Jacquelynn Gehring, a second-grade student in Sheri Stambaugh’s class at Crownhill Elementary School, was named the top winner in a recent coloring contest sponsored by the city of Bremerton.

Jacquelynn Gehring's winning picture in Bremerton's coloring contest for National Drinking Water Week
Drawing courtesy of City of Bremerton

The contest was promoted as part of National Drinking Water Week. This year’s theme was “Water is Important to Me Every Day.”

Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent presented awards to the winning students at a City Council meeting on May 16.

The other winners are Alaura Mercereau, second-place, and Emalee Wheaton, third place, both from Crownhill. An honorable mention was awarded to Destiny Hoaeae from Naval Avenue Elementary School.

Their pictures will be entered into a national Drinking Water Week contest sponsored by the American Water Works Association.

Kathleen Cahall, Bremerton’s water resources manager, has done a good job promoting National Drinking Water Week, a time to recognize actions at the local, state and national levels that ensure that we have the cleanest water in the world.

Kathleen offered this comment in a news release:

“Drinking Water Week is an opportunity to focus on the importance of water, which is too easily overlooked. A safe, reliable water supply is essential to the success of any community. In addition to keeping us healthy, safe water also supports the economy, provides fire protection and provides us with the high quality of life we enjoy.”

Here are the remaining winners:

Second-place winner Alaura Mercereau

Third-place winner Emalee Wheaton

Honorable mention recipient Destiny Hoaeae

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The video at right shows some interesting pictures of water systems in Kitsap County. It takes a bit of reading to get through it, but the video reminds us that the area — and most areas — started out with many surface-water systems and now relies mostly on groundwater.

The history of Bremerton’s water system, which still includes a highly protected surface-water supply on the Union River, is described briefly on the city’s website.

Drinking Water Week is a chance to review the water quality of our own drinking water, at least for those of us on public water systems. The EPA requires most systems to provide information to their customers once a year. Accessing this information at other times is not always easy, although most of the larger systems post the required water-quality data on their websites.

I keep hearing that the Washington Department of Health plans to create a simple way to link to the data for any system in the state, but I don’t think it has happened yet.

The state’s Office of Drinking Water maintains a database with Water System Data, but it is not easy to use the search function.

The Environmental Protection Agency has set up a nationwide system that includes entries where water system managers can place links to their annual water quality reports. It’s called “Where You Live:
Your Drinking Water Quality Reports Online.” But out of hundreds of water systems in Washington state only seven have set up the links — and some of those links don’t work. None of the systems in Kitsap County is using that web page.

Meanwhile, you can find the information on the websites of many water systems if you look around a bit. Here are links to water-quality reports for some of the largest systems in Kitsap County:

Bremerton Public Works and Utilities

Silverdale Water District

West Sound Utility District (PDF)

North Perry Water District (PDF)

Manchester Water District

Kitsap Public Utility District

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Seth Casteel is a pet photographer who does not believe in sitting your pet down in a studio for a formal portrait. Instead, he always looks for an element of surprise.

During one photo shoot, Casteel was shooting pictures of a dog jumping into a swimming pool. Looking for a better vantage point, he purchased an underwater point-and-shoot camera and gained a surprising new underwater angle on the dog — a Cavalier King Charles spaniel named Buster.

That was the beginning of a series of underwater dog shoots, according to a report by Eve Becker in “Tails,” magazine, a publication focused on pets.

In February, Seth’s collection of photographs went viral on the Internet, where it was picked up on all kinds of blogs and email lists. Overnight, his website, LittleFriendsPhoto.com, jumped from 200 to 30,000 hits, causing the server to crash.

“I went from not having enough business to having too much business,” he told Becker.

Seth’s overnight success story is told by writer Jakob Schiller in an article in “Wired” magazine.

Although this pet photographer is busier than ever, the extra attention has helped him further the nonprofit company, Second Chance Photos, he started last year to help animal shelters adopt out more pets. Too often, he says, photos posted on animal-adoption websites and published in newspapers are simple mugshots of poor quality. Casteel travels around the country to teach shelter staff to compose better pictures and improve on image quality.

An idea that anybody can use when taking pictures of pets is to get them into an active mode, and seek out elements of surprise. That’s why the pictures of dogs diving into the water are so popular. Seth suggested in the Becker piece that one can simply hide behind the couch and call your dog to come:

“When the dog finds you, you’ll get a very surprised reaction. So have your camera ready. As soon as that happens, snap! The moment they find you is the moment you take the picture.”

Seth’s own slide show of underwater dogs can be found on his website Little Friends Photo, where he also sells the prints of the images.

Photo courtesy of Seth Casteel, Little Friends Photo

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There is no shortage of things to talk about, however, and I’d like to start with the recently approved two-year Science Work Plan for the Puget Sound Partnership.

Joe Gaydos

In developing a plan to investigate science-related questions, the Partnership’s Science Panel set out to identify weaknesses in our overall understanding of the Puget Sound ecosystem. The panel chose to be strategic about filling the gaps in our knowledge.

“We want to know everything, of course,” chairman Joe Gaydos told me. “But just because there’s a gap in our knowledge does not mean we should go out and do a study.

“The real question is, where does the lack of science hinder our ability to make decisions? We’re not just doing science for science’s sake but to help us make better decisions.”

For the Puget Sound Partnership, the most important questions are related to restoration and recovery. The Science Panel came up with 48 actions in three focus areas, taking guidance from the Puget Sound Action Agenda:

• Protect and restore terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems (12 actions)
• Protect and restore marine and nearshore ecosystems (9 actions)
• Reduce and control sources of pollution to Puget Sound (16 actions)

Another focus area looks to the future:

• Emerging issues — ocean acidification (3 actions)
• Scientific tools for informing policy (3 actions)
• Coordinated ecosystem monitoring (1 action)
• Human dimensions in ecosystems (4 actions)

For a quick summary of these science projects, see Priority Science Areas (PDF 152 kb).

At the highest level, the Science Panel has been stressing the need to develop analytical tools to help policy makers decide on specific restoration projects.

For example, a lot of shoreline-restoration projects are under way in Puget Sound, but how do we know we are spending our money on the right ones? We are restoring habitats, but are they the most important habitats to the overall ecosystem of Puget Sound?

The two-year plan notes:

“Valuable information is available on the status and historical changes in physical structure of marine and nearshore shorelines. However, information and analytical tools … need to be improved.”

Important improvements include:

• “Incorporating additional physical attributes as well as biogenic structures like eelgrass, kelp or coastal forest condition into estimates of ecosystem services provided by shorelines.
• “Assessing the impacts of barrier features on embayments.
• “Increasing understanding of the effects of protection and restoration at different spatial and ecological scales, ranging from local domains (e.g., marshes, beaches, drift cells) to process domains (e.g., geomorphic units and salinity regimes) to landscape domains …
• “More robustly incorporating rare forms, species, and processes in understanding landscape composition.
• “Including landscapes and habitats used by target species.
• “Incorporating threats to ecosystem services and potential for protection.
• “Incorporating human use and values.”

“What we don’t want to do,” Joe told me, “is pretend we have a science-based restoration effort when we are actually going out and restoring places where people want to go.”

Besides creating analytical tools, the Science Panel believes that helpful new findings can be developed by compiling and analyzing unrelated monitoring reports and scientific studies in ways nobody has done before.

Of the 48 science actions in the plan, one-third rely on existing information; nearly one-fourth are focused on trends and effectiveness monitoring; and less than half (44 percent) require new research to better understand ecological mechanisms and relationships.

Unlike the work plan from two years ago, the latest plan will be tracked carefully to see if the research efforts get done, Joe said. The first step is to visit with leaders of agencies and organizations already doing research to determine if the priority science projects can be incorporated into work already being done.

A meeting on Monday will begin to determine who should be responsible for what actions.

“What are the items that the Partnership is responsible for?” Joe queried. “What are the things we can expect the University of Washington to do or the Department of Ecology to do?

“We’ll be taking our list around to the different agencies. A big role of the Partnership is to coordinate all these efforts. We want to get the work done that can answer the questions and have the whole effort be science based.”

Last, but not least, the Science Panel will work with environmental educators to help bring scientific knowledge to the people of Puget Sound, without whose support the restoration effort would surely grind to a halt.

In August, the Puget Sound Leadership Council is scheduled to tackle the question of how to fund the two-year science plan.

Download the full two-year Puget Sound Science Work Plan (PDF 2.2 mb).

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Making the rounds on the Internet are lists of funny answers that young students reportedly provided while trying to answer scientific questions. Maybe you’ve heard these responses before, but they are always good for a smile.

Here are my favorites:

• Water is composed of two gins, oxygin and hydrogin. Oxygin is pure gin. Hydrogin is gin and water.
• When you breathe, you inspire. When you do not breathe, you expire.
• When you smell an odorless gas, it is probably carbon monoxide.
• Nitrogen is not found in Ireland because it is not found in a free state.
• The pistol of a flower is its only protection against insects.
• A fossil is an extinct animal. The older it is, the more extinct it is.
• Germinate: to become a naturalized German.
• Rhubarb: a kind of celery gone bloodshot.
• The skeleton is what is left after the insides have been taken out and the outsides have been taken off. The purpose of the skeleton is so that there is something to hitch the meat to.
• To prevent contraception, wear a condominium.
• The body consists of three parts the brainium, the borax and the abominable cavity. The brainium contains the brain. The borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abominable cavity contains the bowls, of which there are five A, E, I, O and U.
• For fainting: Rub the person’s chest, or, if it’s a lady, rub her arm above the hand. Or put her head between the knees of the nearest medical doctor.

I was able to find a reference to the above list in an Ann Landers column published in numerous newspapers on June 9, 1996. See, for example, New York Daily News. The writer said he was enclosing the list, which was contained in an article he clipped from Popular Science, He said students actuallly said these things.

It appears that people have added to the list through the years. I cannot verify the source or validity of these other “answers,” but many are funny:

From Lawrence University, Appleton, Wis.

• “H2O is hot water, and CO2 is cold water”
• “Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them perspire.”
• “Artifical insemination is when the farmer does it to the cow instead of the bull.”
• “A super-saturated solution is one that holds more than it can hold.”
• “The tides are a fight between the Earth and moon. All water tends towards the moon, because there is no water in the moon, and nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.”
• “For asphyxiation: Apply artificial respiration until the patient is dead.”
• “For a nosebleed: Put the nose much lower then the body until the heart stops.”
• “For dog bite: put the dog away for sevral days. If he has not recovered, then kill it.”
• “To keep milk from turning sour: Keep it in the cow.”

Lots of websites provide this list in one form or another, but the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences provides some “facts” to help straighten out the answers.

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First, if you haven’t been to Pacific Science Center in Seattle lately, you may be surprised by some of the new events and exhibits on tap for this weekend.

Of special note is “Science on a Sphere,” a new permanent exhibit that uses computers and video projectors to animate a globe, which is used to demonstrate atmospheric changes and the effects of heating and cooling across the Earth’s ocean and land masses.

Special programs on the sphere Sunday include “Chasing The Rain” at 10:50 a.m. and 2:20 p.m. along with Oceans, Earthquakes & Tsunamis. The exhibit, provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is similar to spheres installed in about 80 locations throughout the world.

“To the Arctic 3D,” being shown throughout the day in the Boeing Imax Theater, presents an up-close look at a landscape of immense glaciers, spectacular waterfalls and snow-crusted peaks while telling the story of a polar bear and her cubs. Check ahead for reservations.

Check out the Earth Day page for other events at Pacific Science Center on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Orca Network is holding its annual “Welcome the Whales Day” tomorrow on Whidbey Island. Costume-making and a critter parade are part of the fun. On the educational side, Bruce Mate, director of the Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, will discuss gray whales and the animals he has tracked throughout the Pacific Ocean to discover their migration patterns.

For local events, I wrote a piece in the Kitsap Sun about Earth Day activities in Kitsap County.

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The “Mayor’s Challenge” is over, and Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent says she is pleased that Bremerton placed first in Washington state and third out of more than 100 medium-sized cities in the West.

Read the news release issued by the mayor.
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UPDATE, April 27

Kitsap Sun reporter Steve Gardner wrote about the “Mayor’s Challenge” for yesterday’s print edition, helping to move Bremerton from the fourth spot to the third, where the city stands today. See “Bremerton faring well in conservation pledge contest.”

Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent, who has encouraged people to take the pledge at nearly every opportunity, was quoted as saying:

“We have a little hill to climb yet if we’re No. 4. I just want that pride within our city for us to take and beat out someone just to say we can do it.”

Since pledges are recorded by Zip Code, residents are not required to live inside the city limits to support their surrounding community, incorporated or not.
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UPDATE, April 12, 2012

Bremerton didn’t last long in the top spot of the “Mayor’s Challenge.” As of this morning, the city had been pushed down to number 2 in its category, replaced by Aliso Viejo, Calif.

Maybe it’s not so easy to stay on top. I’m sure Kathleen Cahall is already looking for ways to rally the populace in and around Bremerton. Maybe if everyone sent the link to friends in Bremerton? http://www.mywaterpledge.com

To help people understand the contest, feel free to use the buttons at the bottom of the main blog section to Tweet the entry, post it on Facebook or send the link by e-mail with a personal message attached. (E-mail is right before the “response” section.) Good luck again to those in Bremerton; please pardon the hometown bias.
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UPDATE, April 11, 2012

Bremerton, Wash., has taken over the top spot in the “National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation,” among western communities with populations from 30,000 to 100,000 in population.

Sometime between yesterday morning — when I posted this blog entry — and this morning, Bremerton moved from second to first place. I suppose the challenge now is to hold onto that position. Everyone is eligible to join this challenge, which includes prizes for individuals.
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In what is being called the “National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation,” Bremerton currently ranks second behind Newport Beach, Calif., in gathering water pledges among western communities with populations from 30,000 to 100,000 in population.

“It would be wonderful for Bremerton to capture the #1 spot,” Kathleen Cahall, Bremerton’s water resources manager, wrote to me yesterday in an e-mail.

Kathleen has done her best to stir up interest in the event, which also includes potential prizes for participants. Displays have been set up at various city locations; the contest has been mentioned on BKAT community access TV; e-mails have been sent to those on the city’s mailing list; a link has been placed on the city’s website; the event has been mentioned at a city council meeting; and the mayor and city employees have been handing out info cards at events.

To take the pledge, go to www.mywaterpledge.com before April 30.

I told Kathleen I would pass on the word about this contest, sponsored by the Wyland Foundation. If you take the pledge, you may gain some attention for your community and also become personally eligible for prizes, including a Toyota Prius.

While it’s called the “Mayor’s Challenge” and appears to be focused on cities, the contest actually is judged by postal Zip Code, according to Patti Romo of the Wyland Foundation. The goal is to obtain the greatest percentage of pledges among the population represented by a city’s Zip Code.

So if your Zip Code is 98310, 98311, 98312, 98314 or 98337, you are eligible to support Bremerton’s quest to make it to the top, even if you don’t live within the city. Bremerton city officials are strong supporters of water conservation and would love to get that kind of recognition. See the city’s website about conservation.

If you live somewhere else, you’ll get credit for supporting the “city” associated with the Zip Code where you reside — including Silverdale, Seabeck, Hansville, Tahuya and many more unincorporated communities listed by the Postal Service.

In signing the pledge, you’ll be asked if you are willing to take certain actions, such as wash only full loads of laundry. You don’t need to answer “yes” to all the questions to successfully meet the challenge.

It is kind of fun and seems like a good way to get all of us thinking about the choices we make. Again, the website for the challenge is www.mywaterpledge.com.

The Wyland Foundation, founded by environmental artist Robert Wyland, supports educational efforts that help people appreciate and support healthy oceans and waterways.

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Taken today, this photo shows the sediment once impounded by the Elwha Dam but now free to move. The drawdown is on hold to allow the river to redistribute the sediment.
Elwha Dam cam, Natonal Park Service

The Elwha Dam has been entirely removed down to the river bed (see photos below), and the river is now flowing in its original channel, where it will remain. The river is being held back mainly by a “check dam” of boulders. At the moment, the drawdown has been halted at 133 feet elevation for a scheduled two-week holding period.

Andy Ritchie, restoration project hydrologist with Olympic National Park, says the pause in drawdown will allow the river to snake around to redistribute the sediment more evenly across the valley. The final target elevation for the river bed is 100 feet.

Drawdown of Lake Mills, behind the upper Glines Canyon Dam, also is on hold at the moment. Even more sediment is trapped behind that dam. While project managers have largely lost control over the movement of sediment behind the lower dam, the upper dam remains intact enough to control migration of sediment from farther up the canyon.

As the weather improves this spring (or at least we can hope), it may be time for many of us to visit the former lake beds at the two dams. We can walk out onto the deltas and see the new vegetation starting to grow. Lake Aldwell’s delta can be reached from the old boat launch. For Lake Mills, take Whiskey Bend Road, which has been reopened, and you will come to Humes Ranch trailhead with access from there.

It appears the sediments are stable enough for people to walk out onto the former lake beds, though visitors are cautioned about steep banks, overhangs and mud, and people should watch to avoid new plantings. Before visiting, you may wish to check out Olympic National Park’s “Access Updates” or stop in at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center.

Computer modeling shows that sediment loads may be high at times, but suspended solids should not exceed 40 grams per liter, a tolerable level for the downstream water-treatment plant, Andy told me. If needed, the treatment plant can be turned on to clean up the drinking water for Port Angeles and for raceways at a fish hatchery operated by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. So far, the turbidity has rarely exceeded 12 grams per liter.

Andy said fine sediments are flushing downstream, but a “wedge” of coarser sediment has not yet moved past the lower dam site. Those coarser sediments are more likely to be deposited where the flow of the river declines — especially where the river widens near the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

“In a lot of ways, what the sediment does from Elwha Dam downstream will give us a warning about what will be happening with Glines,” he told me. “The mean grain size there will be larger.”

As Lake Aldwell has been drawn down, Ritchie said the researchers realized that the pre-dam ground level was higher in some places than they had originally estimated. The result is that some areas of the former reservoir contained less sediment than originally calculated.

Also, because of the mild winter just past, lower river flows did not transport as much sediment as originally hoped. The effect is that the delta is further from pre-dam conditions than it would have been with higher flows — though everyone realizes that it could take a decade or more before conditions really settle down.

Andy said those working on the project would like to see larger flows just to measure the effects of a good flood on sediment movement while intensive monitoring equipment is still in place. The equipment is scheduled for removal no earlier than next winter.

Seattle Times reporter Lynda Mapes recently wrote a couple of excellent stories about changing conditions along the Elwha River. The first, called “Rush of freedom for Elwha as dam comes down,” describes the landscape around the two dams. The second, called “Man giving nature a helping hand in laying a new Elwha carpet,” focuses on the struggles to get plants to grow in areas long submerged.

These photos show the Elwha Dam removal from beginning to end:

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As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve found the symbolic event to be an enjoyable time for sitting quietly in the dark with a few candles and discussing with my family what we can do as individuals, joining with others, to make this a better world.

As others have said, all important movements start with small actions. I like Earth Hour, because one is joining something both big and small. It’s big because it is taking place throughout the world. It’s small because it is such a simple thing.

This year, Earth Hour founder Andy Ridley would like to pursue the potential of connecting people worldwide through social media. It is now possible to converse in a variety of ways with millions of people and maybe even inspire others to take actions for sustainability. As Andy says, it is time to go beyond the hour.

To check out some of the ideas being thrown out, read “My Challenge to the Earth Hour Community” as well as the home page of Earth Hour.

Plenty of celebrities worldwide have joined the movement, and new ideas are being promoted all the time. My wish is that this simple idea not collapse under an effort to make it something more. I want it to remain personal. I guess it goes back to that enduring environmental slogan: Think global; act local.

If you are interested, feel free to read comments I’ve offered during previous Earth Hour events:

2009: Significant symbolism surpasses silliness

2010: Earth Hour unites people around the world

2011: Earth Hour offers a chance to pause and think

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As Gray tells it, he was reading the memoirs of neurologist Oliver Sacks when he came to a passage describing a periodic table display in London’s Kensington Science Museum.

“In misreading the paragraph, I thought it was a table, not the wall display it actually is,” Gray writes in telling how he came to craft a wooden table shaped like the periodic table.

Gray’s periodic table table contains built-in boxes that hold samples of every element known to man, though he actually keeps some elements — notably gold, silver and platinum — in a safe.

The story about the construction of the periodic table table is quite personal. His craftsmanship relies in large part on the tools and materials he had available when he made the table. See the pictorial “construction history” on his website.

I like the thoughtful touches Gray has included, such as using different woods for groups of elements: red oak for the rare earths, white oak for the transition elements, birch for the alkali earths, teak for the alkali metals and cherry for the main metals. Being so unique, Gabon ebony was the only reasonable choice for hydrogen, Gray says, detailing his reasoning for each choice.

When all was done, he created a website that not only provides answers about the table he built but also talks about all the elements and even instills a vision of science as a kind of personal, hands-on search for fulfillment.

If you visit the home page of the periodic table table, you will see a picture as if you’re looking down on the table top. Click on any of the elements and you will gain access to a tremendous amount of information about that particular element, including links to other sources.

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