The old White River fishway is older than me, so it's been in need of replacement for years. Unfortunately it took thousands of dead pink salmon and a few dead ESA-listed Chinook salmon to provide the "political" motivation to prioritize a new upstream passage fishway. I don't know if a run of one million pinks will ever return to the White River again, but if they do, at least the fish passage facility will be good enough and efficient enough to handle them. Having worked on the project for a long time, it's nice to see project construction about to begin. It will be even more satisfying to see it completed.

As for White River spring Chinook, I don't know if recovery to harvestable numbers of naturally self-sustaining springers is possible. So far it's proving difficult to get even one NOR per natural spawner, let alone more than one, which is necessary before there can be harvestable fish. I think that the south Sound springers, kinda' like Stillaguamish Chinook, may require very long term (100 years or more) hatchery supplementation to keep them around. If that is the case, then a management protocol should be developed around the productivity that is realistic and not the productivity that is just hoped for. Hope does't produce salmon.