Watching Our Water Ways

I wonder if anyone has noticed that I’ve been away from this Water Ways blog for a time. Aside from visiting my youngest daughter in Yakima, where she had her first baby, I’ve been occupied with breaking news for the Kitsap Sun.

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.”

(more…)

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Work on the Washington State Shellfish Initiative is shifting into high gear, as I learned yesterday during a meeting of the Shellfish Initiative Advisory Group.

The initiative is being directed by a “core group,” made up of representatives from seven state and federal agencies. Advice is coming from a much larger advisory group in quarterly meeings like the first one yesterday. See “Purpose Statement” (PDF 44 kb) for details.

Manchester Research Station
NOAA photo

During the meeting, the group reviewed progress on a work plan that includes more than 30 different tasks, each assigned to a small working group. I made notes on many of the projects, which I’ll share with you in future news stories or blog entries.

I did focus on one Kitsap County project with relevance for the entire Puget Sound region: a new oyster hatchery at Manchester Research Station to produce baby Olympia oysters. It will be part of an ongoing effort to restore the native Olympias. See the story I wrote for today’s Kitsap Sun.

One anonymous person commented at the bottom of the story: “Hey, an organization that actually accomplishes something! Keep up the good work and don’t get bogged down in doing studies and producing reports that no one will read or respond to.”

I understand why people are sometimes frustrated by the planning that seems to go on and on. But without planning, I’m not sure who would grap the limited money. Without planning, the projects would have no focus and the work would be done haphazardly.

The Washington Shellfish Initiative, while going beyond Puget Sound, is integrated within the Puget Sound Action Agenda by the Puget Sound Partnership, which has been assigned by the governor to coordinate the shellfish initiative. The Action Agenda is designed as a blueprint for the full restoration of the Puget Sound ecosystem.

If you’d like to catch a glimpse of other shellfish projects in the works, you can download the work plan (PDF 120 kb).

For background on the Washington Shellfish Initiative, check out the story I wrote for the Kitsap Sun Dec. 9, when the project was announced jointly by Gov. Chris Gregoire and Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Other information and important links related to the initiative can found on a Water Ways entry I wrote a few days later on Dec. 16.

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Work is progressing rapidly around the edges of the Kitsap Forest & Bay Project — an effort to protect a 7,000-acre mosaic of lowland forest, shorelines and wetlands in North Kitsap.

Pope Resources lands for sale Click to enlarge

The ecological values of the undeveloped landscape is becoming known among government officials and the public. So far, nobody has jumped in with millions of dollars to buy the land for conservation. But, as the year comes to a close, there are plenty of reasons for optimism among supporters.

When I consider what it will take to make this project happen, I keep thinking of a jigsaw puzzle. I realize the puzzle metaphor is overworked, but let’s stay with it. A good way to begin picture puzzles is by first lining up all the edges and later filling in the middle. To me, that is what is happening with the Kitsap Forest & Bay Project.

First, Forterra — formerly Cascade Land Conservancy — has embraced the project, bringing to the table extensive experience in acquiring lands for conservation purposes. When an option to buy the land from Pope Resources was announced, Forterra president Gene Duvernoy stated, “This is probably the most important project we can accomplish to save Puget Sound.” See Kitsap Sun, Oct. 17.

Another major step came recently when the Puget Sound Partnership released a draft of its Puget Sound Action Agenda. The Action Agenda is designed to recognize the most important preservation and restoration actions that can be taken in the next two years. Although the actions have not yet been lined up in priority, the Kitsap Forest & Bay Project was called out as a high-priority action. Read the story with links in Kitsap Sun, Dec. 21.

Something similar happened in the first Action Agenda in 2008, when the Partnership called for the acquisition and restoration of lands in the Nisqually River delta. The value was so highly considered that some action areas agreed to delay their own projects to move Nisqually to fruition. Perhaps something like that will happen for the North Kitsap lands. Check out the video “The Nisqually Estuary Returns.”

KUOW reporter Ashley Ahearn visited the North Kitsap property and produced a radio piece that outlines the value of the 7,000 acres and discusses the potential acquisition. She did a nice job, as you can see on Earthfix.

Michelle Connor, executive vice president of Forterra, said Ashley’s story will help spread the word about the project throughout the state and beyond.

“This is something that the Kitsap community has known for a long time,” Michelle told me. “Now other people are catching up with us. There is nothing comparable in the Puget Sound region.”

Further bolstering the project is an upcoming study that will examine the ecological values of the 7,000 acres, including nearly two miles of undeveloped shoreline.

A grant of $270,000 will be used to characterize ecosystem values across the landscape and determine which areas are best suited for preservation, forestry and possibly development. A portion of the grant will be used to decide whether revenues can be generated from timber harvest without upsetting the ecological integrity of the region.

The $270,000 study was part of some $6.3 million provided by the EPA’s National Estuary Program for 23 grants earmarked for protecting and restoring Puget Sound watersheds. See Kitsap Sun, Dec. 23.

Acquisition funding for the Kitsap Forest & Bay Project will depend on a variety of public grants and private donations, each with their own requirements. At the same time, the 7,000 acres under discussion contains a variety of small ecosystems that could qualify for one or more restoration and preservation grants.

The 7,000-acre jigsaw puzzle is rather formidable and almost overwhelming, but Michelle Connor is undaunted. Her optimism is infectious. Few people know as much about public conservation grants and philanthropic efforts, and Michelle has an army of people behind her.

The clear strategy moving forward is to assemble this massive puzzle — with all its shapes and colors — one piece at a time.

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Puget Sound Partnership has completed 19 ecosystem “targets” that will serve as mileposts on the road to restoring Puget Sound to a healthy condition.

Ecosystem indicators and targets, along with other information, can be accessed from this "Vital Signs" wheel.
Click on image to link to the PSP website.

The final three goals, all dealing with land-use issues, were approved Thursday by the Puget Sound Leadership Council, as I described in a story published in today’s Kitsap Sun. This a major milestone for the partnership.

The last three targets are mentioned in my story, and you can download the complete resolutions here:

Forest cover (PDF 160 kb)

Ecologically significant areas (PDF 160 kb)

Urban growth priority (PDF 160 kb)

The other 16 targets are described in a two-page document found on the partnership’s website: Puget Sound Ecosystem Recovery Targets (PDF 392 kb).

The website also includes information about ecosystem indicators and targets, along with other information, on a “Vital Signs” wheel. Click on the image above to use the new tool.

One concern, as I’ve said before, is that too much focus may shift to these targets to the exclusion of other potential problems. The partnership’s Science Panel and Ecosystem Coordination Board must keep their eyes on the entire Puget Sound ecosystem. They must make sure the approved indicators and targets advance recovery and protection efforts everywhere in Puget Sound.

Monitoring will be needed to measure advancement toward the approved targets, of course. We also need monitoring to measure the success of recovery projects and their effects on smaller ecosystems, particularly estuaries.

From the Strategic Science Plan:

Although it requires long-term stable funding to achieve, without monitoring, there can be no performance accountability, and the opportunities to make improvements in ecosystem recovery are constrained. Because of its critical importance, the Partnership will develop and implement a coordinated regional monitoring program to inform the adaptive management process and support decisions about future ecosystem recovery and information needs.

Support from diverse interests depends on the partnership staying on a path defined by science, as I discovered in my interviews earlier this year assessing the Puget Sound Partnership. See Kitsap Sun, Feb. 5, 2011.

With targets now in place, I hope the partnership will be fearless in its assessment of success. Some failures are inherent in this system. While the partnership has struggled with administrative processs during these early years, there’s too much at s take for less than a clear-eyed vision of what needs to be done.

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Water-quality leaders in the Washington Department of Ecology and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were quick to respond yesterday to a Seattle Times’ story, which begins:

“Seattle and King County are poised to spend more than $1.3 billion of ratepayer money on pollution-cleanup programs that won’t even move the water-quality needle in Puget Sound.”

Yesterday’s story, by reporter Linda Mapes, is about combined sewage overflows — something that Bremerton knows a little about, having completed a cleanup program after 20 years and $50 million in expenditures. See my story from May 30 in the Kitsap Sun.

The premise of Linda’s story is that it might be better for local governments to focus on reducing stormwater overall rather trying to meet a 1988 state pollution standard focused on raw sewage discharges. After all, the reasoning goes, stormwater containing toxic chemicals may be worse for Puget Sound than stormwater mixed with sewage.

The state requirement, by the way, limits discharges of raw sewage in stormwater to one overflow per year, on average, for each outfall pipe.

There is plenty of room for disagreement, as the Times’ story points out. Christie True, director of King County Natural Resources and Parks, stresses that upcoming CSO projects will reduce the public’s exposure to untreated sewage. But Larry Phillips, a member of the King County Council, says dollars spent on CSO projects can’t be spent on buying habitat or attacking the surface-runoff problem, which the Puget Sound Partnership has deemed the region’s top priority.

Bill Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the EPA and former chairman of the Puget Sound Partnership’s Leadership Council, was quoted as saying:

“This is just crazy; we don’t have unlimited funds in this country, and whatever we do, we ought to spend where we get the most bang for the buck … Cost-benefit has not been part of the discussion.”

David Dicks, former executive director of the partnership and now a member of the Leadership Council, said this:

“It’s just momentum. And what you learn in these things is you can go in and scream and yell and be a revolutionary for a while, but the institutional momentum of these laws has a lot of power, and it is just dumb power. … What we need to do is turn off the autopilot and see what makes sense here.”

Ecology and EPA officials took a stand in favor of the existing rules for reducing sewage discharges. Both issued quick responses to the Seattle Times article, writing on a blog called ECOconnect

From Kelly Susewind, manager of Ecology’s Water Quality Program:

“Infrastructure investments are needed to address water pollution caused by both CSO and stormwater discharges. In areas served by combined systems, CSO projects provide solutions to both CSO and stormwater pollution.

“The investments ratepayers make in their communities’ CSO programs protect public health and Washington’s waters, two principal missions of sewer and stormwater utilities. The success of these projects advances the goals of our state and federal laws to protect, clean up and preserve our waters for present and future generations.”

Adds Dennis McLerran, EPA’s regional administrator:

“Discharging large amounts of raw sewage to Puget Sound and Lake Washington is simply not acceptable. That’s why EPA has worked closely with the state, King County and Seattle over many years to address sewage treatment and the ongoing problem of Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) pollution. With that work nearly completed, now is not the time to lose our resolve to finish the job visionary leaders in the Puget Sound region started some 40 years ago.”

Cost versus benefits for Bremerton CSO project (click to enlarge)
Kitsap Sun graphic

Shellfish were not mentioned in this discussion — maybe because it was focused on Seattle and King County, where industrial pollution is a major problem. In Kitsap County, shellfish are worth millions of dollars a year to the local and regional economy. For Dyes Inlet, the reopening of shellfish beds probably would not have happened except for a lawsuit that forced the city of Bremerton to comply with the federal Clean Water Act on a strict time schedule.

Lisa Stiffler, former PI reporter who now works for Sightline Institute, discussed Bremerton’s accomplishment with a focus on the cost. See “How Bremerton cleaned its waters, and came to wonder about the costs” in the online publication Crosscut.

A case can be made that shellfish beds in Dyes Inlet could have been cleaned up enough to be reopened by spending just the first $33 million, thereby saving the extra $17 million that it took to bring the city into full compliance with federal law.

But state and county health officials have told me on many occasions that Bremerton and Kitsap County, along with local residents, must continue to work hard to keep the Dyes Inlet shellfish beds open. Beaches in the inlet remain on the verge of closure again, and population growth tends to exacerbate the bacterial pollution.

Kitsap County Health District is respected for its monitoring and pollution-fighting program, but it does help to know that release of raw sewage into the inlet has become a very rare event.

Lisa makes a good point when she says Bremerton would have saved money if engineers would have known more about low-impact development during the planning for CSO reductions. Infiltrating rain water near the source (preferably before it runs off the property) reduces the need to deal with stormwater flowing through pipes. Keeping stormwater out of sewer lines by using LID techniques effectively allows the pipes to carry all the sewage to the treatment plants, even during heavy rains.

Bremerton has become a leader in LID. If city officials had known 20 years ago what they know today, they probably would have spent more on pervious pavement and rain gardens and less on expensive piping networks. But it appears they did their best with the knowledge they had — and LID has become a major part of ongoing efforts to address stormwater.

Cities still working on CSO problems may find Bremerton’s experience helpful. Keeping stormwater out of pipes is proving effective, whether or not those pipes also contain sewage.

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A parody of the 1996 hit single “No Diggity” by the R&B group Blackstreet has been rearranged into a new video called “Dog Doogity.”

Wanna guess what the video is about?

Produced for the campaign “Puget Sound Starts Here,” the video — posted last night — delivers a clear message about picking up dog waste: Just DOO it!

Three men who grew up together in Seattle and are now based in San Francisco produced the video, which shows a series of people walking their dogs in familiar locations around Seattle, Tacoma and Everett. The animals leave behind little surprises, which provokes singer Martin Luther (McCoy) to rush in with a plastic bag, a song and a smile.

“It was really fulfilling for three Seattle guys to do something that was a lot of fun and beneficial to our hometown,” said Peter Furia, one of three producers for the company called Seedwell. The others are Beau Lewis and David Fine. All will be 30 this year.

Lewis wrote the lyrics for “Dog Doogity” with a little help from his friends. Check it out:

In the rain, it’s a good day
Each and every day, the Northwest way
The girl and her dog, they were fine (wow)
Until they left a doodie, that’s a crime (bow wow)

Furia said the campaign started when the three men were approached by public relations expert Bob Frause, who helped develop the “Puget Sound Starts Here” campaign.

They were asked to develop a video suitable for YouTube viewers, generally a younger audience. They could choose any of the three messages being promoted by the campaign: 1) Wash your car in a carwash, where dirty water won’t wash down the storm drain; 2) Be careful with your use of lawn chemicals; or 3) Pick up after your dog when Mother Nature calls.

The choice was easy, Furia said. “We knew that dog doo was going to be the most suitable for the online video space.”

Lewis remembered the Blackstreet song and thought it would make a great tune to spoof.

“We removed the rap verse and just did the R&B parts,” Furia said. “We wanted it to be shorter and sweeter.”

With a background in music production, the three produced a high-quality sound with original instrumentation by Jeff Kite. The song sounds great through high-quality headphones.

Luther, an actor as well as a singer, really got into the project, according to Furia. “He’d been to Seattle a couple of times and thought the project was fun and funny, and he owns a dog, a mastiff.”

Unfortunately, they couldn’t get Luther’s dog transported to Seattle in time to perform in the video, but the other dogs DOO quite well on cue.

I can’t forget to mention the dance routine, created by Paul Benshoof as an imitation of the funky dancers from the original video. Of course, the full dance number could not fit on the video, but the producers saved it to a separate video for those who want more. Outtakes can be viewed on a third video.

The $40,000 song and video production is part of the $500,000 “Puget Sound Starts Here” campaign, which is spanning over 18 months with numerous radio and television spots along with newspaper and online ads.

Some 81 cities and counties involved in the campaign have organized into seven teams, each of which will receive a portion of the money for efforts in their local communities. In Kitsap County, bus ads will focus on pollution messages.

Suzi Wong Swint of Snohomish County, a leader in the “Puget Sound Starts Here” campaign, said she expects the video will get a lot of viewers.

“Everyone from all the jurisdictions really like it, “ she said.

Nobody seems to know if the original members of Blackstreet have seen the video, but Furia says it is all in good fun. Since “Dog Doogity” is an obvious parody, a commentary on the original, copyright is not an issue, he said.

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Last week, the Puget Sound Partnership completed work on its ecosystem targets, the first time in history that goals have been established for the restoration of Puget Sound. See the story I wrote for Saturday’s Kitsap Sun.

Early in her first term, Gov. Chris Gregoire established a goal of restoring Puget Sound to health by the year 2020. What we have learned since then is that nobody can define precisely what that means. There is no battery of tests to be given to the waterway that would allow a team of doctors to declare their patient in fine condition.

In human terms, one can say a healthy person is one free of serious disease. But for some people that is not enough. Some are satisfied with nothing less than top athletic form. It’s even more complicated for Puget Sound, where some parts of the water body can be pristine while others are in need of intensive care.

(more…)

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It won’t be long before local governments will be called on to do their part to restore Puget Sound.

That’s one conclusion I drew yesterday from a conversation between representatives of the Puget Sound Partnership and the Kitsap County commissioners.

Martha Kongsgaard, chairwoman of the PSP’s Leadership Council, and PSP Executive Director Gerry O’Keefe have been visiting local governments throughout Puget Sound to learn what they are doing now and to gauge their capacity and willingness to do more to improve the natural environment.

It has long been recognized that the effort to protect and restore Puget Sound requires the support of the people who live here. And local officials tend to be much closer to those living in their community. As a result, they can often bridge the gap between decision-makers at the top levels and the people who need to make changes in their daily lives.

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A third-generation study of toxic pollution in Puget Sound claims to be the best estimate so far of total amounts of toxics entering Puget Sound each year.

New report on toxics in Puget Sound (PDF 7.3 mb). Click to download.
Washington Department of Ecology

As Craig Welch of the Seattle Times points out in a story today, it’s a big exaggeration to think that Puget Sound is suffering through enough drips and drabs of oil — largely from vehicles — to equal an Exxon Valdez spill every two years.

Craig is right to point out how previous studies overestimated the amount of several toxics. After all, politicians having been tossing around the dramatic Exxon Valdez analogy when it serves their purposes. Still, the total amount of oil or any other pollutant in Puget Sound is not really a good measure of the problems we face.

If you want to understand pollution in a waterway, it’s better to measure the concentration of the pollutant, see where that level falls on a toxicity scale, then consider how fish and other organisms are exposed to the pollution.

The new study for the Department of Ecology, titled “Toxics in Surface Runoff to Puget Sound,” analyzed 21 chemicals or groups of chemicals in 16 streams in the Puyallup and Snohomish river watersheds. The watersheds contain all different land types — commercial-industrial, residential, agricultural, forest, fields and other undeveloped lands. The idea is that researchers could extrapolate from these land types to represent all of Puget Sound. But such an extrapolation still requires a number of assumptions, which can throw off the estimates by wide margins.

At least we can say the latest study involved actual water-quality sampling. Previous estimates — including those that produced the Exxon Valdez analogy — were based on measurements of stormwater in other parts of the country.

(more…)

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If science is to guide the Puget Sound Partnership in its quest to restore Puget Sound, then a new online version of the “Puget Sound Science Update” promises to become a powerful spotlight pointing the way.

The printed version of this new Update, released Monday, is more than 700 pages long. The Update engages in a solid discussion about the state of the science in Puget Sound, But the initial version is just a beginning of what the Puget Sound Science Panel hopes it will become, according to Joe Gaydos, vice chairman of the panel.

“I feel like it is a really great start,” Joe told me. “Once we get everything in there, it is really going to be amazing.”

Puget Sound and its major rivers
Source: Puget Sound Science Update

The goal is to provide a central source of all information relevant to the Puget Sound ecosystem, including human connections and guidance for restoration. This is where both old and new research can be cited, discussed and made relevant to decisions regarding Puget Sound.

Joe, a veterinarian and regional director of The SeaDoc Society, discussed how the basic findings could be enhanced with links directly to research reports, academic discussions, newspaper and magazine articles and even descriptions written for elementary school children.

If successful, the Update will become — or be connected with — a living encyclopedia of all things related to Puget Sound. The structure of the website, developed by both policy and science advisers, looks something like Wikipedia — but Gaydos expects it to evolve. An editor will help ensure that information meets a certain level of scientific credibility.

From the document:

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