For Immediate Release

January 22, 2004

ADDITIONAL FEDERAL AID APPROVED
TO ADDRESS HOOD CANAL SALMON PROBLEMS

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Final approval of a multi-agency appropriations bill in Congress today will mean a major boost in federal assistance to study the causes of the diminished levels of dissolved oxygen in Hood Canal, threatening the health of the area salmon population, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks said Thursday.

            In late October, the House and Senate agreed to allocate $350,000 within the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey to conduct a “mortality study” of the fish affected by the oxygen problem in Hood Canal.  The second increment of federal aid, approved today, will be an allocation of $500,000 from the State and Tribal Assistance Grant account in the appropriations bill that funds the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Rep. Dicks said.

            “This appropriation will support the work that the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority is doing to explore the reasons so many fish are dying in the Canal,” Rep. Dicks said.  “These federal funds will be used in coordination with state resources and private organizations that have joined together to address the problem, which has already resulted in a month-long closure of the Hood Canal fishery last fall,” he added.

            The congressman, ranking Democratic member of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee,  said the Water Quality Authority will be engaged in an intense effort to determine how and why the conditions in the Canal have become so inhospitable for salmon and other marine life.

            These funds, he said, are in addition to another increment of federal funding that will address the threatened salmon runs elsewhere in Washington State waters.   A total of $26.27 million will be allocated to Washington from the four-state West Coast Salmon Recovery Program within the Department of Commerce/NOAA budget.  Of this amount, $4 million will support the tribal component of the Washington State “Timber, Fish and Wildlife” program.  Another $1.8 million from that amount will support an effort launched by Rep. Dicks purchase automated machinery to identify hatchery-raised salmon.  Using these “mass marking machines,” developed in Washington State, hatchery-raised salmon can be visibly distinguished by clipping their small, unused adipose fin.  Rep. Dicks said this is a creative method of conducting a selective catch of salmon stocks in order to protect threatened and endangered species.

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