By Larry Vogel
July 15, 2025
Link to My Edmonds News article
The Edmonds Environmental Council (EEC) on Monday filed a formal complaint with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) against the City of Edmonds over what it maintains is an illegal diversion of the lower portion of Perrinville Creek that prevents the return of adult coho salmon.
Citing RCW 77.15.320, the nonprofit EEC alleges that the city’s actions on lower Perrinville Creek amount to an “unlawful failure to provide, maintain, or operate a fishway…which fails to continuously supply…sufficient…water to allow the free passage of fish.”
Perrinville Creek is plagued by very high stormwater flows caused by a combination of steep gradients in its upper reaches, the presence of highly erodible soils, and the cumulative impact of climate change causing increasingly intense rainstorms.
In response to concerns raised by adjacent property owners, in 1994 the city addressed the flooding issue by constructing a high-flow bypass system designed to limit the amount of water crossing over private property and divert it directly into Puget Sound through a 42-inch overflow pipe. The system includes two box-shaped concrete sediment traps designed to capture debris before it enters the overflow pipe and thereby minimize the risk of clogging.
The EEC complaint maintains that this system illegally eliminates adult salmon passage to lower Perrinville Creek, and while the city in 2021 expressed a commitment to restore salmon passage, this has not happened. Instead, the complaint maintains, the city applied for and received Hydraulic Project Approval (HPA) permits from WDFW in 2024, allowing it to maintain these diversions for an additional three years.
“The city committed to fixing this back in 2021, but there have been four summers when the work could have been done,” said Joe Scordino, local fish biologist and EEC spokesperson. He also questions the legality of certain parts of the bypass system – specifically the concrete sediment traps – maintaining that these weren’t properly permitted.
And Scordino said he is losing patience with the delays. Partly in anticipation of the project moving ahead in a timely fashion, Scordino and his volunteers released 4,000 juvenile coho salmon into upper Perrinville Creek at various times during the past three years.
“We expect these fish to return as adult salmon this October when they’ll hit those sediment boxes and bang their heads against the concrete trying to figure a way out, and there isn’t a way out,” he said. “Yes, I’m angry and frustrated.”
According to city officials, this delay was in part the result of a broader plan. It folded improvements to lower Perrinville Creek with 20 other fish passage projects around Puget Sound in partnership with BNSF, the Tulalip Tribes, and the cities of Edmonds, Everett and Arlington. The tribes took the lead in applying for a $37 million grant to cover costs. Approximately $7 million of this would be earmarked for Perrinville Creek, the amount being shared between the City of Edmonds and BNSF.
In anticipation of this grant funding, the City of Edmonds is developing 60% engineering designs for lower Perrinville Creek, which include eliminating the sediment traps, separating stormwater flows from creek flows, diverting stormwater into Puget Sound, and daylighting the lower portion of Perrinville Creek (with the stormwater now removed) that flows through private property. BNSF would be responsible for creating an open bridge under the railroad tracks to replace culvert through which the creek now flows. According to the city, this project “will significantly improve fish passage,” thereby addressing the concerns raised by the EEC.
The city provided a detailed briefing on this project to U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen when he visited the site last October, including maps, photos and diagrams. Read more here.
A decision on the grant was expected earlier this year, but delays at the federal level, the fact that multiple jurisdictions are involved, and the shifting priorities of the current administration have left the applicants “unsure when we might hear back,” according to Acting Edmonds City Engineer Mike DeLilla.
“And this is just the kind of grant funding that the Trump administration is cutting,” Scordino added.
In the meantime, Scordino hopes that the complaint filed on Monday will move WDFW to “enforce the law” and compel the city to address the problem and open lower Perrinville Creek to adult salmon passage sooner rather than later. But there’s the question of paying for it, and with the grant in limbo and the city facing uncertain financial times, funding is uncertain.
Asked for a response to the complaint, City of Edmonds spokesperson Neil Neroutsos said “we are not commenting on a pending legal claim.”