the surf. And you could smell the oil too, in the places where there was plenty of it. It smelled like benzene, like you’re pumping gas at the gas station and you sniff that little bit of benzene as you pull the hose out of your car.
EarthFix: Gary, how were orcas impacted by the spill?
Gary Shigenaka: Two groups that frequent Prince William Sound crashed immediately after the spill. So since the time of the oil spill those populations have continued to be monitored and we can follow the trends and for the AB pod — the resident pod – there’s been a slow recovery. For the AT1 group, which is the transient pod, it’s been declining ever since the spill and the orca specialist for Prince William Sound, Dr. Craig Matkin, has predicted that that particular group is going to go extinct. It continues to decline with time. So it’s an unfortunate longterm legacy from the spill.
EarthFix: Some people thought the orcas would swim away, would avoid the oil spill itself, but that wasn’t actually the case, was it?
Shigenaka: What we all thought was that orcas are so smart. They will simply avoid the oiled waters. But we’ve got very good photographic evidence that shows that indeed they did not.
One photograph, an aerial photograph, shows orcas cutting through a slick and you can see where they’ve come to the surface right through the oil. There’s another shot of a pod of orcas right at the stern of the Exxon Valdez, right at the tanker.
EarthFix: What creatures were the most impacted or most harmed by the Exxon Valdez spill?
Mearns: Oh, birds. We’re talking about 200 to 300,000 I think, Gary.
Shigenaka: Yeah.
Mearns: Seabirds, mainly seabirds and some shorebirds. And of course that was the big thing you’d see in the news almost every day: pictures of an oiled bird, somebody picking it up, taking it to a wildlife rehabilitation station where they’d clean them and then hold them until they could be released.
Birds killed as a result of oil from the Exxon Valdez spill. Credit: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.
EarthFix: SO for people who weren’t alive, weren’t reading the paper when the Exxon Valdez spill happened, what were those animals going through? What happens to a bird when it interacts with an oil slick?
Mearns: Well, first of all, even though it’s in the spring and summer it’s still cold up there. If it’s not killed by being smothered by gobs and gobs of oil, if it’s a little bit of oil, it will succumb eventually to things like pneumonia-type diseases and things like that, so it suddenly causes birds that had good insulation not to have insulation and start suffering the effects of cold conditions.
Shigenaka: And the same holds true for another of the iconic wildlife species in Prince William Sound: the sea otters. They insulate themselves with that nice thick fur pelt and they are affected in the same way by oil disrupting their ability to insulate themselves during a spill.
EarthFix: 25 years later, how is Prince William Sound? What species have recovered, how does the place look?
Mearns: Well, 14 or 15 species or resource values have recovered. The recovery started a few years after the spill with things like bald eagles. A number of them were killed off but their population rebounded. The most recent recovery was just announced was of the sea otters that we were just talking about. So between 1991-92 when we started seeing reports of recovery of a few bird species and now we’ve had about 14 or 15 species recover but there’s still some others that haven’t yet.
EarthFix: Which ones are you most concerned about, Alan, or scientists are following most closely with concern?
Mearns: The orcas are really the ones we’re most concerned about now.
EarthFix: Is the oil gone?
Mearns: No. There are still traces of oil in the shorelines. When you go out at low tide and go into some of these back bay areas with gravel and sand overlying bedrock and dig down maybe a foot sometimes you’ll hit spots with oil that is still actually fairly fresh. We’ve encountered that at a few sites that we’ve monitored over the past 25 years.
Shigenaka: That’s been one of the 25-year surprises for us is that there are pockets of relatively fresh oil remaining both in Prince William Sound and along the coast of the Alaska Peninsula and that’s something that I don’t think any of us expected 25 years later.
EarthFix: What did this spill mean for your careers? You guys were both young bucks when this happened. And now, 25 years later, when you look back, what did it mean, the Exxon Valdez?
Shigenaka: I think overall, just the notion that we have a responsibility, both as responders and as scientists to try to communicate what we do and what we know in a way that’s understandable to the people who are affected.
EarthFix: There is more oil moving through this region now – more oil coming from the tar sands of Alberta and coming from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota to refineries here in Washington state. If I talk to you guys 25 years from now, what do you hope we’re talking about?
Mearns: One thing that I worry about and I think Gary has some other things that he worries about is a lot of this new oil is going to be going through the Aleutian Islands, the great circle route, more and more tankers leaving here or in Canada and heading across. And in the Aleutian Islands, we thought Prince William Sound was remote, well the Aleutian Islands are even more remote. Getting equipment there, getting staff, we’ve had a few experiences with spills. I guess I’m concerned that there will be more spills in that region from this increased traffic out there.
EarthFix: Or elsewhere.
Mearns: Yeah.
Shigenaka: 25 years from now I’m hoping that we have a much better handle on how these novel new oils like the tar sands oil and the Bakken crude oil from North Dakota, how they behave in the environment and what their potential impacts are to exposed organisms because frankly right now we don’t really know how the stuff behaves, both types of oil, once it gets loose in the environment and we’re only beginning to understand what potential impacts there might be for the exposed communities.
Gary Shigenaka and Alan Mearns are scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. They responded to the Exxon Valdez spill 25 years ago.
File photo of the fish ladder at John Day Dam on the Columbia River. The fish ladders at the Wanapum and the Rock Island dams are dry. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The ongoing issue with the cracked Wanapum Dam in central Washington is now creating a problem for migrating salmon.
The drawdown of water between the Wanapum and the Rock Island dams to relieve pressure on the crack means the water levels are down about 25 feet at the base of both dams.
That leaves fish ladders high and dry.
Now, government fish scientists and engineers are trying to figure out just how to get adult salmon by both hulking concrete structures. At Wanapum, engineers plan to pump water into the fish ladder and create a sort of waterslide for salmon.
Russell Langshaw, a fisheries scientist with Grant County utility district that owns and operates Wanapum, says record numbers of fish are headed that way, so they have to get it figured out by mid-April.
“We have a lot of fish coming back this year, and we agree it’s an absolute necessity that we have safe and effective passage at both Wanapum and Rock Island dams.”
Langshaw says the smaller, juvenile fish are expected to be fine. They’re going downstream, and can move through the spillways and turbines.
Langshaw also says juvenile bypass systems are still operational at the Wanapum and the downstream Priest Rapids dam to help the small fish get downriver.
Join NPCA on April 19, 2014 as we partner with other environmental groups to remove debris from Washington beaches. Household plastics, garbage and other manmade debris are polluting our ocean, killing our marine wildlife, and spoiling our beaches and collectively we can do something about it!
This is your opportunity to be a part of the largest coastal cleanup event of the year. Last year a combined 1,000 volunteers removed over 15 tons of oceanic garbage!
We will meet at the Kalaloch Campground Saturday morning and carpool to South Beach for coastal debris removal. Olympic National Park is providing free camping at Kalaloch Campground both Friday and Saturday evenings. The event organizers, CoastSavers, will host a barbeque cookout at the campground Saturday afternoon. We encourage everyone to stay and explore the breathtaking coastlines and rainforests found in this area.
Event Details WHAT: Washington Coastal Clean-Up 2013 hosted by CoastSavers. WHEN: The clean-up is Saturday, April 19 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. FREE camping will be available on Friday, April 18 and Saturday, April 19! WHERE: Kalaloch Beach, Olympic National Park. Meet at the Kalaloch Campground in the main parking lot. WHO: Anyone interested–-families welcome! RSVP: Please RSVP to Shannon Brundle, sbrundle@npca.org or 206.903.1444 ext. 704, by Monday, April 14.
OTHER INFO: Remember to bring your work gloves and camping gear if you plan to camp overnight. Food is provided on Saturday at the cookout; please bring your own food and water for the rest of your stay. Also, the free camping is limited and available on a first come, first served basis– plan ahead to make sure you have a site.
Sunny, high 50s, and just a light breeze: It’s a perfect California December morning for rock climbing at the Owens River Gorge and Alex Honnold has just offered to give me a belay — meaning, he’s offered to attend to the safety rope for me on a climb. The official reason I’m here is to get the scoop on Honnold’s environmental foundation. But, for a climber, getting offered a belay by Honnold is probably the closest thing we have to getting thrown a ball by Peyton Manning or LeBron James.
Because his crazy free-solo (climbing without ropes) ascents in places like Zion, Utah, and Yosemite, Calif., have landed him front-page features in Outside, National Geographic, and on 60 Minutes, Honnold has probably done more than anyone else to bring the historically fringe sport of climbing into the U.S. mainstream. When he started climbing full-time in 2005, he got used to living the dirtbag life of a rock-obsessed vagabond on about $8,000 a year. Now, the 28-year-old does stuff like star in commercials for Citibank and Dewar’s Scotch.
So, in considering whether to take him up on the offer to do the climb, I’m intimidated. I step back and tell myself I’m here to learn about what he’s up to away from the crag, anyway. Through his namesake foundation, he’s dropping some of his extra cash into environmental projects like Solar Aid and Grid Alternatives.
He’s bringing a can-do attitude to it, too: Instead of looking down at how far the planet could stumble, he’s looking for the next hold. “I feel like a lot of the traditional environmental stuff is sort of depressing,” he says. “You know, ‘the world is fucked, things are going downhill, we’re going to have to drastically change our lifestyles in order to keep the world from being so fucked.’ I’m not really that pessimistic by nature … There are so many solutions that only take, like, doing it,” Honnold says.
For now, he sees the next handhold as solar power, hence his next trip: a 2.5 week tour he’s embarking on Friday that will combine climbing desert towers, biking, and working for his foundation installing solar panels in Navajo Territory. The Honnold Foundation will work with Eagle Energy to install solar power systems into the homes of 30 Navajo elders who are currently living without access to electricity, and a total of 200 solar lights into five schools.
“There’s something like 18,000 households on reservations there that don’t have access to power,” Honnold told me over the phone recently. “And, in sunny Arizona, especially, solar is the ideal solution. It seems like we should be powering people who are on the grid with it, let alone people who are off the grid.”
For the record, I did suck it up and do the climb. Later in the day, a hush came over the crowded crag — everyone around me was looking up. There was Honnold, at the top of that same climb, totally solo.
Here’s some footage I took of Honnold on the climb:
Honnold and Wright leave for their trip on Friday. Look out for their movie Sufferfest 2.0about it next year.
Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.
Twenty-one tribal energy and mineral projects just got a boost from the Department of Interior, including multiple projects to advance renewable energy on tribal land.
On Friday, the Interior Department announced the 21 tribal projects that would share in $3.2 million worth of federal grants. The projects include 13 proposals for renewable energy, including wind, hydropower and biomass. The recipients also include two oil and gas extraction projects and six projects focused on extracting limestone and other minerals.
“These grants are about strengthening self-determination and self-governance by enabling tribal nations to evaluate and promote their energy and mineral assets, negotiate the best agreements with partners or investors and develop these resources for the social and economic benefit of their communities,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a release
Not all of the tribes know how much money they’ll receive yet, but renewable projects accounted for the largest chunk of grant money at $1,972,350 for the 13 proposals. One of the tribes to receive grant money is the Crow Creek Sioux tribe in South Dakota, which has plans to build a billion-dollar wind farm. Crow Creek leaders hope the farm will provide free electricity to the 2,000 tribe members that live on the reservation and also generate electricity that the tribe could sell to nearby towns. If the tribe gets enough funding to build the project, leaders say it could produce enough energy to power 100,000 to 400,000 homes.
“We never hardly hear good news,” tribe Chairman Brandon Sazue told the Rapid City Journal of the tribe’s grant. “This was one of the greatest pieces of news I have heard since being chairman for Crow Creek.”
The tribe hopes to secure funding in time to start constructing the 150-160 turbine wind farm in early 2016.
Another initiative that secured Department of Interior funding is Montana’s Crow Tribe, which will receive $655,000 to build a hydroelectric facility at an existing dam on their reservation. That project would also provide power to reservation residents and would have the potential of supplying power outside of the reservation as well.
The grants are helping fund some projects that, if completed, would be one of only a few of their kind on tribal lands. There’s only one tribal-run wind farm in the U.S. so far — the Kumeyaay wind farm in California, which produces enough energy to power about 30,000 homes. The Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma is also working to build a 90-turbine wind farm, but that project hasn’t been completed yet. Government initiatives are looking to jump-start renewable energy on tribal land, however — in 2012 the Department of Energy gave away more than $6.5 million to 19 renewable energy projects on tribal lands, and in 2013 the DOE gave $7 million to nine tribes for wind, biomass and solar projects.
On that day, we will set up camp nearby the White House, lighting our fire and burning our sage, and for five days, we will bear proud witness to President Obama’s final decision on Keystone XL, reminding him of the threat this tar sands pipeline poses to our climate, land, water and tribal rights.
This rally gives a voice to the communities that would be most impacted by Keystone XL, and their message is clear–to protect land, water and climate now and for future generations. The Keystone XL would cross several rivers and the Ogallala Aquifer, which would put wildlife, public water supplies and croplands in danger if a spill were to occur, according to the National Wildlife Federation.
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THIS TYPE of alliance is rare. Ever since the encroachment of settlers onto Native lands, many whites and Native Americans have been at odds, whether over water rights, land rights, hunting rights, etc. Settler expansion laid the foundation for the formation of the U.S. nation state to have access to resources and further expand its interest internationally.
Many of those participating in the Cowboy Indian Alliance are fighting to uphold the protections of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 and 1868. The Lakota (Sioux) signed a document with the U.S. government to create the “Great Sioux Reservation,” to include all of South Dakota west of the Missouri River, including hunting grounds in Northern Nebraska, North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. The treaty stated that “no white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion of the [territory]; or without the consent of the Indians, first had and obtained, to pass through the same.”
The federal government signed the treaty before gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1871. The Black Hills are the most sacred piece of land to the Lakota. Mining companies disregarded the 1868 treaty and flooded into the area, under the protection of the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry commanded by Gen. George Armstrong Custer. The U.S. seized the Black Hills and split up the “Great Sioux Reservation” into six smaller reservations in 1877. This culminated with the Wounded Knee Massacre, in which 150 to 300 Lakota men, women and children were slaughtered by the 7th Cavalry.
Now the Keystone XL pipeline would run across this treaty land. The pipeline would not run directly through any Indian reservations, though it comes within feet of them, and it could contaminate the Ogllala Aquifer, the source of water for the whole region. Tribes such at the Rosebud Sioux Tribe (RST) have taken a formal stand against the pipeline. As the Lakota Voice reported:
The Rosebud Sioux Tribal unanimously passed RST Resolution 2014-29, stating that Tribe “objects to and refuses to sign” the amended Programmatic Agreement, a document imposed upon the Tribe by the Federal Government to attempt to meet legally required consultation requirements. Council Representative Russell Eagle Bear said, “It is our job as the Tribal Council to take action to protect the health and welfare of our people, and this resolution puts the federal government on notice.”
The RST is leading a campaign called Oyate Wahacanka Woecun (“Shield the People”), which will set up encampments along the proposed route to resist construction of the pipeline. Gary Dorr of the Nez Perce Tribe called out the Obama administration about its lack of consultation with tribes on MSNBC’s The Ed Show:
I would ask him to look at his own initiative on consultation and these tribes that are all along from Montana all the way down to Texas. We deserve that consultation, we enjoy a special relationship with the United States as a nation-to-nation government.
Basically, the Lakota, like many other Native people see a big infrastructure project like the KXL pipeline, which moves profits from one corporation to another, across their land, as more than a black snake of the fat taker. It is a threat, and there is no new water.
Even state courts are coming down against the pipeline. In Nebraska, a judge last month sided with three property owners who claimed that the state governor’s decision to agree to the pipeline violated the state’s constitution by taking the decision out of the hands of the public service commission that should to review the pipeline.
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THOUGH THE Cowboy Indian Alliance is a rare occurrence, it isn’t the first time Natives and non-Natives have come together to protect their water and land. One clear example is the Black Hills Alliance (BHA) that fought back against uranium mining in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In January 1977–at the same time that the American Indian Movement (AIM) was talking about treaty rights and the Lakota’s rights to the Black Hills at the height of the red power movement–uranium was found in the Blacks Hills. What came to be known as “Custer’s Expedition Part II” began as companies came to drill for profit and to help the U.S. war machine in the midst of the Cold War.
Since the Black Hills is a watershed for much of western South Dakota, Native peoples as well as local ranchers and farmers objected to uranium drilling, because it would pollute and contaminate their drinking water.
This wasn’t only about using land for energy extraction–it was also an attack on Lakota sovereignty, since the U.S. government was willing to sell off mining leases with no contact with the Lakota, much less their consent.
At this time, tensions were high between Native Americans and whites in western South Dakota because of the AIM occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973 and the legacy of assaults on and deaths of Native peoples on the outskirts around reservations.
Bill Means, a prominent AIM member, eventually spoke directly with small groups of ranching families, with the message that if the energy corporations had their way, there would be little water left to fight over. Means said he and other Lakota argued that treaties could be a legal means to challenge the mining. In turn, he came to understand the concerns of ranchers about low cattle prices and contamination from pesticides and herbicides.
Out of these discussions, the Black Hills Alliance (BHA) was founded in 1979, organizing Lakota, ranchers, farmers and local environmental activists together, as the Cowboy Indian Alliance does today. Bruce Ellison, one of the co-founders of the BHA, remembers: “You could feel the tension in the air…ever since white people came [to the region], the corporations have used ignorance to keep the people most in common with each other at each other’s throats. We wanted to avoid that being an available tactic.”
As the organizing continued, people’s ideas started to change. Non-Natives started to see that their struggle was in line with that of the Lakota. Marvin Kammerer was a case in point. His family had been ranching in the Black Hills since the land was stolen from the Lakota. In a New York Times interview, he said:
I’ve read the Fort Laramie Treaty, and it seems pretty simple to me; their claim is justified. There’s no way the Indians are going to get all of that land back, but the state land and the federal land should be returned to them. Out of respect for those people, and for their belief that the hills are sacred ground, I don’t want to be a part of this destruction.
The BHA demanded that any exploration permit had to be voted on by residents in South Dakota, rather than the state government just handing over the leases. As a result of the BHA’s organizing through continuous protest and legal pressure, many corporations were forced to give up their exploration permits. For example, in 1979, Union Carbide’s license from the U.S. Forest Service to dig up Craven Canyon without preparing an environmental impact statement was successfully contested by the BHA.
Uranium mining is still being fought to this day by the people of South Dakota, but the experience of the BHA can guide us to what a multi-racial fight against environmental destruction can look like.
Those who support the Cowboy Indian Alliance’s march to Washington, D.C. to oppose the pipeline can learn from the tradition of the BHA. It is part of the hidden history of struggle that we need to revive in the fights of today.
An increase of acidity in the Pacific Ocean is quickly killing off one of the world’s most beloved shellfish, the scallop, according to a report by the British Columbia Shellfish Grower’s Association.
“By June of 2013, we lost almost 95 per cent of our crops,” Rob Saunders, CEO of Island Scallops in B.C. told Canada’s CTV News.
The cause of this increase in acidity, scientists say, is the exponential burning of fossil fuels for energy and its subsequent pollution. Oceans naturally absorb carbon dioxide, a byproduct of fossil fuel emissions, which causes acidity to rise.
An overdose of carbon in the atmosphere subsequently causes too much acidity in the world’s oceans, Chris Harley, a marine ecologist from the University of British Columbia, told CTV News. Overly acidic water is bad for shellfish, as it impairs them from developing rigid shells. Oyster hatcheries along the West Coast are also experiencing a steep decline,CTV News reports.
“This is a bit of a red flag,” said Harley.
And this red flag has a much bigger impact than one might imagine. “Whenever we see an impact at some level of the food chain, there is a cascading effect at other levels of the food chain,” said Peter Ross, an expert in ocean pollution science.
A recent study warned that ocean acidification is accelerating at a rate unparalleled in the life of the oceans—perhaps the fastest rate in the planet’s existence—which is degrading marine ecosystems on a mass scale.
Ocean acidification has been referred to as the “evil twin” of climate change.
Poertner says that if humanity’s industrial carbon emissions continue with a “business as usual” attitude, levels of acidity in the world’s oceans will be catastrophic.
Lynne Lynch/Columbia Basin Herald Wanapum Reservoir Lowered water levels on the Wanapum Reservoir have brought about issues with public safety and preservation of archaeological sites. A bill recently signed into law protects the archaeological locations from being revealed in public records requests.
OLYMPIA – A bill protecting the locations of tribal burial grounds and other archaeological sites awaits the governor’s signature to become law.
The legislation, which makes information about the locations of archaeological resources unavailable to the public through public records requests, was passed unanimously by the House with 47 votes in favor and two opposed in the Senate.
In Grant County, some shores of the Columbia River in Grant County PUD’s Priest Rapids Project contain artifacts from the Wanapum and other Native American groups that lived and traveled along the river, according to Grant’s website. And lately, artifact protection and public safety have been concerns because of the lowered Wanapum Reservoir, exposing shoreline and resulting in the PUD closing the area to the public. Two human skeletons, believed to be several years old, were recently found after the water was lowered.
“This bill is about respect for our Indian tribes,” main sponsor Rep. Lillian Ortiz-Self, D-Mukilteo, said, speaking before the Senate Committee on Government Operations.
Tribes are reluctant to share sensitive information about where their ancestors might be buried or artifacts could be found. They’re worried about “people who might go digging around,” said Sen. Pam Roach, speaking in favor of the bill before the senate vote earlier this month.
“This bill is to help protect that by making the whereabouts of such objects a little more shielded,” Roach said.
The supporters of HB 2724 hope it will encourage tribes to entrust local governments with more information so they can prevent sites from being accidentally disturbed during development.
Representatives from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, state Department of Ecology, Yakama Nation, Association of Washington Cities, state Department of Archeology and Historic Preservation, and state Department of Natural Resources testified in support of the bill.
Rowland Thompson, of Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, testified with concerns because the bill was drafted too broadly, as it mentions any information and any agency, according to the House Bill Report. “Any agency” should include schools, libraries and museums, Thompson clarified.
He said it could apply to museums or schools, rather than specifically protecting the database of archaeological sites that city developers used.
The bill was amended so property owners can get information about their own property from the state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation (DAHP).
“Perhaps they have some cultural data on their property and they may not know about it, and this allows that to happen,” said Sen. Linda Parlette, R-Wenatchee, who proposed the change.
DAHP preservation officer Allyson Brooks said it was important for landowners to know that the department wouldn’t stop construction because of archaeological finds.
“I think it’s a bit of a myth, a scare, that things will stop, when we all work very hard to keep projects going. A lot of times tribes will come out and do the work for free with property owners,” Brooks said at the senate hearing.
Lawmakers also clarified that the bill relates to information regarding the locations of historical resources shared between tribal governments, state agencies or local governments.
Once signed by Gov. Jay Inslee, the law would go into effect in June.
