Key Findings

1. Progress on recovering salmon populations across Washington state is very slow or, in some places, nonexistent. 
2. Permits and other regulatory barriers are often cited by local salmon recovery project managers as creating roadblocks to finishing projects efficiently and on time.
3. Modeled on “regulatory sandboxes” found in more than a dozen other states, a salmon recovery accelerator would allow project managers to request specific regulatory relief from state agencies.
4. The accelerator office works with the agencies to either provide relief, reject regulatory changes, or find an alternative approach to mitigating the regulatory barrier.
5. Grants of regulatory relief are temporary and may be rescinded if necessary. 
6. Empowering salmon recovery project managers and regulatory agencies to accelerate projects would help ensure projects are completed quickly and allow the state and local watersheds to respond to emergencies where delay would be damaging.
7. Several other states already have similar programs, allowing Washington to learn from their experience.

Introduction

Across Washington state, salmon populations continue to struggle, with few watersheds making progress toward recovery. The State of Salmon in Watersheds report from Governor Inslee’s Salmon Recovery Office notes, “No salmon species have been removed from the federal Endangered Species Act list in Washington and most of the species on the list are in crisis or not keeping pace with recovery goals.” 

The problems are not limited to just one part of the state. In Puget Sound, between 2004 and 2019, there were declines in the number of spawning salmon in 16 of the 22 Chinook populations. As a result, the state badly missed its 2020 goal for Puget Sound to begin to show improvements in wild Chinook populations in each of the five biogeographical regions.

The simple truth is that progress on salmon recovery is too slow. That is creating tension between groups who have turned to fighting for their share of a shrinking fish population.

Washington state needs to get salmon recovery back on track. Central to that effort is to put more control in the hands of local salmon recovery organizations. Ask those on the ground about the problems they face and they will invariably mention state permitting and other regulatory roadblocks. Helping reduce or eliminate those roadblocks is an important step in helping complete habitat restoration for salmon quickly and effectively. 

HB 2193 would use the model of a “regulatory sandbox,” used by more than a dozen other states, to identify unnecessary regulatory barriers and empower state agencies to temporarily waive or mitigate them. This new tool would allow project managers and regulators to work together to identify and solve problems in real time, rather than having to wait years for legislative action. 

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