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Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Low-impact methods have high impact on ecosystems
Rain barrels, green roofs play a key role in saving orcas
In the front yard of the Ballard house is a hole wider than a bathtub. It has sloping sides and the bottom is lined with shiny ocean-blue rocks. It's planted with native iris and grasses. A drainpipe from the roof at the front of the house empties into it.
 | HARVESTING RAIN | ||
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Neighbors keep asking Ryan and Kristen Bergsman if it's going to be a fish pond.
At the back of their house is a 480-gallon black plastic tank as big as two fridges tipped on their sides. It's fed by drains from the garage and the house's back roof.
A monstrosity to some, the plastic cistern "is kind of a point of pride for us," Ryan Bergsman said.
Installed last year, the cistern and hole -- actually a "rain garden" -- are tools to control stormwater, holding it where it falls and letting it soak into the earth.
In the nearby Broadview neighborhood, standing at the intersection of Second Avenue Northwest and Northwest 120th Street, looking north what you see is unremarkable: a street with unpaved parking strips on each side.
Look south. It's quite different. The curvy street snakes along, its edges stocked with plants. Where most streets have deep and narrow drainage ditches, this one has a broad, shallow swale filled with grasses, salal, sword ferns and dandelions. Here, water can soak into the ground.
"If you really want to preserve ecosystems, if you want salmon to survive, this is what the science is telling us to do," said Tom Holz, a private consultant and expert on what's called "low-impact development."
The Seattle projects -- which include numerous homes and city blocks -- were paid for and led by Seattle Public Utilities.
"It's a rare approach to an urban watershed," says Heungkook Lim, a University of Washington researcher.
He regularly checks a stormwater measurement device in a ditch on the Broadview road, which is known as the Street Edge Alternative Project, or SEA Street. Since monitoring began in 2000, there's been essentially no runoff. The experiment has been a tremendous success.
When it comes to stormwater, there basically are three options: Keep pollutants out of the stormwater; clean up the water at treatment facilities before it empties into streams and Puget Sound; or do low-impact development to keep the water onsite so it seeps back into the ground.
Many scientists say the most cost-effective, environmentally smart solution -- some would say the only solution -- is the last one.
"We have to trick the environment ... into thinking it's an old-growth forest," said the UW's Richard Horner, a stormwater scientist.
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 | Paul Joseph Brown / P-I | |
| Heungkook Lim, a University of Washington researcher, checks rainfall levels in the Piper's Creek watershed in North Seattle. Lim says a pilot project in the neighborhood has virtually eliminated storm runoff, the fastest-growing source of pollution for Puget Sound. In developed areas, rain runs off impervious surfaces, picking up pesticides and other pollutants, and if unimpeded, carries them to waterways. | ||
In the forest, trees and plants help the soil sponge up the rain. In urban areas, it runs off pavement and roofs, picking up pesticides, vehicle oil and grease, and metals. City rain gardens and grassy swales try to imitate the woods.
But the spread of low-impact strategies has been excruciatingly slow in the Puget Sound area.
Olympia requires developers to use low-impact tools in select cases. Proposed rules for most governments in the Puget Sound basin require them to allow this approach to development, but do not force them to embrace it.
It can be challenging to balance high-density development while maintaining natural spaces to absorb the water. Narrow, planted streets can be difficult for fire trucks to navigate. Porous cement and roofs planted with grasses can cost more to build and require ongoing maintenance. And the approach doesn't look like the developments most people are used to.
Later this month, the state Department of Ecology is awarding $2.5 million in grants to local governments wanting to test low-impact development projects.
The Puget Sound Action Team, a government agency, has published a detailed how-to manual describing these strategies. It has helped 19 cities and counties craft low-impact development regulations, and about a dozen additional governments provide incentives or allowances for low-impact development -- out of 125 regional governments total.
There are other areas of progress. Seattle is expanding its SEA Streets and cistern programs. A light rail system that could help get more cars off roadways is under construction. A federal judge banned the use of pesticides near salmon streams.
But improvements are scarce and resistance to change remains.
"It'll take somewhat of a revolution in planning and regulation and people's thinking and people's willingness to take some chances in doing things differently," Horner said.
What are your thoughts on promises to clean up Puget Sound and save local orcas?
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What are your thoughts on promises to clean up Puget Sound, and save local orcas? Tell us.
Part One:
Over some 90 years, Granny has dodged bullets, escaped captors' nets. Can she survive the contamination of her home -- and her body?
Part Two:
A young Granny grows from infant to mature female in a sea increasingly dirtied with human waste and poisoned with chemicals. To humans, she's a monster, a curse -- and, soon enough, a swimming target.
Part Three:
Granny has escaped the bullets of fishermen and the military, but she and her family aren't so lucky when the nets of fortune-hunters close around them.
Part Four:
Granny escapes the nets of captors, but she can't escape a world in change. Her seas grow noisy, crowded with boats -- and young relatives are dying.
Part Five:
Granny must adapt to a world that's noisy and crowded, an underwater New York City where orca mothers pass along human poisons to "crack babies." The world up top is as strange. The same humans who once feared her now revere her.
Part Six:
Granny is tough. She has dodged nets and bullets. She has swum in our garbage and pollutants for nine decades and survived. What she can't survive is a sea without prey.
All about orcas
A primer.
Part One:
Marine life is disappearing from Puget Sound, and fast
The causes are many: Politicians' broken promises, industries' resistance and the inability to convince people to live and work more gently on the shores of the Sound.
Although some species thrive, the feast is actually a famine
Shrimp and spot prawn appear to be thriving -- which may represent a serious imbalance in the Puget Sound ecosystem.
Some businesses find flouting laws is cost-effective
Environmental agencies are hamstrung by businesses that repeatedly fail to follow the rules.
In the battle between fish and farmers, orcas are the losers
The Skagit River is the classic example of how much people resist changes that are necessary to rescue the sound's sea life.
Part Two:
A rising tide of chemicals and sewage
Despite years of cleanups, bans on certain chemicals and increasingly stringent regulations, pollution in Puget Sound remains pervasive. Fish are bathing in microscopic bits of plastic, toxic chemicals, pharmaceuticals and caffeine.
The message in the (plastic) bottle is dire
A lot of the plastics -- bottles, bags, toys, packaging, etc. -- that we use are winding up in marine waters. It's a newly emerging threat to sea life as the items break down and make their way into the food chain.
Septic tanks suspected in threat to nation's manila clam harvest
Leaky septic systems are oozing sewage into marine waters and making shellfish unsafe for eating. But in many cases health inspectors can't get onto private property to pinpoint the culprits.
Part Three:
Toxic stormwater is one of the Sound's biggest threats
For years, government officials and scientists have known that polluted stormwater poses one of the greatest threats to the Sound. And they know how to fix it. But so far, no one has had the political nerve or money to match the threat.
Low-impact methods have high impact on ecosystems
Grassy ditches, rain barrels and green roofs are all innovations to close the tap on stormwater and can help save salmon and orcas.
Part Four:
Major oil spill presents greatest short-term threat to orcas' survival
Government scientists say a major oil spill is the biggest extinction threat for Puget Sound orcas over the next half-century. Even smaller spills irritate orcas' eyes and skin, and contaminate their prey.
An ounce of prevention won't clean up even a gallon of oil, activist warns
A gadfly has a warning about the preparedness for cleaning up a massive oil spill in Puget Sound.
Part Five:
Slaughtered orcas' DNA a chance to save the species
Odds are good that your grandkids -- or maybe even your kids -- could see the Sound's orca population shrink perilously low in their lifetime. The government has launched protections to save the orcas, declaring most of the Sound protected.
Saving Puget Sound could cost $12 billion
The cost of saving Puget Sound could exceed $12 billion and will require a holistic strategy that tackles the problems plaguing the entire marine ecosystem, according to an all-star advisory panel appointed by the governor.
Part Six:
Puget Sound is in trouble, but many still don't get it
The Sound is still in trouble and people still aren't getting it. Restoration advocates agree that getting the public onboard is key for raising needed funding and stanching the flow from the "death by a thousand cuts" sickening the Sound.
What the readers are saying ...
"The Sound of Broken Promises" readers were troubled to learn about the plight of Puget Sound and conflicted over who's to blame and what to do next, according to the dozens of comments logged on the P-I Web site.
Track the latest environmental news on Lisa Stiffler and Robert McClure's Dateline Earth.
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