Wednesday January 15, 2025
Elkhorn Media Group —
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) officials held a signing on Friday, Jan. 10 at the Corps’ Walla Walla District headquarters to honor a joint project to improve fish passage on Mill Creek.
The project will remove 7 miles of flood control structures the Corps installed in the creek from 1939 to 1943 to protect the City of Walla Walla. Those structures consisted of stream channelization with levees, 250 cross-channel small dams and a concrete channel through downtown Walla Walla.
“Over many years, flood control was the driving force of river management without consideration of the impacts to the natural environment. Public safety and human health are two key goals of the Corps of Engineers, but so is environmental protection and enhancement,” CTUIR Chairman Gary I. Burke said. “The CTUIR has worked with the Corps and other partners to ensure that environmental management and flood control can co-exist. We hope that this project, and others like it in the Walla Walla and Columbia basins will address the damage to fish habitat and passage we’ve seen over the last century understanding that this is a long-term process and continued restoration efforts will be needed in the Walla Walla Basin. It will continue to be important for projects such as this to be carried out to restore and protect the resources important to the exercise of CTUIR treaty rights.”
Burke added that it was fitting the ceremonial signing took place on Jan. 10, being that it was the five-year anniversary of the groundbreaking of the CTUIR’s South Fork Walla Walla Fish Hatchery.