Hamm Creek comeback
- John Beal reported that his 27-year restoration of Hamm Creek in the Seattle/Duwamish area succeeded in bringing salmon back after cleanup. (x.com) - Beal chronicled nearly three decades of habitat work that culminated in fish returning to the restored creek. (x.com) - The account documents how long-term local remediation and habitat work can result in urban-stream salmon recovery. (x.com)
Salmon are again using Hamm Creek in South Seattle after decades of cleanup and habitat work reopened part of the stream to fish. (kuow.org) John Beal, a Vietnam veteran who lived near the creek, began the effort after doctors told him he had only months to live following a series of heart attacks. He spent the next 27 years working on Hamm Creek and the Duwamish watershed before his death in 2006. (historylink.org) Hamm Creek had been pushed into a ditch and culvert after dredge spoils were piled on the site from the early 1950s through 1971. That outfall reached the Duwamish in a way fish could use only at higher tides, cutting off regular passage. (srp.rco.wa.gov) Restoration crews rebuilt about 2,300 feet of stream bed and channel and added a one-acre estuarine marsh where fresh water meets salt water. King County said the new channel included meanders, fish pools, large woody debris, and a fish-passable connection to the Duwamish Waterway. (kingcounty.gov) That kind of marsh matters for salmon because young fish need slow, sheltered water as they move from creeks into bigger tidal rivers and then Puget Sound. Hamm Creek sits on the Lower Duwamish, a heavily industrialized stretch where habitat has been scarce for decades. (kingcounty.gov; epa.gov) The wider river is still under cleanup. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in March 2026 that a proposed settlement would fund a cleanup of the five-mile Lower Duwamish Waterway, with work estimated at about $668 million and expected to take at least 10 years. (epa.gov) Beal’s work has remained a touchstone in the watershed long after his death. At a Duwamish Alive! event on April 18, 2026, organizers again told volunteers that he turned to Hamm Creek after that medical prognosis and gave his name to the coalition’s environmental stewardship award. (westseattleblog.com) Older accounts described the turnaround in plain terms: by the mid-1990s, salmon were returning to Hamm Creek and native plants were rebounding along cleaned-up banks. The creek is still a small urban tributary, but it now stands as one of the earliest visible habitat recoveries on Seattle’s only river. (archive.seattletimes.com; epa.gov)
