For Immediate Release

November 29, 2001

GAO CRITICAL OF FEDERAL AGENCIES’ ROLE
IN ASSURING FISH PASSAGE ON NW STREAMS

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a strongly-worded report, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) criticized federal land management agencies for assigning a low priority to restoring fish passage through faulty or damaged culverts in the Pacific Northwest, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks said Thursday.

            The congressman, who serves as the ranking Democratic member of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, said he had asked GAO investigators to review the efforts of the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to assure that threatened and endangered species of salmon and steelhead in the Northwest can pass through culverts along roadways on these federal lands. The congressman asked GAO to analyze the two agencies’ concern for the Endangered Species Act mandate to protect these fish along the 122,000 miles of roads that use culverts to allow water to flow from one side of the road to the other.

            In responding to Rep. Dicks, GAO concluded that both agencies have relegated work on culverts to such a low priority that eliminating the backlog of culverts that present barriers to fish passage will take 25 years on BLM lands and more than 100 years on Forest Service lands.

            “That magnitude of delay is simply unacceptable, and it calls into question the federal government’s own ability to adhere to the Endangered Species Act requirements for fish protection,” said Rep. Dicks.

            “GAO has outlined for me the extent of the problem on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest, and the results of this report indicate that we must seriously realign the priorities of the BLM and the Forest Service to address this problem that renders much of our other fish protection and habitat restoration actions in the region less effective,” he continued.

            The investigative report identified almost 2,600 culverts that currently act as barriers to fish passage on Forest Service and BLM lands in the northwest, and it estimated that up to 5,500 barrier culverts may exist.  The report noted: “Historically, agency engineers designed culverts for water drainage and passage of adult fish.  However, as a culvert ages, the pipe itself and conditions at the inlet and outlet can degrade such that even strong swimming adult fish cannot pass through the culvert.”

            In addition to criticism about the pace of the agencies’ efforts to improve fish passage along these roads, the GAO investigators found that neither the BLM nor the Forest Service was systematically monitoring the restoration projects that had been completed in recent years along 171 miles of fish habitat.  “[B]ecause neither agency requires systematic monitoring of these completed projects, the actual extent of improved fish passage is largely unverified,” GAO wrote to Rep. Dicks.

            “Most significantly,” the GAO report said, “the agencies have not made sufficient funds available to do all the culvert project work that is necessary.”

            Rep. Dicks said he will be meeting immediately with the heads of both agencies to prod them to address these problems more effectively and expeditiously.

            [To read a complete copy of the GAO report to Rep. Dicks, click on this link:  http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02136.pdf]

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