Watching Our Water Ways

It is exciting to hear that the millions of dollars spent in cleaning up the waters going into Seattle’s Elliott Bay has made a measurable difference in the health of fish as well as in the sediments themselves. For overall findings, check out the news release from the Washington Department of Ecology.

It is also reassuring to know that money spent on gathering sediments and collecting fish samples has paid off with important results. The report calls for some new monitoring efforts and ways of interpreting data being collected. I believe careful monitoring will continue to collect dividends as researchers figure out what measures work best to clean up our bays.

I don’t want to get carried away here. Elliott Bay is far from clean. A third of the bay still fails to meet state sediment standards, and pollution-tolerant organisms are far more abundant than pollution-sensitive species. We have a long way to go.

Improvements were seen in the concentrations of four metals (lead, mercury, silver and tin), in most polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (petroleum products), in PCBs, in overall toxicity and in the health of benthic communities (organisms that live in the sediments).

Almost no changes were seen in the concentrations of five metals (arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper and nickel) nor in a few polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Worsening conditions were observed for one metal (zinc), for two polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (acenaphthylene and retene) and for a common plasticizer chemical (Bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate4).

The report concludes: “Faced with a growing human population in the Puget Sound area, work is increasingly important to stop pollution at its source, clean up contaminated areas, and monitor the results to make sure our efforts are working.”

I would add that we need to stay on top of emerging pollutants, including flame retardants and new chemicals, to measure their toxicity in the lab and track their presence in the environment.

For those who would like to delve more deeply into this subject, I would recommend a “four-page summary for scientists,” (PDF 1.2 mb) as described by Ecology’s news release.

You may also review:
A two-page “focus sheet for the general public” (PDF 888 kb)
The full report: “Urban Waters Initiative, 2007: Sediment Quality in Elliott Bay” (PDF 5.2 mb)

The various news stories I read did not go much beyond Ecology’s original release.

The next reports from the Urban Waters Initiative will focus on Tacoma’s Commencement Bay, followed by Bremerton’s Sinclair and Dyes inlets. I believe all areas are showing improvement, though it will be interesting to see if anyone can tease out — or even discuss — differences related to dredging and capping versus reduction in pollutant discharges and effects of natural sedimentation.

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Tags: Elliott Bay, Urban Waters Initiative, Washington Department of Ecology

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 26th, 2009 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Benthic organisms, Fish, Pollution and spills, Puget Sound, Research, Sediments, Stormwater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.