Dozens of people watched from the shore on Tuesday as a giant excavator plunged its bucket into the last remaining strip of dirt that held back water behind the Bateman Island causeway.
With one strong scoop, muddy water bubbled through a small channel crews dug, disconnecting the popular island from the earthen bridge that linked it to the Richland shore.
Cheers and claps came from the shore, where onlookers watched the muddy water bubble and drop about six inches from behind the causeway to a pool of water in front of it.
“Look at that. That’s cool. The first time we’ve had flow in 80 years,” said Phil Rigdon, superintendent of the Yakama Nation’s Department of Natural Resources.
It took decades of work from a coalition of tribe, state and federal agencies to breach this manmade causeway.
“This is an important step. It's a huge step. (The causeway is) the first obstacle that our fish have when they're returning, and it's the final obstacle to take a lot of mortalities for our juvenile fish trying to get out,” said Joe Blodgett, Yakima Klickitat Fisheries project manager for the Yakama Nation.
The unapproved causeway was built around 1940, likely for farmers to reach Bateman Island. Over the years, the island has served as a hiking, fishing, birding and camping spot for many locals in the Tri-Cities.
It also bottlenecked salmon swimming to and from the Yakima River. Warm waters and low amounts of dissolved oxygen killed off numerous fish. Those poor conditions are exacerbated by climate change. The warm, stagnant waters bred mosquitoes and allowed predators to eat young, migrating salmon.
Removing the 550-foot salmon obstruction is expected to have an outsized effect on salmon all along the Yakima River and its tributaries, Rigdon said.
“ This will be part of our stories our people will talk about and ‘remember when.’ I think that's important,” Rigdon said. “That's an important part of, hopefully, a legacy we leave for (the) future, when sockeye are strong back, and spring chinook and summer chinook.”
However, Blodgett said, this project won’t solve every problem for salmon.
“ It's not the end,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do in the Yakima Basin. So we're not saying this is going to fix the salmon populations, but it's a very big part of our overall objective.”
The milestone was also huge for 8-year-old Sahalie Squeochs.
“ I was thinking it was pretty cool that I got to see it, even though I haven't been alive for the entire project,” she said.
As the water pushed through, 11-year-old Remy Squeochs imagined future salmon swimming through this area.
“ I just thought of all the baby salmon talking to the granddads and grandma salmon, and the grandma salmon and the granddad salmon telling about having it blocked off,” he said.
Crews conducted the work during this time of year so it wouldn’t impact salmon migration.
People can still reach the island by swimming or by boat.
After the water began flowing, crews continued trucking out dirt and boulders, which were used to build up the causeway.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expects the work to continue through mid-February.
