College earns Vision 2040 Award; students' help improves salmon run

The City of Mukilteo, Paine Field Airport, and Edmonds Community College have won a 2012 VISION 2040 Award from the Puget Sound Regional Council for the Japanese Gulch Fish Passage Improvement Project. The awards recognize innovative projects and programs that help ensure a sustainable future as the region grows.

Edmonds Community College partnered with the City of Mukilteo to help excavate a historical site at Japanese Gulch. The City of Mukilteo discovered historical and cultural artifacts at the site while working on a fish passage and stream restoration project at Japanese Gulch Creek.

Last summer archaeology students at Edmonds and Everett community colleges recovered artifacts of the Japanese community, emigrants working in the Mukilteo Lumber Mills, who lived in the area in the early 1900s. This fall, students in Archaeology Lab classes ANTH 271, 273 continue work documenting the artifacts.

Students in the Learn and Serve Environmental Anthropology Field (LEAF) School (a series of Human Ecology, Anthropology classes) are also helping with fish and wildlife counts at Japanese Gulch.

Read more about the project "Salmon return with creek project’s end," in the Mukilteo Beacon.

Left to right: Bill Lewallen, deputy director Snohomish County Airport; Stephanie Wright, Snohomish County Council member and chair of PSRC Vision 2040 Awards Selection Committee; City of Mukilteo Mayor Joe Marine; Patricia Love, City of Mukilteo, assistant director of community development; Dr. Jean Hernandez, Edmonds Community College President; and Dr. Thomas Murphy, Edmonds Community College anthropology instructor.