Major milestone for fish passage project along coast

By The Daily World • March 15, 2025 1:30 am
WSDOT Travelers headed to Washington’s Pacific Ocean beaches or around the Olympic Peninsula will need to add extra travel time. This year, construction and maintenance crews will make improvements to sections of U.S. Highway 101, U.S. Highway 12 and state Routes 8, 104, 112 and116 and in Grays Harbor, Mason, Jefferson and Clallam counties. People will travel through multiple work zones that may have reduced speeds and shifted lanes with temporary traffic signals.
WSDOT Travelers headed to Washington’s Pacific Ocean beaches or around the Olympic Peninsula will need to add extra travel time. This year, construction and maintenance crews will make improvements to sections of U.S. Highway 101, U.S. Highway 12 and state Routes 8, 104, 112 and116 and in Grays Harbor, Mason, Jefferson and Clallam counties. People will travel through multiple work zones that may have reduced speeds and shifted lanes with temporary traffic signals.

A project to remove barriers to fish under U.S. Highway 101 and state Route 109 on the Olympic Peninsula just passed the halfway point.

Contractor crews working for the Washington State Department of Transportation have been working through a list of 29 fish passage barriers since 2023. Having recently completed work at the 15th site, crews have turned the corner and are on-target to wrap up the whole project by the end of 2027.

New sites in 2025

Work will focus on U.S. Highway 101 in 2025, with crews preparing a site near Ruby Beach in mid-March. Travelers will soon see daytime, single-lane alternating traffic for tree felling.

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Construction is scheduled to start in the spring. Travelers will encounter eight new work zones across Grays Harbor, Jefferson and Clallam counties. Crews will work to remove barriers to fish under U.S. Highway 101 at six locations between Lake Quinault and the Queets River. Two more work zones will be located between Ruby Beach and Forks.

WSDOT will announce the dates for all work once the schedules are finalized.

What to expect

This spring, crews will build a temporary bypass road at each location. Once traffic is shifted onto the bypass road, temporary signals will alternate traffic one direction at a time. The temporary bypass road keeps people moving while crews dig up the highway.

Once work is complete this fall in Grays Harbor County, new larger culverts will be in place of the outdated culverts that block fish migration. Work at the two sites near Forks and Ruby Beach will pause for the winter. Crews will return in 2026 to complete the new structures there.

Ongoing work

Travelers will also see work resume at a site between Forks and Lake Crescent. Crews will return to the work zone near Wisen Creek Road to build a bridge on eastbound U.S. Highway 101. The westbound bridge was completed in fall 2024.

A separate fish passage project continues at the Jefferson/Clallam county line. Crews expect to complete a new bridge over May Creek in the fall of 2026.

In all, people traveling along U.S. Highway 101 west of Olympic National Park will encounter 10 work zones this summer located between Lake Quinault in Grays Harbor County and Lake Crescent in Clallam County.

Each location will have reduced speed limits, single-lane alternating traffic and temporary traffic lights.