Washington's U.S. Sen. Patty Murray is raising the alarm over a new spending plan by the Trump administration that doesn't include $500 million in funding for a fish-passage project on the Green River near Seattle.
Murray and others have for decades advocated for fish passage for threatened Chinook salmon at the federally owned Howard A. Hanson dam. They may need to wait even longer.
Under a Biden administration earmark, the project was to receive $500 million in funding in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers construction budget, but the work plan proposed this week by the Trump administration has zeroed out the project, according to Murray.
"I am furious that this administration plans to unilaterally defund construction on the Howard Hanson Dam ... This is a staggering betrayal ... and a tremendous, unacceptable setback in the important work to safeguard our water supply, protect our communities from dangerous flooding, and save our salmon," Murray said in a news release.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell also said funding for the project is essential and criticized the cut.
"Constructing fish passage at Howard Hanson Dam was key to reopening at least 60 miles of prime salmon and steelhead habitat, nearly doubling Green River spawning grounds for endangered salmon and steelhead," said Cantwell. "Withholding funding for this project is a stab in the back to tribal, commercial, and recreational fishing families. It also amounts to an abandonment of our commitment to tribal treaty rights, and ignores federal law intended to protect salmon."
The Seattle district office of the Corps of Engineers did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the funding.
Murray, a Democrat, has been among a bipartisan chorus of Washington lawmakers pressing the Corps, which built and operates the earthen embankment dam, to make fish passage a priority. Murray helped secure $220 million for the Howard Hanson Dam Fish Passage Facility Project through funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2022, and an additional $50 million to help the Corps continue design and award the construction contract.
Murray secured in the fiscal year 2025 appropriations bill she wrote as Chair and passed through committee in August 2024, as well as in House Republicans' fiscal year 2025 bill. The funding was needed for the Army Corps to execute a construction contract option this year, allowing construction to begin in 2026 as scheduled
The dam is on the Green River, which flows from the Cascade Mountains north of Mount Rainier. It meanders through Flaming Geyser State Park, Auburn, Kent and then on to Tukwila, where it becomes the Duwamish, Seattle's only river. The upper Green River has been inaccessible to Chinook and coho salmon and steelhead since the Tacoma Headworks Diversion Dam went into operation in the 1910s.
The diversion dam, about 3 miles downstream of Howard Hanson, has been upgraded to allow adult salmon to be trucked above the dams to the upper watershed once the Howard Hanson fish passage project is complete. But until then, salmon remain blocked from about half of the Green River — and all of its best remaining habitat.
The Howard Hanson Dam, completed in 1962, is intended to reduce flood risk in the Green River Valley, where in the past floods were a more regular occurrence. In the 70 years before construction, the valley flooded more than 30 times, heavily damaging lands and buildings.
Murray's comments were in response to the release Thursday of the Corps' work plans, detailing how it will spend the funding provided by Congress under Republicans' yearlong continuing resolution for fiscal year 2025.
The plans show how Trump's Army Corps of Engineers intends to zero out or significantly cut funding for essential projects in Washington state and across the country, according to Murray's office.
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