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Snoqualmie - Skykomish River Watershed, King County, Washington

Overview
Snoqualmie-Skykomish Watershed

Griffin Creek, Snoqualmie WatershedKing County has relatively detailed information about major river flood hazard reduction needs in the Snoqualmie/Skykomish watershed. However, the Snoqualmie/Skykomish watershed does not have a basin plan or comprehensive assessment of habitat restoration needs comparable to those in the Cedar, Green, or Sammamish watersheds.

This does not diminish the overall importance of the Snoqualmie/Skykomish watershed in terms of sustaining diverse populations of wild salmon and water quality in the region. The watershed supports wild runs of coho, chinook, pink, chum and steelhead salmon. In the 1980's, the Snohomish watershed (including the Snoqualmie and Skykomish watersheds) supported one third of the wild coho entering Puget Sound on an annual basis.

Habitat in the Snoqualmie/Skykomish watershed has been impacted by flood control practices, road building, development, agriculture and forest practices. In many cases, levees and roads have cut off accrss to side channels and tributaries that provide critical rearing and spawning habitat. Approximately 60% of the banks of the Snoqualmie and Snohomish Rivers have no riparian vegetation other than grass or have a riparian buffer that is only one tree wide. In the Snohomish basin as a whole, almost 30% of the floodplain tributaries have been channelized.

Several planning efforts are underway or have been completed to identify critical habitat, blockages to fish passage and sources of sediment. These include the Snohomish River Basin Fish Mapping Workshop, Snohomish Basin Conditions and Issues Report, Stream Typing completed by Washington Trout, the Waterways 2000 report, the Patterson Creek Reconnaissance Report and Watershed Analyses conducted by Weyerhaeuser and the United States Forest Service for selected tributaries to the Snoqualmie. There is enough information to undertake restoration projects at some sites, particularly where there is blockage to fish passage.

The Snoqualmie/Skykomish basin is still in need of a watershed-wide strategy for habitat restoration.