Salmon and steelhead will soon gain access to more than five miles of additional habitat near Carnation.

Washington Department of Transportation contractor crews from Northwest Construction, Inc. will replace the culvert that channels Langlois Creek starting the night of Sunday, Aug. 26. The work will require a three-day full closure of State Route 203 between Langlois Lake Road and Northeast 32nd Street.

“We typically do this type of work over the weekend,” WSDOT Project Engineer, Dave Lindberg, said in a press release. “But after talking with the community, a midweek closure just made sense with all the tourism they see on the weekends.”

Closure details and detoursSR 203 south of Carnation will be closed to all traffic from 8 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 26 to 5 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 29.

A signed detour will help people navigate around the closure using SR 202 and nearby local roads.

Improving fish passage

Replacing the existing narrow 30-inch diameter culvert with a new 18-foot box culvert will improve stream flows for local salmon and steelhead, opening up about five and a half miles of new fish spawning habitat. The existing culvert channels water in a way that makes it too shallow or too strong for fish to travel upstream during certain times of the year.

The Langlois Creek fish passage is one of 1,000 culverts statewide affected by a 2013 U.S. District Court ruling requiring the removal of state-owned culverts that act as a barrier to salmon and steelhead by 2030.

This $1.5 million project is paid for through pre-existing funds and from the Connecting Washington package.