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Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Toxic stormwater is one of the Sound's biggest threats
Knowledge goes only so far in controlling polluted runoff
(Editor's Note: This story has been altered. City and county storm-water regulations being issued by the state allow -- but do not require -- the use of low-impact development. The original version of this story did not make it clear these were state-issued regulations.)
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BAINBRIDGE ISLAND -- It's up to the oysters now.
Can they save Bainbridge Island's Eagle Harbor? A government cleanup hasn't.
The scenic bay is still under assault, despite a costly rehab of the harbor. A defunct creosote plant at the water's edge was walled off, vast amounts of poisoned sludge were scooped out and what remained was buried under clean sand.
But the $100 million-and-counting effort couldn't keep the harbor's eelgrass -- a crucial marine refuge for salmon and other sea creatures -- from dying off at the harbor's other end.
The killer? Stormwater runoff.
With each rainstorm, a dose of algae-fertilizing nutrients, plus assorted toxic filth, washes off the streets and yards of the town and flows into the harbor.
Stormwater pollution is plaguing Puget Sound, and government efforts to control it are running far behind the 270-person-a-day population increase and ensuing development.
Federal scientists have made preliminary predictions that the Sound's coho salmon could be extinct in 60 years because of stormwater pollution. Chinook -- the favorite food of local orcas -- seem more resilient, but remain at risk.
"People don't understand that Puget Sound is turning into a cesspool," Cara Cruickshank says.
So the environmental consultant launched a tiny non-profit group that is taking a stab at cleaning up the harbor, which also is being polluted by sewage treatment plants and leaking septic tanks.
The group's means are unconventional. Aided by the Boy Scouts, Rotary Club and a local high school's ecology club, they started hanging baskets of baby oysters on the docks. The mollusks are cleaning machines, constantly pumping water in and filtering pollutants out.
For years, government officials and scientists have known that polluted stormwater poses one of the greatest threats to the health of the Sound.
And they know how to fix it.
Codes need to be changed so developments include enough tree- and plant-covered land to soak up the water running off paved-over surfaces. Urban areas need to be outfitted with "green roofs" planted with grasses that absorb water and cisterns to catch rain for irrigation. Some pollutants -- pesticides, metal-containing paints and certain auto parts -- might need to be banned. Improvements are needed in city and county systems for catching and cleaning stormwater.
But so far, no one has had the political nerve or money to match the threat.
"We're getting paralyzed because the problem is so challenging," said Sue Joerger, head of the non-profit Puget Soundkeeper Alliance. "We've got to find a way out of this tangled mess."
At the end of the year, the state is set to release the final rules governing stormwater pollution in the cities and counties of the Puget Sound basin. Critics -- including fellow government agencies -- who have examined the far-reaching regulations have found numerous problems, calling into question whether the Sound can ever hope to see a rebound of its salmon or a return to a thriving marine ecosystem.
Measures insufficient
The rules to be issued by the state Department of Ecology mark the first time that smaller cities and counties will face stormwater regulations, as well as the first major update of rules for larger governments, including Seattle and King County, which are more than five years overdue.
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 | Paul Joseph Brown / P-I | |
| Cara Cruickshank, left, leads a group of volunteers preparing about 100,000 oysters for placement in Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island. They hope that the oysters will filter stormwater and other pollutants. | ||
"Even Ecology agrees that it's not enough but they feel like politically they're out on the edge and they have a lot of cities mad at them," said Kathy Fletcher, executive director of People for Puget Sound, a non-profit organization.
The Ecology manual on which the rules were based even states -- on its first page -- that the guidelines include "sometimes insufficient measures" for keeping water clean.
The proposed rules have non-existent or limited requirements for monitoring stormwater pollutants. There are lengthy delays for meeting pollution-reduction goals. Requirements for controlling stormwater flowing from existing developments are minimal in the proposal. And those concerns aren't coming from rabid environmentalists. They're being raised by the Puget Sound Action Team, the state agency responsible for protecting and restoring the Sound.
The proposed rules, states the Action Team's critique, "will not adequately support" Gov. Chris Gregoire's avowed goal of healing the Sound by 2020.
Ecology officials say it's not fair to put so much of the burden on these rules, which are technically permits for local governments and required by federal law.
"The permits are not the only answer. The permits are part of the answer to recovering Puget Sound," said Bill Moore, Ecology's policy specialist for stormwater issues.
But many say the rules are going to play a critical role.
"It really is a litmus test issue," said Brad Ack, head of the Action Team. "The whole thing about getting to a healthy Puget Sound by 2020 is about hard choices. We've made most of the easy choices."
Federal agencies also panned the new rules.
A review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that the proposed rules don't do enough to help struggling salmon, contributing to "long-term declines in their numbers and distribution" because of the gradual damage to streams and shorelines where the fish lay eggs, feed and migrate.
On the other side, the Building Industry Association of Washington found the rules onerous, saying that it "adds to the regulatory burden of contractors" and will boost housing prices.
The Association of Washington Cities also raised concerns about costs and questioned whether Ecology has the legal authority for some of the provisions.
It's a tricky set of rules to write, Ecology officials said. The regulations do nothing to penalize governments if stormwater has dangerously high levels of pollution. That's because this is water running off private rooftops, driveways and lawns.
"Do you want to hold governments liable for something they don't have full control over?" Moore asked.
The rules require governments to come up with a program to control stormwater, slowing its flow so it won't scour streams and cleaning it through various means, such as ponds that hold the water while pollution settles out. Governments are required to identify and address pollution sources.
And governments must allow for what's known as "low-impact development," a strategy that incorporates features such as rain barrels and porous cement to absorb stormwater. But the rules don't require this kind of development -- a major failing, critics say.
The regulations are expected to be completed by December.
"Just getting the permits issued and getting everybody moving in a common direction, implementing stormwater management programs ... will do wonders for improving what is going on environmentally," Moore said.
Copper's toxic impact
One of the worst things you can do to a young salmon is to expose it to copper. It acts like a snout full of Drano, scientists say, disorienting the fish and deadening the sense of smell it uses to avoid predators. When a young salmon gets chomped by a bigger fish, it automatically releases a scent that screams: Danger! Other salmon know to take cover.
This life-saving sense of smell, though, is affected by seemingly imperceptible levels of copper -- any water containing more than 5 parts copper per billion parts water, tests show.
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| Paul Joseph Brown / P-I | |
| With the Puget Sound region's population expected to increase by 30 percent to nearly 5.4 million by 2025, experts say Puget Sound will continue to decline unless development is handled in a low-impact way. | ||
In a study released this year, stormwater spilling from the 520 Bridge contained copper at levels up to 76 parts per million, more than 15,000 times higher than what hurts young salmon. It has been measured in Seattle streams at much lower concentrations, but still in the salmon danger zone.
Car brake pads are suspected to be the most widespread source of copper in stormwater. Other sources include housing materials and marine paints.
Washington is eyeing new rules for the state Department of Transportation's handling of stormwater pollution, as well as for businesses and construction companies -- rules that environmentalists say are inadequate.
But the first of the new round of stormwater regulations to be tested in a legal challenge is the one targeting boatyards.
As a component of boat paint, the toxic copper keeps barnacles and algae from growing on the hull. And at boatyards, it can get loose when paint is blasted or ground off boats. Often, it flows during rainstorms into adjacent waterways.
Boatyard owners have struggled to reduce the amount of copper, lead, grease and other contaminants flowing off their properties.
"We're really trying to do the best we can to control it. I don't know what else we can do except build a big Superfund thing," said boatyard co-owner Scott Anderson over the whine of a table saw and the chug of a sump pump at CSR Marine on Lake Union. "We're really trying to be proactive."
Despite spending about $50,000 in improvements to control stormwater -- including a concrete curb to contain runoff, a water-filtering system and the sump pump -- CSR still has some of the highest copper readings in town. Anderson argues that government should help pay for improvements outside the financial reach of boatyards.
Ecology launched a major effort at getting boatyards to follow approved stormwater-control methods in the 1990s and required them to measure pollution levels. Copper levels were astoundingly high in some cases.
But the state failed to follow up on those high levels, charged Joerger. When a new set of rules was issued by Ecology last year, her group challenged them as too lenient.
In the litigation over boatyards, a state inspector and other Ecology workers testified that:
In a March 2006 deposition in that case, Puget Soundkeeper's attorney, Richard Smith, asked Ecology's John Drabek if boatyards are likely to be contributing to water quality violations.
"I've never heard anyone dispute that," Drabek answered.
100,000 oysters
On a spring Saturday, volunteers tussled with the yellow mesh oyster cages ready for hanging on docks throughout Eagle Harbor.
"The harbor is so polluted that people want to do whatever they can, even though we're not sure if it will work," Cruickshank said.
Supported by government grants and private donations, Cruickshank's group, the Natural Landscapes Project (www.naturallandscapes.org), originally promoted natural lawn care. But examining chemically laden unnatural lawn care led her to the harbor's problems.
Smaller than a dime, each oyster larvae will grow to be the size of a person's palm. Cruickshank figures that if she can get 100,000 oysters into the poorly flushed harbor, each filtering 55 gallons a day, her group can begin to make a difference.
Inspired by similar efforts on the East Coast, they call the project Oysters For Salmon, in the hope that once the eelgrass returns, it will shelter the small fish that salmon eat.
The oysters are not supposed to be eaten.
The hardworking shellfish are a Band-Aid approach to cleaning up stormwater, Cruickshank agreed. What really needs to happen is for some of the same waterfront property owners who are letting her hang oysters from their docks to stop using fertilizers and pesticides on their lawns. Same for other townspeople.
Same for Puget Sound.
"It is a head change about what's appropriate and what's not," she said. "The good thing is that everybody wants to help. The bad thing is that they don't want to change ... .
One of our mottos is 'Changing the environment one yard at a time.' "
WHAT IS NEEDED?
Requirements for using "Low-Impact Development," which strives to keep rainwater at the site of homes and businesses so it soaks into the ground
WHAT'S BEEN DONE?
City and county storm-water regulations being issued by the state allow -- but do not require -- the use of LID
WHAT ARE THE ROADBLOCKS?
Government and developer resistance to the less conventional LID practices
TOMORROW
The greatest extinction threat orcas face
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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