Stormwater runoff from highways has been found to contain one or
more toxic compounds that can bring on sudden death in coho and
possibly other salmon as well.
Researchers Kate Macneale
(left) and Julann Spromberg place a coho salmon into a tub of
stormwater at Grover’s Creek Hatchery. Their studies have revealed
that urban stormwater can kill coho before they are able to
spawn.
Photo: Tiffany Royal/Northwest Indian Fisheries
Commission
Researchers from NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center first
noticed the problem in Seattle’s Longfellow Creek, which gets a
high volume of stormwater when it rains. Returning adult coho were
dying in the stream before they could spawn.
The problem was confirmed last fall at Grover’s Creek Hatchery
in North Kitsap, where coho were placed into tanks containing
highway runoff. Even after days of rain, the runoff was deadly,
causing the fish to become disoriented and die within hours. This
was not a disease process but a severe physiological disruption of
the salmon’s metabolism.
On Monday, I reported on these dramatic new findings made by Nat
Scholz and his colleagues at NOAA. Since then, the story was picked
up by the Associated Press and has appeared in dozens of
publications and news digests across the country.
I won’t go into detail about the study here, because most of
what I know is the story. See
Kitsap Sun, Jan. 21. Toward the end, I describe some actions
that Kitsap County officials are taking to keep highway dirt and
debris from getting into local streams, even before the deadly
compounds are identified.
I’ll continue to follow this story as scientists try to narrow
down the list of possible toxic compounds that are causing the
problem. The next step will be to take clues from tissues removed
from the dying salmon at Grover’s Creek Hatchery.
Naturally, these new findings raise many questions about how the
unknown chemicals affect the fish so rapidly and where these
compounds come from. Could it be from automobile tires or exhaust,
or could it be something in the road material itself? Are certain
chemicals acting synergistically to heighten the problem? Answering
these questions could make a significant difference for urban
streams and possibly for rural streams as well.
Personally, I can’t help wondering about the salmon that
survive. It’s not easy to find a coho stream where highway runoff
does not contribute something to the flow. If these compounds can
kill a fish in concentrations found in stormwater, what are they
doing to fish exposed to lower concentrations? Are the salmon that
survive as successful in finding a mate and conducting their
spawning rituals as salmon not exposed at all?
I’m not sure where this line of research will lead, but the
early implications appear to be quite serious. On an optimistic
note, if the compounds can be identified, Washington state has a
reputation for reducing or eliminating toxic chemicals at the
source.
Lisa Stiffler of Sightline Institute does an excellent job
addressing common objections to permeable pavement in her latest
discussion about stormwater solutions. See
Sightline’s website.
I’ve heard the excuses from contractors worried about the use
and maintenance of new paving materials. Lisa did some research and
tells us that when the concerns are valid, there may be ways to
work around the problems.
The fears she allays, including sources for more
information:
Permeable pavement will clog and lose its porousness.
Holes in permeable pavement make it weaker.
Permeable pavement won’t work on high-speed, high-volume roads
such as highways.
Permeable pavement won’t work on sloped sites.
Permeable pavement will result in groundwater
contamination.
Permeable pavement is prohibitively expensive.
Permeable pavement is more prone to rutting, breaking apart, or
otherwise failing.
It’s the water, or maybe it’s just the nasty stuff that’s in the
water.
A new series of studies by federal researchers is delving into
the question of which pollutants in urban streams are killing coho
salmon.
David Baldwin of Northwest
Fisheries Science Center mixes a chemical soup of pollutants found
in urban stormwater. Coho salmon will be kept in the brown bath for
24 hours to measure the effects.
Photo by Tiffany Royal, Northwest Indian Fisheries
Commission
As I describe in a story in
today’s Kitsap Sun, the new studies involve coho returning to
the Suquamish Tribe’s Grovers Creek Hatchery in North Kitsap.
Of course, pollutants in streams are just one factor affecting
salmon in the Puget Sound region, where development continues to
alter streamflows and reduce vegetation, despite efforts to protect
and restore habitat. But pollution may play a role that has gone
largely unnoticed in some streams.
The new studies continue an investigation that began more than a
decade ago with the involvement of numerous agencies. By now, most
of us have heard about the effects of copper on salmon, but the
latest round of studies will look at the collection of pollutants
found in stormwater to see how they work together. It may be
possible to pinpoint the chemical concentrations that result in
critical physiological changes in salmon.
The latest work involves a team led by David Baldwin of NOAA
Fisheries and Steve Damm of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The
Suquamish Tribe is providing the fish, along with facilities and
support.
For information on the ongoing effort to understand how toxic
chemicals affect salmon, review these pages on the website of the
Northwest Fisheries Science Center:
A page called “Coho Pre-spawn Mortality in Urban Streams”
presents a series of videos that show the advance of an apparent
neurological disease that first causes disorientation in coho
salmon and then death. The video is taken in Seattle’s Longfellow
Creek, an urban stream.
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.
I guess we’re lucky in Kitsap County to have local health
authorities who not only gather water-quality data but also know
what to do with the information. I’m told that’s not the case for
many counties in Washington state or across the nation.
The reason I bring this up is because of a story I wrote for
today’s Kitsap Sun. Some of the water-quality report cards
being issued by environmental groups are nothing more than a
rewrite of raw data from water-quality samples collected by local
officials. This could be valuable information in places where no
other information is offered. But water-quality specialists at the
Kitsap County Health District stand ready to interpret the data
and take more samples, if necessary, so we know when we really
should worry.
One bad sample does not mean we should run away from the water,
but it does serve to raise some questions. Asking questions is the
role I play when I see these reports. Fortunately, we have experts
in Kitsap County who know our streams and beaches and who are
willing and able to answer my questions.
It would be interesting to know how many counties in the state
conduct routine monitoring of streams, lakes and marine waters; how
many do follow-up tests when they find a problem; how many assess
the findings to measure trends; and how many use the data to begin
corrective actions. If anyone knows of information compiled on
monitoring programs for all counties or cities, please let me know.
If not, maybe this would be a project someone could take on.
Kitsap County’s monitoring program is funded by a stormwater fee
collected with our property taxes. The residential fee is $70 per
year. Commercial businesses may pay more, depending on their
size.
Many cities and counties collect stormwater fees, but few use
the money for monitoring. Even fewer compile long-term trends with
a comprehensive ongoing monitoring program. Such programs deserve
consideration.
In addition to paying for water-quality testing, Kitsap County’s
stormwater fee is used to investigate sources of pollution;
retrofit older communities with stormwater systems; clean out storm
drains on county property; inspect all storm drains except for
state highways; teach people about clean water; coordinate
volunteers in programs including Beach Watchers and Stream
Stewards; provide signs and supplies for the Mutt Mit dog-waste
cleanup program; fund grants for a backyard rain garden program;
and plan for and monitor results of stream-restoration and
stormwater-retrofit projects.
I’m not saying that programs such as Heal the Bay and Testing the
Waters (by Natural Resources Defense Council) don’t have value.
In some cases, this is all that communities have, and they provide
a good reason to ask questions about water quality.
But, as Keith Grellner of the Kitsap County Health District told
me, these reports may be like crying wolf for some individuals. If
people keep hearing warnings when the problems are minimal or
nonexistent, will they pay attention in the face of serious
water-quality concerns?
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.
The soon-to-be-released cleanup plan for Sinclair and Dyes
inlets could become a leading example of how to reduce all kinds of
pollution in a waterway. Check out my story in
Tuesday’s Kitsap Sun.
Based on conversations with many people involved in the project,
I believe the keys to success are continual and ongoing monitoring
of water quality, an unfailing commitment to identify pollution
sources, and a spirit of cooperation with people who can help solve
the problems.
Officials with the Kitsap County Health District and other local
and state agencies will tell you that one can never walk away from
a watershed with the belief that the pollution problem is solved.
Still, at times, the rewards can be relatively quick, as one
observes improvements in water quality after a pollution source is
turned off.
Every month for the past 15 years, health district officials
have gone out into the field and taken water samples from nearly
every stream in Kitsap County — some 58 streams at last count.
Often, these monthly tests provide assurance than cleanup plans are
working. Occasionally, they offer an early warning that someone in
the watershed is doing something to degrade water quality.
If you haven’t checked the health district’s
Water Quality website, I would recommend reading through some
of the reports under “Featured Water Quality Reports,” particularly
the “2010 Water Quality Monitoring Report.”
Monthly water-quality testing over time tells a story about
differences between wet years and dry years, about the effects of
new development, and about successes that follow cleanup of problem
farms, septic systems or yards containing dog feces.
I think it would be a big step forward if every significant
stream in the state were monitored monthly for at least bacterial
pollution. The results would help all levels of government set
priorities for dealing with stormwater and other pollution
sources.
Sinclair and Dyes inlets
animation of hypothetical treatment system failure in East
Bremerton (Click to launch; shift-reload to restart)
Project Envvest
Another factor worth mentioning in regard to the Sinclair-Dyes
cleanup is the Navy’s funding for Project
Envvest, a cooperative effort between the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Washington Department of Ecology and the Navy.
The resulting computer model helped describe the flow of pollution
under various rainfall scenarios. It can even predict the movement
of pollution resulting from various kinds of spills.
The animation (right) shows what would happen if the ultraviolet
infection system were to fail in the East Bremerton treatment
plant, which handles stormwater mixed with sewage during periods of
heavy rainfall. Tidal flows make a big difference. This simulated
spill is 7,000 gallons per minute for a total of 10 million
gallons. See
CSO Simulation Scenarios to view other animations from the
model.
Other websites related to the Sinclair-Dyes
project:
In some ways, the recession we are going through has been very
good for Puget Sound, at least if we’re talking about ecosystem
restoration.
Gov. Chris Gregoire spies
an eagle flying over Oakland Bay during Friday’s media
tour.
Kitsap Sun photo by Larry Steagall
In an effort to stimulate the economy and create jobs, Congress
appropriated lots of money for projects that were ready or nearly
ready to be built. The Puget
Sound Partnership lists 614 projects with a price tag of $460
million since 2008. An estimated 15,640 jobs were created in the
process, according to the PSP.
But the recession also helped another way. It turns out that
when restoration and public-works projects were put out to bid,
most of them came in well under their original estimates.
Contractors apparently needed the work so badly that they were
willing to cut their profit margins and compete hard for the
available work. That freed up money for additional projects.
On Friday, Gov. Chris Gregoire led a media tour to some of the
projects being built with special federal and state appropriations.
One was the Belfair sewage treatment plant, designed to remove
nitrogen from Hood Canal to address the low-oxygen problem. Her
message was that Puget Sound restoration must not be placed on the
back burner until the recession is over. Continue reading →
Art Castle, executive director of the Home Builders Association
of Kitsap County, has completed and released the “Kitsap Low Impact
Development Standards Final Report,” which describes a
three-to-four-year project to make LID practical for developers.
Download the
report’s narrative (PDF 2.5 mb) and check out other resource
information offered by the Home Builders.
In an e-mail to participants and supporters of the project,
Castle again declared that Kitsap County is the “low-impact
development capital of Washington,” as he did last April. See my
Kitsap Sun story from April 7, 2009.
The following is a final assessment of the project, as listed in
the summary, along with a map of low-impact development projects
throughout Kitsap County. (Click on the pins for descriptions.)
“This project has met and/or exceeded all its goals. Every
jurisdiction in Kitsap County has adopted the same LID Standards,
The Kitsap County Low Impact Development Guidance Manual is well
thought of for both how comprehensive it is and how current the
information on low impact development — it’s modeling and use —
is.
“The challenges that remain are transitional. While much
progress has been made in Kitsap County with the engineering
community, there are still some in both the public and private
sector who have yet to acquire the technical knowledge to become
comfortable in designing and/or reviewing projects that include low
impact development.
“The PSP/WSU Technical Training Workshops are the most
comprehensive and contain the most current technical information in
the country. However, the quantity and quality of technical
training opportunities needs to be expanded and supported for some
time.
“The Kitsap Spreadsheet Modeling Tool (LID Calculator) will
provide an “ease of use” element to meeting the sizing and use of
LID features in new and retrofit projects… In our ‘Kitsap County
Low Impact Development Guidance Manual’ workshops and Webinar, it
should be noted that all the presenters are from Kitsap County….
These private and public sector individuals were selected to
recognize the low impact development knowledge that Kitsap pubic
officials and industry professionals have achieved and to show that
Kitsap County has the knowledge, leadership, and technical
expertise to successfully implement low impact development.
“As more and more new development, and commercial and homeowner
retrofit projects are completed the increased aquifer recharge and
the water quality benefit of natural treatment will result in
significantly less pollutants in runoff reaching streams and water
bodies. In addition, low impact development practices will result
in less peak runoff caused erosion in stream channels.”
Yesterday, I talked about living through a period of confusing
budget-shifting. I mentioned how federal economic stimulus money is
being used for public works projects — such as building a new sewer
system in Gorst and a new water-treatment plant for Bremerton.
Today, I’d like to reflect on a couple of small hazardous waste
cleanup projects and some juggling involving hundreds of millions
of dollars in state cleanup funds.
In years past, the Washington Department of Ecology signed
agreements with property owners dealing with hazardous chemicals
that had leaked from underground tanks on their property. The
owners were required to pay what they could, although some were not
able to pay anything. Ecology might then lead the cleanup, using
funds from the state’s Model Toxics Control Account. That account
derives its funds from a tax on petroleum products, pesticides and
other specific chemicals.
The federal economic stimulus program has provided $3.4 million
for such leaking underground storage tanks in Washington state. As
I reported in the
Kitsap Sun this week, work is beginning on a renewed cleanup at
Country Junction Store in South Kitsap while a proposed plan would
clean up soil near Hansville Store in North Kitsap. These are both
small, community stores whose owners signed consent agreements with
Ecology years ago.
It just so happens that the Washington Legislature has been
taking money out of the state’s toxics account to help balance the
state’s general fund budget. Continue reading →
