Crooked Creek Tributary Culvert Replacement

The Makah Tribe completed the Crooked Creek Tributary Culvert Replacement project to restore stream habitat and watershed processes by removing a barrier culvert. The project is located on a tributary to Crooked Creek, the second largest tributary watershed to Lake Ozette in Clallam County. The project removed a fish-blocking culvert and replaced it with a bridge, opening up at least 1.25 miles of spawning and rearing habitat for coho, steelhead, sockeye, and cutthroat anadromous species. The original culvert had 21 feet of fill material on top of it and had an approximately 6-foot outfall, impeding downstream fluvial processes and upstream fish passage.

The goal of this project was to provide more upstream, functional habitat for coho salmon, sockeye, steelhead and cutthroat trout. The objective is to remove barrier culvert and restore it to pre-disturbance conditions. Removal of this barrier restored hydrologic and fluvial downstream process and make available more than 1.3 miles of upstream habitat for use by anadromous fish species.