(The Center Square) – The town of Wilkeson knows it may take years before the state puts real money behind rebuilding the Fairfax Bridge — or tearing down the historic gateway to Mount Rainier National Park and buying out the nearby landowners for around $50 million.
But the $7 million environmental review to consider whether that’s feasible might extend the local crisis even further due to some birds.
The Washington State Department of Transportation announced earlier this month that it’s moving into the design and environmental review phase after a study last year resulted in two options. Some other ideas were thrown around, but they would require another few hundred million dollars from the taxpayer.
A proposal filed this week could clear the red tape, but it’ll take a compromise in a divided Legislature.
The 104-year-old bridge was built in an era with far less regulation, and it stood the test of time until the last few decades. WSDOT knew it was deteriorating, but put off preservation work like repainting the structure — citing a backlog of critical infrastructure repairs as it began tackling climate projects.
“The closure has affected nearly every aspect of daily life in Wilkeson,” Mayor Jayme Peloli told The Center Square, underscoring the economic crisis facing the town after WSDOT cut access in April.
Peloli has garnered support from elected officials across the state after her dive into WSDOT records caught the attention of the Office of the Washington State Auditor. She wants to know why the bridge wasn’t a priority, as seniors living on the other side now have to take a long rural detour into town.
According to Explore Washington State, various reports placed the cost of designing and building the existing Fairfax Bridge in 1921 between $80,000 and $500,000. After adjusting for inflation, it ranges from $1.4 million to $8.7 million today. The planning study last year cost the state $1.5 million alone.
“Everyday activities like grocery shopping, medical appointments, school events, deliveries, and basic services now take substantially longer,” she said. “This is not just an inconvenience — it’s isolation.”
Gov. Bob Ferguson has visited the town and seen the impacts. Peloli met with him and U.S. Rep. Kim Scrier last month. A few days later, the governor announced a historic $2.1 billion preservation budget for the next decade. About $1.1 billion would go toward bridge preservation projects, but not this one.
Cara Mitchell, communications manager for WSDOT’s Olympic Region, said WSDOT allocated the $7 million for its design and environmental review during the current 2025-27 biennium. The funding that Ferguson proposed last month is part of his supplemental budget for the 2026 legislative session.
“The state needs to treat this as an infrastructure emergency,” Peloli said, “not a routine project.”
WSDOT says it needs to obtain right-of-way permits from landowners and environmental clearances before drilling along the steep, heavily forested Carbon River Canyon. Those core samples will help determine whether it’s safe to put a bridge foundation there, but collection could take up to a year.
However, WSDOT says even that timeline is dependent on securing permits to cut down some trees.
“Our environmental team has identified the location as habitat for Spotted Owl and Marbled Murrelet,” WSDOT said in a blog. “There are only certain times of the year we can remove trees to avoid nesting for both species. This early engineering work is used to start environmental review for the project.”
Mitchell said WSDOT can’t drill until it obtains Endangered Species Act coverage under a programmatic biological assessment. That would allow the state to drill within the owl and seabirds’ habitats, but any tree removal required to place the drilling rig would have to happen outside of their nesting seasons.
“The nesting season is established by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and begins in March and ends in September,” she told The Center Square. “We work around similar dates on our fish passage projects.”
The drilling work is just a preliminary step, which could take up to a year or longer to complete due to the birds. WSDOT said environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act would come next for both identified options. The state is planning for the federal process to add another two years.
According to a 2008 environmental assessment of Evans Creek ORV Park, which is on the other side of the closure, logging since the start of the 20th century has greatly impacted the northern spotted owl, so much so that the species was “scarce or no longer persists in the planning area due to habitat loss.”
“In the proposed action, the cutting of second-growth trees needed to expand the campground and parking areas would not cause an adverse decline in potential use by the spotted owl or marbled murrelet,” according to the 129-page draft environmental review that Peloli sent to The Center Square.
“You start going down that road, and without some form of environmental waiver via an emergency proclamation, you can delay projects indefinitely,” Rep. Andrew Barkis, R-Olympia, said. “This needs to be expedited. They need to look at every possible way to replace this structure as soon as possible.”
The Republican’s district stretches east from Tenino all the way toward Yakima County, encompassing all of Mount Rainier, Wilkeson and the Fairfax Bridge with it. Barkis said the state needs to declare an emergency over the closure. He was shocked to find out the birds would slow things down even more.
Barkis sits on the House Transportation Committee and helps write the budget. He recently proposed opening the Climate Commitment Act, a cap-and-trade program that hiked the cost of living, to rebuild the bridge; however, Democrats have opposed using the revenue for projects unrelated to the climate.
The Department of Commerce admitted earlier this month that the state’s climate emission reporting for around eight recent projects was highly inaccurate. The data overinflated the impact by more than 90%, leading Republicans to call for spending the billions of taxdollars from the CCA on other projects.
Barkis proposed a bill that would waive much of the red tape and direct CCA revenue to rebuilding the Fairfax Bridge. However, he filed another bill earlier this bill that eliminates references to the CCA.
Peloli posted a screenshot on Thursday of a Facebook comment from Barkis explaining the changes.
“It’s a complicated process moving legislation. After dropping [House Bill] 2149, discussions ensued,” Barkis explained. “In order to achieve a hearing and to get the process of the bridge replacement moving, I agreed to remove the reference to a direct appropriation of funds in the original bill.”
His new proposal, House Bill 2645, is essentially the same as the original but doesn’t allocate funding.
Barkis says he requested a hearing and was “told” that the House Transportation Committee, chaired by Rep. Jake Fey, D-Tacoma, would conduct one. He said the funding discussion is ongoing and could involve multiple sources. If the bill or negotiations fail, it could leave Wilkeson right where it started.
“We have lots of bridges, and we need to make investments,” Fey said at a press conference when asked about bridge preservation on Jan. 9. “And I would hope that we would set it up so that we target bridges and have it so that citizens know which bridges are going to get fixed and when.”
WSDOT says it has 342 bridges that are at least 80 years old, despite 75-year lifespans. There are 33 that currently need to be replaced, with that rising to 80 over the next 10 years. The department says that it didn’t have enough funding to repaint the Fairfax Bridge to extend its life, but Barkis disagrees.
“I keep hearing that the Legislature has not done an adequate job in funding to do this,” Barkis said.
“There is a spotlight being shown on this that highlights 20-plus years of neglect by the agency,” he told The Center Square. “I don’t remember ever seeing a request come across my desk that said, we need X amount of dollars for the Fairfax Bridge. … why did it fall off the list of a high priority?”
Barkis said this is a state-owned bridge sitting on a state highway. The closure is cutting off access to a significant portion of the national park, and Wilkeson’s economy is suffering from the loss of tourism.
Whether it’s a temporary pre-fabricated bridge or something more permanent, he wants this fixed now.
“Local businesses have lost pass-through traffic and spontaneous stops,” Peloli told The Center Square, “which is especially damaging for small, rural businesses that rely on seasonal and weekday visitors.”
“Emergency response to Fairfax has become more complex and more fragile without a direct crossing, requiring additional coordination and contingency planning,” the mayor continued. “Recreational access into the Carbon River corridor has been cut off, significantly reducing tourism and outdoor use.”
She said WSDOT hasn’t provided a detailed schedule or milestones, or indicated when drilling would begin, beyond what was included in the planning study. She plans to testify on Senate Bill 5987, which mirrors Barkis’ original proposal with references to the CCA, next Tuesday. More than 40 others have already signed in ahead of the hearing to show their support as momentum builds in both chambers.
Peloli said passing these bills is a critical step to accelerate the preliminary work and start drilling.
“Even as overall transportation spending has increased, this situation highlights what happens when maintenance and preservation are consistently deprioritized until the only option left is closure,” she said. “The focus now needs to be on changing that approach so rural communities aren’t left carrying the consequences of long-term neglect. Wilkeson should not become a cautionary tale for the next town.”
