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The poop on goose droppings: Problems will only get worse
Monday, July 19, 1999
By NEIL MODIE
King County sanitation experts went on alert last summer when a high bacteria count at a popular Lake Washington beach indicated a sewage spill -- a major health hazard.
Juanita Beach was closed for two months. But the cause -- county scientists learned after 1 1/2 months of costly, painstaking tests -- wasn't raw sewage but an inundation of goose poop. It came from the Puget Sound region's proliferating population of Canada geese.
The geese -- the bane of swimmers, picnickers and soccer players -- enjoy the same places that human summer fun seekers do: lakes and lawns, including the waters and grass of Juanita Beach.
Such problems probably will only get worse as the Canada goose population grows, city and county health authorities said. The county had several hundred in the 1960s, but has an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 today, despite having relocated several thousand to Eastern Washington and northern Idaho until authorities in those regions objected.
Area authorities have endorsed a proposal by the Wildlife Services division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to loosen federal rules under which USDA agents may capture, haul away and kill geese with poison gas.
Existing regulations allow killing only when public health is endangered, such as when goose droppings accumulated outside a flour mill. Workers tracked the feces inside the mill, according to Donald Harris, a Seattle parks manager.
Harris heads a regional waterfowl management committee representing municipal and federal agencies.
Relaxing the restrictions on killing geese could lead to the removal of as many as 3,500 of them in 12 Puget Sound-area counties next year, according to a state Agriculture Department study. That would be far more than have been eradicated in the past.
The convergence of geese, humans and summer weather prompted King County's Health Department to issue a warning last week that swimmer's itch is back. It is spread in swimming areas populated by ducks and geese; parasites infest the water and climb aboard swimmers.
P-I reporter Neil Modie can be reached at 206-448-8321 or neilmodie@seattle-pi.com
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The problem with false alarms like the one at Juanita Beach is that bacteria from a spill of human waste is much more dangerous than bacteria from waterfowl feces, according to county scientist Jonathan Frodge. "Our response is to assume it's a sewage-spill issue for the sake of prudence," he told the County Board of Health at a briefing Friday.
Area parks and beaches are popular with Canada geese, but the city and county are looking at ways to reduce their numbers because of the mess they leave.
Mia Song/P-I
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