A Waashat service was held before the public commemoration in Richland, Wash., April 24, drawing tribal chairs, agency leaders, elected officials and Corps engineers to the site of an 85-year-old barrier that tribal experts have long warned was harming the river and salmon.
Attendees representing Big River chiefs, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, and Yakama Nation fisheries and outreach staff survey the removed Bateman Island Causeway during the ‘Reconnection of Chamna: Healing the Yakima River Delta’ ceremony, held April 24 in Richland, Wash. The unsanctioned structure, built in 1939, had blocked fish passage and generated harmful sediment buildup and water temperatures detrimental to salmon survival. Removal began January 5, marking the culmination of nearly a century of effort led by the Yakama Nation — whose Tribal Ecological Knowledge had long maintained that obstructing water flow harms fish and the river as a whole, a conclusion western science took more than half a century to confirm. ▣ J Gavin/CRITFC
Ceremony Rooted in Tribal Ecological Knowledge
Drumming and songs broke the early morning stillness at Chamna—the Sahaptin name for the confluence of two of the great salmon rivers of the Pacific Northwest, the Yakima and Columbia. Tribal leaders and invited U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officers and state officials to join in a private Waashat service with them. With these songs, they honored the river that now freely flowed past Bateman Island in Richland, Wash. after being blocked for 90 years. They honored the salmon, that would now pass the restored location on their migration. And they honored the years of work by the tribes, Corps of Engineers, and state agencies to make it possible.
The April 24 ceremony was the opening of a full day of celebration hosted by the Yakama Nation to commemorate the federally approved removal of the Bateman Island causeway, a structure built without authorization that had blocked one of the delta channels for 90 years.
The Reconnection of Chamna: Healing the Yakima River Delta, marked the conclusion of a decades-long effort by Northwest tribes to correct what their many letters, calls for action, and work described to the Corps as both an environmental harm and unauthorized trespass on Washington State lands sacred to the Yakama Nation and Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR).
Jaime Pinkham, CRITFC Senior Advisor, expresses gratitude at the project’s completion — more than five years after first being assigned to it during his tenure at the Pentagon. ▣ J Gavin/CRITFC
Jaime Pinkham (Nez Perce), a senior advisor at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC), reflected on the morning service, “How often do you find a director of a state fish and game agency, two tribal chairs, and the lieutenant colonel from the Army Corps of Engineers standing on the same ground?”
Pinkham continued, “When you have healthy ecosystems intimately connected to human wellbeing and community identity and values like we see here, we will witness the human relationships between the natural world and see the fullness of our worship, community resilience, justice and fairness, including solemn guarantees between sovereigns.”
Toby Patrick (CTUIR), Member-at-Large for the CTUIR Board of Trustees, said in his remarks, “It’s a good day for our land and water and for our people, to work together for the land and all that is on it.” Patrick worked on the project as a Cultural Resource Committee delegate with Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes.
Almost a Century of Harm
Zelda Winnier, Yakama Nation Language Program Community Outreach Coordinator, applauds solemnly as she surveys the removed causeway that had blocked fish passage and generated harmful sediment buildup and water temperatures detrimental to salmon survival.▣ J Gavin/CRITFC
Around 1939, someone built the 550-foot earthen causeway to connect Richland to Bateman Island, a quarter-square-mile island at the confluence of the Yakima and Columbia rivers. The causeway turned the southern channel into a dead end that tribal nations documented and formally complained about for years.
Aja DeCoteau is the executive director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, the fisheries technical support and coordinating agency for fishery management policies of the Yakama, Umatilla, Warm Springs, and Nez Perce tribes. “Salmon returns to the Yakima River once numbered more than half a million fish a year. Fishers from the villages all along the Yakima caught plenty of salmon to feed their families and communities. Today, Yakima River salmon returns are only 2% of those historical numbers.”
For the already struggling Yakima Basin salmon, the conditions at the river mouth created by the causeway was a final hurdle to many of the smolts migrating to the ocean didn’t survive.
“[The causeway] creates a complete blockage of the channel … resulting in stagnant water and increases the presence of algae due to higher water temperatures … and is a refuge for introduced non-native fish species such as smallmouth bass, walleye, and catfish that have a high rate of predation on the out-migrating salmon smolts,” the CTUIR Board of Trustees wrote in a 2017 letter to the Walla Walla District Corps of Engineers.
The Yakama Nation, writing to the Walla Walla District, described conditions created by the causeway as “perennially lethal to Yakima River salmon and steelhead populations.”
Both tribes urged the Corps of Engineers to remove the causeway to address the issue. Yakama Nation modeling determined that causeway removal would produce “higher flows and lower temperatures in the estuary, both of which would benefit salmon.” CTUIR advocated to remove the causeway as quickly as possible, writing “the current extended timeframe will continue to have adverse effects on salmon survival.”
Federal Studies Confirm Tribal Findings
Prompted by tribal pressure to respond to the situation, federal and state agencies began evaluating the situation, both impact of the causeway on river and salmon health as well as developing options to address the harm. These scientific assessments confirmed what the tribes had been reporting for years.
The NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service identified long-term benefits of removal including reduced predation across at least 400 acres of delta, improved quality of rearing habitat across at least 400 acres, and improved passage for adult and juvenile fish between the Columbia and Yakima rivers— projections that closely paralleled what tribal had argued for years.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Yakima River Final Feasibility Study with Integrated Environmental Assessment, published in September 2024, evaluated a number of possible options to address the problem, including Alternative 3A: full removal of the causeway.
The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC), in its public comment letter supporting that selection, wrote that Alternative 3A “promises to improve the ecosystem function of the Yakima River delta by remedying the stagnant backwater environment that resulted from blocked flow south of Bateman Island.”
A CTUIR comment letter underscored the limits of partial solutions as opposed to removing the entire causeway. “Lamprey, one of the tribal First Foods which is relied on culturally by the tribes, are not strong swimmers,” the letter stated. They noted that the difference in water velocity between a 500-foot channel and a 250-foot channel created by partial removal “may potentially have an impact on lamprey migration” and that “every incremental step to improve habitat is critical.”
Ultimately, the Corps selected Alternative 3A, as the preferred plan. This finally set in motion the actual work of bringing in the heavy machinery and sediment boom safeguards to begin removing the causeway and free the river on the morning of January 13.
Celebrating the Success
With the work of removing the main causeway completed and the river once again flowing freely through the south channel, the Reconnection of Chamna event was a way of giving thanks and gratitude to all the hard work and partnerships that made it possible.
Lt. Col. Kathryn Werback of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers delivers remarks during the Reconnection of Chamna Ceremony, celebrating the river and land’s restoration while calling on federal and state agencies to rebuild their relationships with the original stewards of the land — tribal governments and, most importantly, their community members.▣ J Gavin/CRITFC
“We’re here not only here to celebrate the success, but something that is far more enduring. And that is partnership, restoration, and reconnection. Reconnection to the river, to the land, and to the communities who have stewarded this place since time immemorial,” Lt. Col. Kathryn Werback of the Army Corps of Engineers said in the opening remarks at the commemoration. “On behalf of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, I want to express my sincere gratitude to Yakama Nation for your partnership, your trust. We are honored to work beside you,” she said.
Kat Brigham, Board of Trustees Chair for the CTUIR, framed the effort in intergenerational terms. “Our fish don’t stop when it comes to the state or federal boundary; they continue to go and travel the system just like our water and all our natural resources. Therefore, we all need to work together to restore our environment,” she said. “We aren’t fighting for today, we’re fighting for tomorrow. We are always thinking of our children and our children’s children.”
Yakima County Commissioner Amanda McKinney, District 1, tied the project to broader regional priorities. “The ones who receive my support in the future are going to be the ones who understand systems of connectivity,” she said. “It is critical, water is life for our basin, and it is vital to every aspect of our lives.”
David Blodgett, Yakama Nation Fisheries Program Manager, acknowledged the generational nature of the work. “Since the causeway was put in in 1939, I know there are generations of biologists working for all our agencies who have thought about this, who worked hard, and who built that science,” he said. “This is in honor of those who came before us and laid down this path for this great work for us to accomplish and get it across the finish line.”
Tribal council chairs from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and Yakama Nation, elders, fisheries staff, county commissioners, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officers, and tribal and federal project engineers gather during the Reconnection of Chamna Ceremony, marking the culmination of an effort the Yakama Nation had pursued since an unsanctioned causeway was built in 1939. Western science took more than half a century to confirm what Tribal Ecological Knowledge had long maintained, that obstructing water flow harms fish and the river as a whole.▣ J Gavin/CRITFC