Paving begins of access road to fish weir in Cedar at Cedar River Park

By Dean Radford • May 22, 2009 8:35 pm
Workers finished paving the road Tuesday to the Cedar River that will provide access to a fish weir Seattle Public Utilities and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife will install again this fall in the river.
Workers finished paving the road Tuesday to the Cedar River that will provide access to a fish weir Seattle Public Utilities and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife will install again this fall in the river.

Paving of the access landing to the Cedar River near Cedar River Park that Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) will use to reach a fish weir that traps returning sockeye salmon was completed Tuesday.

Work on the project had stopped for about three weeks so that engineers could redesign some of the utility work at the project, according to Shaunie Cochran, the senior engineer on the project for SPU.

Seattle also changed the type of concrete it used for the access road. SPU dropped its plan to use porous concrete after it was decided that sediment would fill up the voids; instead, the city used regular concrete, which is also less expensive, according to Cochran.

“That would give us a better long-term product,” she said. “The public is getting the performance that it’s paying for.”

Also, the city paved with concrete all the way up to the Cedar River Trail, rather than use asphalt for part of it, she said.

The project will cost SPU about $210,000.

The public also will use the access road to reach the river for recreational purposes.

But the main purpose of the access is so that workers can reach the fish weir that Seattle and the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife will again install this fall. The fish weir traps returning adult sockeye salmon that will serve as brood stock for Seattle’s fish hatchery upriver at Landsburg.

The fish weir made its first appearance just upriver from the I-405 freeway last fall, but workers had to haul the fish up a crude trail to waiting transport trucks to Landsburg.

Seattle also will install an informational kiosk and viewing area across the river in Cedar River Park to explain the access road and the purpose of the fish weir. Right now, the grass is dug up in the park where the kiosk will go.