Nitrogen from sewage-treatment plants, along with other nutrient
sources, are known to trigger plankton blooms that lead to
dangerous low-oxygen conditions in Puget Sound — a phenomenon that
has been studied for years.
Nitrogen sources used to
predict future water-quality in the Salish Sea Model
Map: Washington Department of Ecology
Now state environmental officials are working on a plan that
could eventually limit the amount of nitrogen released in sewage
effluent.
The approach being considered by the Washington Department of
Ecology is a “general permit” that could apply to any treatment
plant meeting specified conditions. The alternative to a general
permit would be to add operational requirements onto existing
“individual permits” issued under the National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System, or NPDES.
The general permit would involve about 70 sewage-treatment
plants discharging into Puget Sound. Theoretically, an overall
nitrogen limitation would be developed for a given region of the
sound. Treatment plant owners could work together to meet that
goal, with the owner of one plant paying another to reduce its
share of the nutrient load.
It was a tale of two health advisories that created a bit of
confusion in Kitsap County following a major sewage spill last week
from King County’s West Point treatment plant.
A beach closure in Kitsap County included the eastern shoreline
of Bainbridge Island north of Eagle Harbor plus North Kitsap from
the Agate Pass bridge to Point Jefferson between Kingston and
Indianola.
Brown color designates areas
closed to shellfish harvest because of pollution. Click to see
state map for details on closures.
Map: Washington State Department of
Health
The closure area was determined in part by computer models,
which showed that spills of sewage, oil and other substances are
capable of crossing Puget Sound from Seattle and hitting the shore
of Kitsap County, according to Scott Berbells, section manager for
shellfish growing areas, a division of the Washington State
Department of Health.
Such a scenario occurred in December 2003, when 4,800 gallons of
heavy fuel oil spilled from a barge at the Chevron/Texaco Facility
at Point Wells, south of Edmonds. The oil crossed Puget Sound and
damaged shellfish beaches in North Kitsap. See
Kitsap Sun, Dec. 31, 2003.
The latest spill, about 3 million gallons of raw sewage mixed
with stormwater, occurred at West Point in Seattle’s Magnolia area
— about 20 miles south of Point Wells.
The exact trajectory of a spill depends greatly on winds and
tidal currents, but state and county health officials tend to be
cautious, thus the closure of Kitsap County’s shoreline.
Water-quality testing has not revealed the presence of bacteria
from the West Point sewer spill, but the tests are limited to a few
areas, according to John Kiess, environmental health director for
the Kitsap Public Health District. It is best to be cautious in
these situations, he said.
In what is becoming an annual event, portions of Hood Canal have
changed colors in recent days, the result of a large bloom of
armored plankton called coccolithophores.
Coccolithophore from Hood
Canal’s Dabob Bay viewed with scanning electron microscope.
Image: Brian Bill, Northwest Fisheries Science
Center
Teri King, a plankton expert with Washington Sea Grant, has been
among the first to take notice of the turquoise blooms each year
they occur.
“Guess who is back?” Teri wrote in the blog
Bivalves for Clean Water. “She showed up June 24 in Dabob Bay
and has been shining her Caribbean blueness throughout the bay and
spreading south toward Quilcene Bay.”
Yesterday, I noticed a turquoise tinge in Southern Hood Canal
from Union up to Belfair, although the color was not as intense as
I’ve seen in past years.
The color is the result of light reflecting off elaborate
platelets of calcium carbonate, called coccoliths, which form
around the single-celled coccolithophores. The species in Hood
Canal is typically Emiliania huxleyi.
“Salish Sea Wild” is a new video series by the SeaDoc Society
designed to transport the viewer right up close to the living
creatures that occupy the underwater and terrestrial realms of the
Salish Sea.
The videos portray the beauty of our inland waterways as well as
the excitement and occasional amusement of diving down into the
ecologically rich waters that many people know only from the
surface. The host for the series is wildlife veterinarian Joe
Gaydos, science director for SeaDoc.
“Amid the wealth of biodiversity in our backyard, we’ll discover
trees that eat fish, fish that mimic plants, plants that grow two
feet a day, and animals that bloom like flowers,” Joe says in an
introductory video (the first on this page). “We’ll focus on
scientists working to preserve and restore the Salish Sea and to
save its iconic species like salmon and our beloved orcas.”
By 2021, the 28 countries in the European Union are expected to
ban single-use plastics — including straws, plates, cutlery and
drink stirrers, as well as plastic sticks for cotton swabs,
balloons and candy.
The latest development, announced this past week, involves the
approval of a provisional agreement by the European Parliament and
Council of the European Union. Formal approval is expected next.
The ban carries through on an initiative launched in May that also
seeks to limit the use of plastic drink cups, food containers,
grocery bags and candy wrappers. Review
Water Ways, May 31,2018, or take a look at this
EU brochure.
World production of plastic
materials by region (2013). Click to enlarge // Source:
European Union
Most plastic in Europe is landfilled or incinerated, rather than
being recycled, which is a loss to the economy, according to EU
documents contained in the European
Strategy for Plastics. In the environment, many plastics take
hundreds of years to break down, and the amount of plastic getting
into the ocean has raised alarm bells throughout the world.
“When we have a situation where one year you can bring your fish
home in a plastic bag, and the next year you are bringing that bag
home in a fish, we have to work hard and work fast,” Karmenu Vella,
EU commissioner for environment, maritime affairs and fisheries,
said in a statement
released Wednesday. “So I am happy that with the agreement of
today between Parliament and Council. We have taken a big stride
towards reducing the amount of single-use plastic items in our
economy, our ocean and ultimately our bodies.”
“This agreement truly helps protect our people and our planet,”
said First Vice-President Frans Timmermans, responsible for
sustainable development. “Europeans are conscious that plastic
waste is an enormous problem and the EU as a whole has shown true
courage in addressing it, making us the global leader in tackling
plastic marine litter.”
The measures are expected to reduce litter by more than half for
the top-10 plastic litter items, saving 22 billion Euros (about $25
billion) by 2030 and avoiding 3.4 million metric tons (3.75 million
U.S. tons) of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, according to a
fact
sheet.
The United Nations has launched
a campaign to reduce plastic pollution.
Source: UN
Peter Harris, a graduate of North Kitsap High School who is
working on an environmental assessment for the United Nations, told
me in June that plastics pollution is one of the three greatest
problems facing the world’s oceans. The others are the bleaching of
coral reefs caused by global warming and overfishing, which is
driving some species to extinction. See
Water Ways, June 6, 2018.
The European Union has carefully examined how plastics affect
the ocean. EU countries should be recognized for their courage in
tackling the problem in Europe, not waiting for a worldwide
agreement before taking action. Non-European countries would be
wise to consider their own plastic impacts on the environment.
So far, actions in the United States have been limited to a
relatively small number of cities and counties, along with a few
states. Because plastics wash downstream in stormwater and into
rivers before reaching the ocean, every American has a role to play
in the problem. Whether we address the challenges internationally,
nationally or locally, everyone should take time to understand this
serious issue, consider practical solutions and support actions
that can save marine life before it’s too late.
OK, I’ll admit that I used this line once in a story many years
ago when I first observed the Skokomish River overflowing its
banks. I was amazed at the number of chum salmon swimming through
farm fields and across pavement in the Skokomish Valley as they
tried to get back to their spawning grounds.
Despite extensive work in the Skokomish River estuary, the
waters still back up and fish still swim across roads during heavy
rains and floods.
I was not the first to bend the old joke to ask, “Why did the
salmon cross the road?” And I was definitely not the last, as two
new videos went viral the past few days, resulting in news reports
across the country. Hundreds of thousands of people must have been
surprised to see Puget Sound salmon skittering across the pavement
in a most unnatural way.
Recent rains are bringing chum salmon into numerous streams on
the Kitsap Peninsula, according to Jon Oleyar, biologist for the
Suquamish Tribe. But more rains are needed to help the salmon reach
the upper tributaries and fully seed the system, he added.
Chum salmon swim up Chico Creek
on Thursday (11-1). // Photo: Emma
Jeffries
“The fall fish are right on schedule,” Jon told me, “but I wish
they had more water, especially for the tributaries.”
Folks attending the Kitsap Salmon Tours this Saturday should be
able to see fish in most locations on this year’s list. Read on for
details.
The fall chum themselves seem larger than average this year, Jon
said, which means the streams need a little more water than usual
for the fish to easily swim upstream.
Salmon can move quickly upstream and become stranded in
too-shallow water after a downpour followed by a dry period, he
said. In a worst-case scenario, fish may die before spawning. Once
the rains have saturated the soil, the risk of low flows is
reduced, but as of today we’re not at that point yet. Heavy rains
last Saturday brought many fish into the streams, he added, but
streams levels have dropped somewhat since then.
Washington Department of Ecology has agreed to take steps to
protect wild salmon eggs incubating in gravel by developing
entirely new water-quality standards to control fine sediment going
into streams.
The new standards, yet to be developed, could ultimately limit
silty runoff coming from logging operations, housing construction
and other operations that can affect water quality. The idea is
maintain adequate oxygen to salmon eggs, thus increasing the rate
of survival as well as the health of the young fish.
The legal agreement with Ecology grew out of a lawsuit brought
by Northwest Environmental Advocates against the federal
Environmental Protection Agency. NWEA claimed that the EPA had
failed to consult with natural resource agencies while reviewing
changes in state water-quality standards, as required by the
Endangered Species Act.
We’ve just gone through one of the driest five-month periods on
record in Kitsap County, yet the total precipitation for entire
water year was fairly close to average.
Water year 2018, which ended Sunday, offers a superb example of
the extreme differences in precipitation from one part of the
Kitsap Peninsula to another:
In Hansville — at the north end of the peninsula — the total
rainfall for the year reached 35.2 inches, about 3.5 inches above
average.
In Silverdale — about midway from north to south — the total
rainfall was recorded as 43.1 inches, about 5 inches below
average.
In Holly — near the south end — the total rainfall came in at
82 inches, about 3.3 inches above average.
The graphs of precipitation for the three areas show how this
year’s rainfall tracked with the average rainfall through the
entire year. The orange line depicts accumulated rainfall for water
year 2018, while the pink line represents the average. Click on the
images to enlarge and get a better view.
Puget Sound Partnership has honed its high-level game plan for
restoring the Puget Sound ecosystem, including a sharp focus on 10
“vital signs” of ecological health.
The newly released draft of the Puget
Sound Action Agenda has endorsed more than 600 specific
“near-term actions” designed to benefit the ecosystem in various
ways. Comments on the plan will be accepted until Oct. 15. Visit
the Partnership’s webpage to view the Draft Action Agenda and
access the
comments page.
The latest Action Agenda for 2018-2022 includes a revised format
with a “comprehensive
plan” separate from an “implementation
plan.” The comprehensive plan outlines the ecological problems,
overall goals and administrative framework. The implementation plan
describes how priorities are established and spells out what could
be accomplished through each proposed action.
Nearly 300 near-term
actions are listed at Tier 4, the highest level of priority,
giving them a leg up when it comes to state and federal support,
according to Heather Saunders Benson, Action Agenda manager.
Funding organizations use the Action Agenda to help them determine
where to spend their money.
The greatest change in the latest Action Agenda may be its focus
on projects that specifically carry out “Implementation
Strategies,” which I’ve been writing about on and off for nearly
two years. Check out
“Implementation Strategies will target Puget Sound ‘Vital
Signs’” in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound.
