Watching Our Water Ways

I used to feel happy for teenagers who got together on a weekend to wash cars and raise money for a good cause. I would often take time to drive in, get my car washed and praise the teens for their efforts. And I would give them a nice tip.

Now, when I see a charity carwash, I just want to know where the water is going. If the water is washing into a storm drain that spills into a stream, I can’t help but wonder if these kids care about fish and wildlife, or if they might not have gotten the message about the harm caused by dirty, soapy water.

You may wish to read the story I wrote on this topic in last Saturday’s Kitsap Sun.

Sometimes, being an environmental reporter causes one to think a little too much about the environment. Sure, carwashes probably are not going to kill everything in sight. But they are just another insult from a human society that has not yet learned how to protect the living Earth.

The federal Clean Water Act of 1972 declared that it was illegal to discharge polluted water into any natural stream or waterway. At the time, industrial discharges were so severe that soap and heavy metals from carwashes were insignificant. But now, after 40 years, those industrial point sources are greatly diminished, and researchers are learning that the greatest threat to water quality today comes from thousands of small sources.

Gov. Jay Inslee has declared this month “Puget Sound Starts Here Month,” according to a press release issued by the Puget Sound Partnership. The idea is for each of us to pay attention to how we affect Puget Sound.

Here’s the message from Marc Daily, the partnership’s interim executive director:

“It’s not just about the pipe coming out of the factory anymore. Today, stormwater runoff is the single largest contributor to our water quality problems. That pollution comes from our cars and how we wash them, from the chemicals we put on our lawns, and from not picking up after our pets. When it rains, bacteria and toxic chemicals from these and other sources end up in our local waterways. That’s a problem.”

From King County Water and Land Resources

One way to keep charity car washes alive is to capture the wash water and direct it into a toilet or sink that connects to a municipal sewer system, not a septic system. King County provides instructions for making and using a carwash kit to handle the water.

People can also sell tickets to commercial carwashes, which is the method being pushed by most water-quality programs across the nation. It’s not just here that carwashes are getting increasing attention.

How much harm do they cause? It varies from place to place, but some students from Central Kitsap High School calculated the amount of various chemicals produced by capturing the water from washing cars and conducting lab tests on some of the pollutants. See “Characterization of Runoff from Charity Carwashes in the Dyes Inlet Watershed” (PDF 475 kb).

Like many people, I feel a tinge of sadness that carwashes will probably die out. Like many harmful traditions, such as burning garbage and smoking, it might be time to give this one up.

Still, if you want to operate a weekend car wash, get yourself a carwash kit to deal with the wash water. Then stand on the corner and wave signs promoting the fact that this is a clean and safe carwash that protects the environment. If I see you, I’ll even stop and donate to the cause.

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The long-, long-, long-awaited court ruling in the so-called culvert case has finally been issued. The bottom line is that the Washington Department of Transportation has been given 17 years to upgrade all state culverts to accepted standards to allow fish passage.

That’s basically what 21 Western Washington tribes asked for when they proposed a court order three years ago. Actually, the tribes asked for 20 years, but Judge Ricardo Martinez subtracted the three years that they waited for a final decision in the case, first filed in 2001. See my latest story in Saturday’s Kitsap Sun, or review the history in an article published in January.

How much effect this case will have on the state budget is hard to say. The state will likely appeal, because there’s so much at stake — including the tribes’ authority to affect how the state spends its money. As I see it, under Martinez’ ruling, treaty obligations are not much different than the constitutional obligations the state has to provide “basic education.” And we all have seen how the governor and Legislature are looking under rocks to find money for that purpose.

One estimate of the cost of fixing all the culverts is $1.9 billion, but that’s assuming the state has a complete inventory. It could be more. Martinez wants to see a complete inventory within six months. People concerned about salmon will probably make sure their least-favorite state culverts are on the list.

The latest “Fish Passage Barrier Inventory” (PDF 5 mb), completed last July, identifies about 1,500 culverts that block significant upstream habitat. That inventory and other information can be found on WDOT’s website “Fish Passage.”

If you’d like to read Martinez’ ruling — which includes information on the treaties, salmon habitat needs and culvert history — download the decision (PDF 111 kb) here and the injunction (PDF 45 kb) here.

Through all these years, WDOT has not been ignoring the problem. As I have reported, the state has been upgrading culverts while doing major road repairs and also increasing the budget for stand-alone culvert replacement.

But at the current pace, it could take between 50 and 75 years to get all the work done, maybe more. These are just guesses provided to me, based on the average cost of repairs, but every culvert is different.

Near the upper end of the scale, replacement of a culvert that carries Chico Creek under Highway 3 is estimated to cost between $20 million and $30 million alone. The project will require several bridges for the four-lane freeway north of Bremerton plus on- and off- ramps in that location.

State officials are very aware of this Chico Creek culvert, which lies at the mouth of what has been called the Kitsap Peninsula’s most productive salmon stream. Salmon are getting through the culvert, but it’s a struggle. The culvert is considered a high priority by all, but replacement will probably take a special appropriation from Congress or the Legislature, or both.

As I watch our state highways deteriorate, I keep thinking back to the 1960s and early ‘70s when Washington had some of the best roads in the country. It was a pleasure to drive back then, if my memory isn’t faulty. Although money is needed to repair roads today, I think a good argument can be made that salmon were here first and should have been considered when the roads were built. Failing that, many people consider it essential to make things right now.

I should point out that the ruling does not immediately affect county roads or other projects that block the passage of salmon or affect salmon habitat. However, for better or worse, the legal principles established by the 1974 Boldt decision and reinforced by this culvert case could open the door to other types of court-ordered repairs to salmon habitat.

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I just completed the second part of a yearlong series I’m writing about the Puget Sound ecosystem and the 21 “vital signs” indicators chosen by the Puget Sound Partnership to measure the health of the sound.

This second part, published in Sunday’s Kitsap Sun, consists of stories about the food web, including plankton and eelgrass; forage fish, including herring; and bulkheads, which are generally considered a threat to the nearshore ecosystem.

I was trying to cover the lower half of the food web, to build a foundation for the other parts to come.

I talked to a lot of experts on these issues and ended up writing one of the largest story packages I’ve ever written. Still, I barely touched the surface of these topics. I guess I’ll have to return later to dig a little deeper.

Scientists often say, the more they know, the more they realize what little they know, or something like that. I’ve always tried to help people understand the complexities of environmental science, but there are no simple answers.

That’s why the Puget Sound Partnership is an important bridge between policymakers and scientists. We have enough tools to know what should be done to save Puget Sound, but how do we know what projects should come before others? What can we afford to do? And how do we measure success or failure? Those are the questions challenging the partnership at the moment.

I would like to thank all the researchers willing to give their time to this project as well as Kitsap Sun staffers who helped crunch the numbers and produce the graphics for the story package, as well as the editors who offered ideas along the way.

The overall series is called “Taking the Pulse of Puget Sound.”
The second part is pulled together on a webpage called “Food web’s base”
Stories in the second part are:
Environment’s health starts at the bottom
The foundation of all life in Puget Sound
Herring, other forage fish, at risk
Eelgrass is both food and shelter
Shoreline armoring threatens base of the food web

Sinclair Inlet last August was awash in colorful plankton. This photo was taken over Port Orchard, looking toward Gorst.
Photo by Christopher Krembs, Eyes Over Puget Sound

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Parental instincts are on stark display in this video, below, showing a pair of fish protecting their eggs against an aggressive turtle, who no doubt wants to make a meal of their unhatched offspring.

The conflict takes place in Africa’s Lake Tanganyika. At first glance, you have to wonder how these fish, known as emperor cichlids, could possibly hold off the larger terrapin. But they do.

Another kind of fish-vs-turtle contest is the classic tug-of-war involving a worm. I found two videos in which a goldfish in an aquarium tries to steal a worm from a turtle. In each, the fish is at least partially successful. The longer (2.5-minute) video on Benjenings Channel plays up the drama; the shorter (22-second) video on Stonemanjosh Channel gets right to the moment of truth.

Can a turtle and goldfish be friends? They can, according to this sweet little video by Chibikana70.

But if you want to understand the more common scenario between turtle and goldfish, just search in YouTube for “turtle eating goldfish” and choose from the long list. You’ll find out more about the dark side of life than you wish to know.

I used to include some epic battles in this “Amusing Monday” feature. (Remember the octopus-vs-shark video taken at the Seattle Aquarium?) But some readers objected to violent battles ending in death, so I’ve kind of steered away from them. But I’m still fascinated by closely matched conflicts, such as the alligator against the python. Check out this video from “Nature,” originally broadcast on PBS.

As the narrator of the alligator-python battle explains:

“Alligators were once the undisputed reptile kings of the Everglades. But when push comes to shove, who would win in a battle now, alligator or python? It all depends on which one is bigger.”

Who wins in a battle of bats versus crows? I’m not sure there is an answer, but this well-produced video on BillsChannel is amusing to watch.

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A research team led by Brad Hanson of NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center has been tracking K and L pods off the coast of Oregon and California, most recently offshore of Washington’s Willapa Bay.

Satellite transmissions from two killer whales, K-25 and L-88, show their pods crossing the Columbia River this morning.
Map by Robin Baird with NOAA data

The team left Newport, Ore., on Friday aboard the 209-foot research vessel Bell M. Shimada. The crew caught up with K pod the following day with the help of a satellite transmitter attached to K-25, according to reports. Most if not all of L pod was seen swimming with the K pod whales near Cape Blanco, off the southern coast of Oregon.

The research team attached a new satellite tag to L-88, a 20-year-old male named Wave Walker. The new tag will provide another method of following the whales if the tag attached to K-25 should fall off, as expected sooner or later. It has already stayed attached for more than two months, about twice the average life of the satellite tags.

I have not yet connected with Brad Hanson, but I talked to Robin Baird of Cascadia Research, who has been getting reports from the crew. Robin told me that the researchers have been able to obtain multiple fecal and/or fish-scale samples on most of the days they have been at sea.

Those samples will aid in meeting the primary goal of the cruise, which is to figure out where the whales are going and what they are eating during the winter months while away from Puget Sound.

The satellite tags have allowed the research ship to stay with the whales even when the weather and their lack of vocalizations have made them hard to find, Robin said. As a result, this research cruise has been more efficient than past ones in terms of both time and fuel.

The research trip, which was scheduled for 21 days, will be cut in half because of the federal spending cuts related to the sequester, according to a statement issued by this afternoon by the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

The travels of K-25 over the past two months are shown in an animation produced by staff at Northwest Fisheries Science Center. (In my browser, the north and sound portions of the map are cut off even in full-screen view, but the movements shown are still amazing.)

The latest report shows both tagged whales swimming offshore of Willapa Bay on the Washington Coast, having crossed the Columbia River mouth this morning. The full trip can be viewed on maps posted on the website called Southern Resident Killer Whale Satellite Tagging.

Researchers are tracking K and L pods aboard the NOAA vessel Bell M. Shimada. Click on the image and insert the ship’s name to view its recent travels. / NOAA photo

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Changes are coming rapidly to the Elwha River, as massive amounts of sediment shift around in the river channel and flow out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Phoebe Tyson, a Student Conservation Association intern, joins in planting efforts in the former Lake Mills to help restore a natural forest. / Photo courtesy of Olympic National Park

Over the past few months, researchers have documented the formation of new beaches and the growth of the delta at the mouth of the Elwha. I described these latest changes in a story in Sunday’s Kitsap Sun.

The new information came out of an annual workshop of the Elwha Nearshore Consortium, which has a special interest in the river, especially its effects on the coastal reaches along the strait.

It’s exciting to hear about the transformation of the river, and I would like to congratulate the scientists for the monitoring work that allows us to talk about “before” and “after” dam removal — although the “after” part will be an ongoing story for decades. Many research organizations are involved in the Elwha, and I hope their funding holds out to tell a more complete story from a scientific perspective.

Meanwhile, many writers, photographers and videographers are telling their own stories about the restoration in various ways, and new books and documentaries are on the way. I’ve talked about some of these in the past and will continue to do so as new works are released.

The human connections to the river, particularly those of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, have been widely recognized as an integral part of the restoration story. Many Klallam elders have been gracious in sharing their culture and traditions.

Although the Elwha Dam removal is far from the only restoration effort taking place in Western Washington, it may be the one place where nature is working at an extraordinary pace to put things back the way they were.

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The little streams and tributaries on the Kitsap Peninsula and elsewhere in Puget Sound are destined for special attention under a proposal to designate critical habitat for Puget Sound steelhead. See my story in today’s Kitsap Sun.

Acoustic tags help researchers track the movement of steelhead in Puget Sound.
Kitsap Sun file photo

When it comes to endangered and threatened species, most of the attention has been given to Puget Sound chinook, which migrate to the larger rivers and often spawn in mainstem waters and larger tributaries.

As a reporter, I’ve also paid attention through the years to Hood Canal summer chum, which come into the streams along Hood Canal in the late summer and early fall. They generally spawn in the lower part of the streams, because water has not yet arrived to fill upstream tributaries.

Steelhead are an entirely different kind of fish, coming into our local streams in the winter months and swimming upstream as far as they can go. Steelhead may not die after spawning, so they can repeatedly return to spawn again and again.

With adequate rains, there is almost no place on the Kitsap Peninsula where steelhead cannot go. In that respect, they are similar to coho salmon, a fall spawner that remains on the borderline for listing under the Endangered Species Act. Many biologists tell me that protections for steelhead will go a long way to protecting our depressed coho runs as well.

What is needed more than anything is more research on the ecological values of the smaller streams on the Kitsap Peninsula and South Sound region. Where have steelhead been found historically, and what can we do to improve the habitat for them?

On the positive side, it is often easier to fix the smaller streams. Culverts can be replaced, side channels created and streamside vegetation planted, all at less cost than on our major rivers.

On the other hand, given our tight state and federal budgets, we are not likely to see more money for salmon and steelhead restoration. We’ll probably have to spread the existing dollars further. In fact, I’ve been told that some people in chinook territory have tried to slow down the steelhead-recovery effort, because it will mean less money for chinook recovery. And they may have been successful.

Puget Sound steelhead were listed as “threatened” nearly five years ago. The Endangered Species Act calls for designating critical habitat within one year of the listing, but NOAA concluded that the designation was “not determinable” at that time. Now, more information is available, the agency says.

Elsewhere, five populations of West Coast steelhead were listed as “threatened” in August 1997, and four others were listed in March 1998. Critical habitat for all nine listed species of steelhead was proposed in February 1999 and completed a year later. (Their status was later reconsidered, which led to the official listing date actually coming after designation of critical habitat.) As a result of a lawsuit, the court scheduled the deadlines for those steelhead.

Biologists are now working on a recovery plan for Puget Sound steelhead in consultation with local governments throughout the region. The ESA does not provide a firm deadline for approving a recovery plan, although federal agencies attempt to get them done within a few years after listing.

More information can be found on the website “Critical Habitat for Lower Columbia River Coho & Puget Sound Steelhead.”

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I’m always pleased to present the winners of “National Wildlife” magazine’s annual photo contest. This year’s winning photos seem better than ever.

The magazine’s editors say they continue to be surprised by the quality of the entries — which reached 28,000 in the 2012 contest. And they were pleased to see expected and unexpected animal behaviors shown in the images.

To view the top winners and the stories behind the photos, go to the page “2012 Photo Contest Winners” on the National Wildlife Federation’s website.

The photo of the leopard seal and the baby penguin captures a moment after the seal ambushes the bird and starts playing with his food. The photographer, Amos Nachoum of San Francisco, had to hang out patiently under water to catch this and similar images.

The photo of sockeye salmon was captured when photographer David Hall of Woodstock, N.Y., tried to escape the swift current by taking refuge near a tree trunk. The stream is the Adams River of British Columbia.

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When 60 students from Central Kitsap High School took off in double kayaks to look for jumping salmon, they had no idea how the changing weather would make the trip more exciting.

Bill Wilson, who teaches environmental science, organized Tuesday’s trip on Dyes Inlet near Silverdale. Lead guide Spring Courtright of Olympic Outdoor Center shares the story in her words.

Reminder: Free stream tours from land are scheduled for Saturday. See the story I wrote for Tuesday’s Kitsap Sun.

Wind pushes the kayaks along, as 60 Central Kitsap High School students return to Silverdale Tuesday after watching jumping salmon. / Photos by Spring Courtright

By Spring Courtright
Program Director, Olympic Outdoor Center

At 9 a.m. on election day, anyone peering through the fog at Silverdale Waterfront Park would have seen 35 bright kayaks lined up on the beach and 60 high school students preparing to paddle.

Central Kitsap High School environmental science students study salmon in class, then are given the option to paddle with jumping salmon on an annual Salmon Kayak Tour with the Olympic Outdoor Center (OOC). For the last two years, 60 students have jumped on the opportunity.

This trip started about 10 years ago with about half that number of students. I have been one of the lead guides for nearly all of these tours. It’s always an adventure, but this year was one of the more memorable trips because of the beautiful clouds and quick change in weather.
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Strange as it may seem, some fish make their living cleaning others’ teeth and generally improving the hygiene of larger animals.

The fish in the video appear to be bluestreak cleaner wrasse, which live on coral reefs in the Indian Ocean and much of the Pacific Ocean, as well as many seas, including the Red Sea and those around Southeast Asia. See the entry in Wikipedia.

Cleaner wrasse hang out in “cleaning stations,” where large fish recognize them by their colorful uniforms. The larger fish strike a specific pose to allow the cleaner fish access to their bodies, according to the Wiki article.
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