The Seattle Times | Bill could lift decades-old funding lockout for Nisqually fish hatchery
By: Anumita Kaur
WASHINGTON — Once-abundant groundwater has dwindled at the Nisqually Clear Creek Hatchery near Olympia. Now, the hatchery needs drilled wells and water pumps to sustain the facility’s millions of Chinook and coho.
But the Nisqually Tribe struggled for years to find funds to maintain the site, according to David Troutt, the Nisqually Indian Tribe’s director of natural resources.
Though the hatchery sits on Nisqually land and is run by the tribe, it belongs to the federal government — a legal technicality that shuts the tribe out of key federal grant funding and hinders the tribe’s ability to adapt the facility to the changing climate.
New federal legislation attempts to remove this barrier. U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Tacoma, introduced the Nisqually Clear Creek Hatchery Land Transfer Act, in March, which would formally transfer ownership of the hatchery to the tribe.
Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray have sponsored a twin bill in the Senate. While neither bills have advanced yet — both must clear committee hearings and pass votes in each chamber — their introduction represents a hopeful first step toward eliminating a bureaucratic hurdle and ensuring the hatchery’s future, Troutt said.
“The tribe is very pleased that our delegation took this up,” Troutt said. “We produce about 3 to 4 million Chinook a year, and about a million coho, and those benefit the Nisqually Indian Tribe and other nontribal fisheries, so the Clear Creek Hatchery is a pretty big deal, not only for us, but others as well.”
Despite presenting a yearslong quandary, it was a clear aim for Strickland, she said.
“It’s on tribal property, they should own it,” Strickland said, adding that ownership would not only align with the tribe’s responsibility of operating and maintaining the facility, but give them access to funding to help cover those costs.
The Nisqually Clear Creek Hatchery was established in 1991 as a partnership between the Nisqually Tribe and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a major collaboration stemming from the Boldt decision, which designated tribes natural resource co-managers alongside the state.
Between 1980 and 1987, Troutt said, the tribe went back to Congress several times to obtain funding for the facility’s design, engineering and eventual construction.
“But during the debate for the construction costs, the state was extremely concerned that this was such an ideal spot, that if for some reason the tribe was not able or interested in running the hatchery in the future, that the state would have to step in and run the facility,” said Troutt, the tribe’s natural resources director since 1987.
They had concerns at the time, he said, “but we figured we could make it work.”
It wasn’t an ideal arrangement. The tribe struggled to maintain a large, complex facility without access to grants from agencies like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which require tribes to own the facilities for which they seek funding. Efforts to challenge that technicality proved unsuccessful, prompting the tribe over the last decade to focus on transferring ownership of the hatchery.
“We’ve been having a number of conversations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and with the administrations over time and never running into any roadblocks, but never running into anybody who was willing to put it as one of their top agenda items,” Troutt said, “until Congresswoman Strickland came on board and identified this with the tribe as one of our higher priorities.”
The Nisqually Reservation is in Strickland’s 10th Congressional District, which stretches from Tacoma to Olympia. In September 2024, Strickland toured the hatchery, where tribal leaders described ongoing funding challenges.
“If you look at the facility itself, you can definitely tell that it needs some more updated maintenance,” she recalled. “You know, it’s very much doing its job, but it definitely needs to be updated and modernized.”
“I can’t tell you about why this didn’t happen before, but I had a chance to meet with the tribe and they described this as a priority,” Strickland said, “I said, ‘OK, let’s take some action and get detached into the rightful hands of the owners.’”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — which declined to comment — will have to provide official documentation acknowledging the transfer, Strickland said. Then the bill will need to work its way through the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works before hitting the House and Senate floors for votes.
“These kinds of things typically have bipartisan support. There’s nothing controversial about it. People on both sides of the aisle say that they support tribal treaty rights,” Strickland said. “This is about their livelihood, and so I am hopeful that every single member of the Washington state delegation, including Republican colleagues, will sign on to this.”
Cantwell said the legislation will ultimately bolster salmon populations. “The Nisqually Tribe has long been a leader in bringing more salmon back to the Nisqually River and protecting the entire watershed,” she said. “The Clear Creek Hatchery is a keystone of these efforts.”
For Troutt, this is a milestone — but still only a marker in a longer road ahead.
“We’re not going to feel relieved until it passes and gets the signature of the president,” he said.