Rain Garden Tour de Bellingham, Saturday, June 1, 9:30 am to 12:30 pm

          By Jane Billinghurst, WSU Skagit County Extension Master Gardener Volunteer

Prepare to be inspired by the functionality and beauty of the diverse selection of rain gardens on this tour. From homeowner installations as part of the Lake Whatcom Homeowner Incentive Program to rain gardens in co-housing sites and at Western Washington University, you will see how these gardens can be designed to fit a variety of sites and aesthetics.

All the rain gardens on this tour work to reduce the quantity and improve the quality of stormwater that runs off roofs, lawns, and driveways in the heavy winter rains of the Pacific Northwest.

Packed with native plants to attract birds, this 

rain garden makes a lovely urban retreat - a

vast improvement over the grassy berm that used

to run along this narrow backyard.

What Is a Rain Garden? A rain garden is essentially a stormwater processing facility. It is a shallow depression that captures fast-moving stormwater and then releases it slowly into the surrounding landscape.

Stormwater Quantity: Unchecked stormwater causes flooding and erosion, and causes problems with combined sewer systems. A primary goal of rain gardens is to interrupt and slow the flow of stormwater.

Stormwater Quality: Stormwater picks up pollutants and washes them into local water bodies, and, in the case of Lake Whatcom, into a source of drinking water. Pollutants include pet waste, pesticides, and excess fertilizers from landscapes; and oil, copper, and zinc from cars. Rain gardens help remove these pollutants from stormwater.

Stormwater Processing: Even in heavy storm events, the rain gardens on this tour drain quickly. Instead of having water rushing down storm drains or along ditches, or water levels rising close to homes, rain water puddles in the gardens and then soaks into the specially designed soil

This rain garden helps process water from a co-

housing project while providing a landscape feature that is 

safe for children to play around and that attracts

beneficial pollinators for the veggie gardens beyond.

and gravel mixes through pore spaces opened up by plant roots and soil microbes. The plants and microbes then get to work breaking down or sequestering organic pollutants and heavy metals in the stormwater. A layer of mulch on exposed soil surfaces—usually arborist chips—keeps the weeds down and aids in processing and trapping pollutants.

Attractive Wildlife Habitat: Native plants adapt well to rain garden conditions and attract a host of beneficial insects and birds. Extra color and diversity can be added by including some hardy cultivated varieties of plants that enjoy growing conditions in the Pacific Northwest.

When I was checking out these rain gardens, I saw hosts of beneficial insects on columbine, camas, and spirea. There were birds perching in ninebarks and hazel, and bathing in attractively designed bird baths. Despite a few days of heavy rain (and a downpour while I was visiting!), none of the rain gardens had standing water. All were beautiful.

The plantings in this colorful rain garden with abuzz with bees.

On the Tour: Homeowners will be on hand to explain the process of installing their gardens and how they have benefited from the Lake Whatcom Home Incentive Program. Rain garden experts from the City of Bellingham and WSU Extension will explain how rain gardens work and what steps you can take if you are inspired to install a rain garden of your own.

Rain Garden Tour de Bellingham is from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm on Saturday, June 1. The $20 fee includes lunch and transportation. Register online at http://raingardentour.brownpapertickets.com.  The tour is co-hosted by RE Sources, City of Bellingham, Sustainable Connections, and WSU Whatcom County extension. After the tour, you are invited to stick around for the Watershed-Friendly Project Expo at Bloedel Donovan Park from 1 to 3 pm. 

To find out more about home owner incentives in the Lake Whatcom watershed, download the Homeowner Incentive Program Brochure (PDF).

To find out more about WSU Extension’s rain garden resources for homeowners, visit www.12000raingardens.org. 

All photos by Jane Billinghurst

THE CITIZEN SCIENCE BRIGADE and a SEASIDE UNDER FIRE

By Matt Schwartz, North Sound Baykeeper Intern

            What it means to be a citizen is shifting by the seaside. Largely because the seaside is under fire. ‘Oceans on Acid’, ‘Plastic Soup’ and ‘Sea Level Rising’ are familiar phrases buzzing around the media these days. Oil spills, collapsed fisheries, seabird die offs and the threat of more massive coastal development projects hardly round out the story. Nonetheless, if hope is an action that must be practiced, then alas, hope abounds on a rainy Saturday morning in Whatcom County! At Marine Park, thirty three local volunteers successfully completed field training as citizen scientists for the Aquatic Reserve Intertidal Monitoring Program. These volunteers will participate in important beach surveys throughout the summer at Cherry Point, Fidalgo Bay and Boulevard Park. Between Whatcom and Skagit counties, seventy two women and men are enlisted in this project. They will be equipped with the skills to document the intertidal zone at a scientifically sound level.  By measuring beach profiles and counting intertidal plants and animals year after year, this project aims to gauge changes to our shorelines and all of its creatures.  

“Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.”
-Alfred Lord Tennyson

            The intertidal is hopelessly romantic…

It is a musing enchantment that pulls many of us to the seashore. When you get to know her, the intertidal is quite the fanciful dreamer. Here are some basics: tides generally operate on semi-diurnal cycles in this part of the world, as commanded by the gravitational pull of the moon (and to a lesser extent, the sun). They take two deep breaths a day. Breathe in and water drains out from all of the arms and fingers of the sea that penetrate the land- hold- and breathe out to fill them back up. On cue, tides swell and heave their way up the beach, submerging every last mussel in its path. Salty spray quenches the lichens plastered on the bedrock outcrops in the high intertidal zone. Waves lap at the cobbles below. All this effort, only to about-face and the tide slinks away like a dog with its tail between its legs, leaving all of her creatures exposed. Thousands of subdued colors bend knee to the white cloud layer so heavy it barely holds itself up. Flip over a rock (gently)[1] and you might find any number of slinkers, crawlers, creepers or oozers. Whether you sit and stare, or stand up, face the water and close your eyes, the salty breeze runs its hands through your hair, beckoning.  As Annie Dillard once said, “The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out”.

Photo credit:  Doug Stark

…And hopelessly peculiar. 

Intertidal organisms usually take their time. The mossy chiton is a good example. Suctioned to a rock you might see this beautifully designed 8-plated shell with a chinstrap beard protecting a shriveled vienna sausage. This little sausage is the chiton’s foot and it remains virtually glued to rocks like a suction cup for its whole life. The Haida (southeast Alaska native) word for chiton is Çuunçuugiiga, ‘he who lays face down forever’. Keep looking and you will find creatures at all rates and states of flux. Peek under a rock and you might find a wriggling eel-like fish having a hyper-speed seizure (the ‘rockweed gunnel’). A purple shore crab scuttles hurriedly by on her way to somewhere clearly important and that thieving hairy hermit crab just outgrew its shell and helped himself to a new one. A bit higher up in the intertidal zone, crops of greenish-brown rockweed (fucus algae) shrivel as they slowly dehydrate, waiting ever so patiently for tide to return. Once it does, check right below the surface of the water. Those acorn barnacles have just opened up- frantically waving their ghostly little feet, catching particles of food brought in by the flooding tide. Picture thousands of organisms in motion: crawling, burrowing, seeping and worming their way around the sand, rocks and lapping waves. The intertidal zone is an infinite amusement park treasure hunt that could entertain us for hours- but there is work to be done… 

Enter the Citizen Science Brigade. 

The power of citizen science is rather infinite.  The bottom line: it’s cheap, it’s local, it’s potentially everywhere. Interpreting our natural world is a job for everyone.  With specific, focused training programs, ordinary citizens can gain the skills to observe planet earth in detail. Incredible discoveries and enormous pools of credible data can be gathered by the greater populace. Take the NASA citizen scientists who recently discovered the first known four star planet. Impressive. The Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count has been a pillar of citizen science for 113 years.  Yes.

The scene at the Aquatic Reserve field training was chock full of measuring sticks, tide markers, clipboards and rain boots. Quadrats- handheld grid squares, made of PVC and string- are placed at random locations on the beach, where volunteers analyze any plants or animals that lie inside them and count anything alive.  “Citizen science is a great idea. More eyes for better monitoring and data. The old truism is ‘to know it is to love it’. Once people know how wonderful the natural world is, the more inclined they are to protect it,” says beach naturalist Marie Hitchman, who has been observing Cherry Point since 2000 and the San Juan/Gulf Islands by sailboat since 1968.

The local intertidal surveys gather a baseline of data that will help us understand how unique each beach really is. Taking measurements and vital signs of a particular shoreline can show how it responds to change over time and to different environmental conditions.  With a solid grasp on the health of a beach and all of her critters, it is possible to gauge transformations, should an oil spill, a restoration project, or an increasingly acidic ocean happen upon her.  The truth is that numbers talk. Credible quantitative data that spells out the health of a specific marine environment can warrant important decisions, funding and actions for that area[2]. Nonetheless, as a strong group-centered effort, citizen science embodies a spirit that speaks beyond the data sets. It taps into the heart of a community. John Stockman is a local high school science teacher and co-trainer for the intertidal project. He describes citizen science as “an excellent way to get people involved in a real project. The data can be very useful to recognize slow changes in ecosystems. But we must not forget that it is not just about the data; it is also about the researchers who have volunteered to collect the data.”

This brings it back to you- the volunteer, the donor, the backbone of “what have you done for your country, lately?”. If you spoke seastar you’d know- Pisaster ochraceous thanks you.

"Intertidal Biotic Monitoring at Cherry Point, Fidalgo Bay and Boulevard Park” is a joint project of RE-Sources for Sustainable Communities, the Marine Resources Committee, Washington Environmental Council, and the respective Cherry Point and Fidalgo Bay Aquatic Reserve Citizen Stewardship Committees. It is complemented by the citizen science “Aquatic Reserve Bird Surveys” program.

---

[1] Tidepooling etiquette 101: if ever flipping over a rock do so gently. Roll the rock back over just as you found it.

[2] The Washington Department of Natural Resources and collaborating partners (see below) will be utilizing the data from this project and it will also be made available online to the public.

Fix That Leak!

Don’t Drip and Drive – Fix That Leak!

As a “welcomer” volunteer at the free auto leak check event at WWU, my job was to wear an oversized I love Puget Sound t-shirt and hand arriving drivers a card that said “Yes!  Please check my car for leaks!”  Cars arrived in droves, without slowing down to get a card, in a hurry to get to class on time.  So instead of politely standing at the entrance of the parking lot, I made haste and ran after the cars as they parked, and waited for each driver to open their door.

Most arriving students didn’t see me standing by because they were engaged in a variety of activities, from texting to hair brushing to makeup applications to adjusting things in their ears.  By the time they noticed me I was grinning from ear to ear waiting to blurt out “We’re doing free leak checks today!!”  And “  We won’t touch your car and you don’t need to do anything - can we PLEASE check your car for leaks while you’re in class today?”  Few people declined.

One person arrived in a large truck with huge oversized tires, and declined my offer for a free leak check.  As soon as he declined, he tossed a burning cigarette butt out his window, which landed near me.  I moved towards the butt, intending to pick it up. Guilt ridden, he beat me to it.  Then we had a brief conversation about the fate of litter in streams.

The decliners muttered “I’m very mechanical, so I know if my car is leaking” to “this car only has 30,000 miles” to “I just had the car serviced” to “this is a company car so it’s not leaking” and “I’m only here for one hour.” 

Meanwhile, the other volunteers unfurled a special white vinyl sheet under the engines of the cars whose owners agreed to the leak test.  The sheet was left in place for about half an hour.  Then the sheet was removed, and the color and approximate amount of drips on a post card counted.  The tally was written up and left under the windshield wiper with the discount coupon and tips for getting the leaks fixed. In six hours we checked 305 cars and found 57 leaks.

Why check car leaks?  Pollution from vehicle leaks and exhaust is one of the primary sources of toxic pollution to the Salish Sea.  In Washington State, we release 7 million quarts of motor oil into our lakes, rivers, streams, and the Salish Sea every year.  Oil causes harm to wildlife through physical contact, ingestion, inhalation and absorption. Floating oil can contaminate plankton, algae, fish eggs, and the larvae of various invertebrates. When fish feed, they can subsequently become contaminated through ingestion of contaminated prey or by direct toxic effects of oil. Larger animals and humans consume contaminated organisms as they feed on these fish.

Leak check was sponsored by the City of Bellingham with funding from the Washington State Department of Ecology.  It was mostly staffed by volunteers.  We had a good time, got inspired, and learned to how to check for car leaks.  If you want to check your own car, it’s easy.  But most of all, it’s important.  While your engine is still warm, put a sheet of cardboard under the engine, and check it in an hour.  If you find leaks, please get them fixed. Finding and fixing leaks is a great way to keep your car on the road longer, and keep help prevent water pollution. We all need to pitch in for clean water.

Want more info about how to check for leaks?  Check here:  www.fixcarleaks.org

Want more pollution prevention tips?  Check here: http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/hwtr/p2/sectors/p2sb.html

Thanks, City of Bellingham, for hosting this event!

RDS & the road to MRF

The staff and owners of Recycling and Disposal Services (RDS), a locally owned recycling, garbage and waste disposal center, recently opened their facility for a public tour.   Attendees included solid waste and stormwater professionals, consultants, families, government staffers and interested citizens.  There was much to see – waste separation for recycling, stormwater systems, imposing machinery for compacting and sorting garbage, huge containers, grinders and mountains of ground up wood, pulverized toilets, and the best for last – a materials recovery facility – also called a “MRF.”

Let’s take a step back, examine the road to the MRF, and the unofficial short history of garbage handling in Whatcom County.  Before landfills and transfer stations, garbage was dumped into ravines and various places.  For 20 years beginning around 1950, one or two barge loads of wood and mill waste from the Georgia Pacific Mill was dumped into Bellingham Bay every week, and between 1953 and 1965, garbage from the City of Bellingham was collected in garbage trucks and dumped off the terminus of Cornwall Avenue into Bellingham Bay.  Photo courtesy of Phil Robbins.  Between 1950 and 1971 there were 21 garbage dumps that operated around the county: in Acme, Bellingham, Lynden, Lawrence, Pt Roberts, Sumas, Ten Mile, Y Road, Van Zandt, Custer, Glacier, and other locations.  Open burning was common at these dumps.  For a few years, burning garbage at two incinerators was the fashion.  Solid waste regulations evolved, small landfills filled to capacity, and large regional landfills with leachate and methane gas systems opened up near the Columbia River in central Washington and Oregon.  Whatcom County became the first county in Washington to ship garbage to these regional landfills via rail.  In a typical year, RDS sends approximately 75,000 tons of garbage to the Columbia Ridge landfill, owned by Waste Management, in Arlington, Oregon.  Whatcom County produces approximately 150,000 tons of garbage annually.

RDS entered the scene as a garbage transfer station in 1996, and was required to gain coverage under the Department of Ecology’s industrial stormwater general permit (ISGP).   Businesses engaged in transportation, recycling, fabricating metal, refrigerated storage, and other endeavors with outdoor processes exposed to rain and stormwater are required to gain coverage under this permit if they discharge stormwater.  The permit is part of the National Discharge Elimination System (NPFES) permit system required by the federal Clean Water Act.  Read more about NPDES permits here.

RDS was issued a stormwater discharge permit, and subsequently re-issued revised permits in later years. They concentrated on finding new ways to separate waste for recycling, and did not pay special attention to their stormwater discharges.  They found markets for yard waste, concrete, and lumber, reconfigured their yard to allow for separating these from garbage, and continued to offer accept glass, aluminum, cardboard, newspaper for recycling at no cost.  They figured out new waste streams to recycle and divert from the waste stream, and expanded in size and complexity.  Buildings were added, traffic flow changed, special containers and systems invented to expedite sorting, both for customers and staff.  Business was good, population was growing, and so it went.  

Business as usual ended suddenly in July 2009 when RDS received an intent to sue letter from the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, southern counterpart to the North Sound Baykeeper, and a founding member of the Waterkeeper Alliance.  The letter stated that RDS was in violation of the Clean Water Act and its NPDES permit, and listed all the violations. The owners of RDS immediately agreed to improve stormwater practices, settled out of court, and paid a fine.  They took immediate actions to change their practices in order to clean up their stormwater discharges.  The actions included hiring a sweeper truck to regularly clean and vacuum their paved surfaces, parking heavy machinery under cover, creating and maintaining stormwater treatment vaults and redesigning their stormwater treatment bioswale.  They also installed new stormwater

catch basins and pipes, regularly employed catch basin filters (shown at right) and regular catch basin cleaning regimes, altered traffic flow, installed additional pavement, and more.  RDS became a clean stormwater innovator, which is what many permit holders have to do in order to prevent discharging polluted stormwater. 

What goes into your garbage?  Dog poop, kitty litter, baby diapers, and other unsavory items – toss it, right?  Once your stuff and everyone else’s is dumped onto the tipping floor, it sticks onto the garbage truck tires, then the slop flows to low areas on pavement, into catch basins, and into one of three stormwater treatment vaults on the RDS property.  I’ve watched RDS staff load a variety of filter “media” into the vaults, including compost mixtures, sand mixtures, and oyster shells, and combinations of these (photo above).  Pollutants adhere onto these media, which keeps them from getting discharged into Silver Creek, the nearest stream.  Silver Creek flows to the Nooksack River and is listed on the Washington State 303(d) list for impaired waters.  Because Silver Creek is already polluted with high levels fecal coliform bacteria, RDS has to comply with unusually low allowable discharge level for fecal coliform -100 colonies per 100 mL.  In order to comply with their ISGP, they take quarterly samples for turbidity, pH, zinc, oil sheen, copper and fecal coliform from their final disharge point – where water discharges from their stormwater treatment bioswale. 

As part of their efforts to increase recycling of waste, RDS added this new sorting system called a materials recycling facility, or MRF, in late 2012.  The lucky guy shown above is loading garbage for sorting onto a conveyor belt system.  Along the belt, a newly hired team of people sort waste as it moves along the belt:  cardboard, wood, wire, metal, and plastic is removed and place it into bins for recycling. 

RDS recycles cardboard, mixed paper, newspaper, glass bottles & jars, plastic containers, tin and aluminum cans, televisions, computer monitors, computers, and laptops free of charge.  For a fee RDS recycles yard waste, wood, concrete, scrap metal, dirt/sod, appliances, tires, porcelain toilets & sinks, lawn mowers, propane tanks, and car batteries.  We are so fortunate to have these recycling options – thanks RDS!

We applaud the efforts that RDS takes to keep their facility clean to protect water quality, as well as their work to offer so many recycling options.  RDS is a stormwater super hero!  Thanks for all your great work.

Cherry Point by Kayak. Mid-February 2013

Cherry Point by Kayak.  Mid-February 2013.

By Matt Schwartz, Baykeeper Intern

“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”
― Wendell Berry, Given

Cherry Point must be tired.  Since the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliot[1] called for the Lummi Nation to relinquish much of its homeland, the years have been hectic.  It seems that even the Strait of Georgia and the Puget Sound are pulling her in two.  Cherry Point, known to the Lummi people by its ancestral name Xwe'Chi'eXen, has a contentious history of proposed oil drilling, clean water regulations, herring fishery openings, herring fishery closures, refinery construction and court cases.   

We are a small crew of North sound Baykeeper kayakers today and the expedition begins in a cautious state of mind.  Georgia Strait can be quick to anger and often funnels heavy wind and waves straight towards Cherry Point.  As we set out from Birch Bay State Park, however, the paddle gods and goddesses must be howling somewhere else- moody Georgia Strait is behaving nicely.  The water is glassy calm and the sun is making appearances. We paddle for a few hours spotting surf scoters, Brant ducks, Saturna and Orcas Islands and a tanker appearing to be offloading crude oil at the BP refinery pier.  A sign says "Do not approach within 100 yards of a tanker at dock. Security Zone Regulations.”   So we keep our distance, but still manage to scope out the gigantic boom they have in place in case of a spill.  Eventually, we pick out an inviting cobbled beach and land our kayaks in between two black bear-sized boulders.  We walk along the beach and thousands of shades of cobblestones jostle underfoot.  Dark greys, pearl whites, speckled scarlet and gold, jet black striped with orange, sandy brown splotched with purple.  If a rock could show off, these cobbles are sure trying their hardest.  As the incoming tide rinses over them the colors come to life.  We stop for lunch and a quiet moment.  I try to picture the last several hundred generations of Lummi ancestors gathering plants and berries, collecting shellfish and reefnet fishing in this very spot.  I try to imagine paddling a monstrous cedar dugout canoe.  Yup, this place is cool.     

---

Two questions beg some attention.

What’s so sweet about this Cherry?

Try to picture it.  A steep intertidal gradient- this means that the shore quickly drops off into deep water.   This deep water is nutrient rich.  Currents churn and sweep this water up towards the surface in a process called upwelling.  These nutrients become dinner for plankton, the little guys of the food chain.  Towering above sections of the beach are tall bluffs, which over time, either gently erode or abruptly calve off[2], feeding the beaches with sand and gravel that forage fish like to spawn in.  Fine sediment washes in from the Fraser River helping to fertilize the underwater vegetation.  Variable wave action hammering and caressing the beaches and moderate tides also contribute to a rich soup of mixed algae, kelps and eelgrass.  The forage fish love that stuff.  They can lay eggs in it, hide amongst it and find plenty of delicious plankton to eat.  The salmon sure like that.  And the Salish Coast People sure liked how they like that.  Seasonal waterfowl, marine seabirds, land mammals, and thousands of marine invertebrates round out this dizzying food web.  These gastronomical relationships have supported a broad ‘homeland’ in which the Lummi people subsisted and traded for thousands of years.  The Lummi had established villages of multi‐family cedar‐plank longhouses but would migrate seasonally up, down and across the north Puget Sound, from the Fraser River in British Colombia down to Seattle, including much of the San Juan Islands.  Cherry Point connected land to sea as an entryway from inland routes to the islands in the original homeland territory of the Lummi people.  

Who wants a slice of Cherry Point?

 Today, an insoluble mix of interests mangles the greater Cherry point area.  These include private residences, the Lummi Reservation, an aquatic reserve run by WDNR[3], Washington’s largest oil refinery (owned by BP), a major aluminum smelter (Alcoa) and a second oil refinery (Conoco Philips).  

Big business wants Cherry Point.  That steep intertidal gradient means that large vessels can come close to shore without the need to dredge out shipping channels or berthing areas.  Major water-dependent industries have already located on the shores and a hotly contested proposal for a major coal terminal is on the table.

The Lummi Nation wants Cherry Point… left alone.  “These adverse impacts potentially affect our past, present, and future generations by way of steady encroachment on any and all waterways and uplands of our ancestral homelands like Xwe'Chi'eXen” , states the Lummi Nation Awareness Project[4].  Inherent, Inherited and Treaty rights protect sacred burial sites, traditional medicine and other plant gathering, underwater traditional cultural property and archaeology and fishing rights for the Lummi.  Salmon is historically the most important food source for the Lummi, the ‘People of the Sea’.  Because salmon migration is cyclic, their lives and migrations revolved around the fish.  Knowing that fish on spawning runs would rise toward the surface as they neared underwater reefs, the Lummi figured out a brilliantly successful technique for catching a lot of fish, called ‘reef netting’.  Reef nets are designed to simulate a natural reef or an obstacle that the salmon must swim across.   The fish are funneled towards the surface as they swim up the ‘reef’, and are netted.  “The Lummi are salmon people; salmon is culture, and culture is salmon,” says Merle Jefferson, director of the Lummi Natural Resources Department.[5]

The Washington Department of Natural Resources has a management plan in place for the Cherry Point Aquatic Reserve.  Included is the understanding that “the aquatic environment of Cherry Point provides essential habitat and irreplaceable biological and ecological functions; is a portion of Treaty-protected Usual and Accustomed grounds and stations of local Native American Indians, and are used by the Indians for commercial, ceremonial, and subsistence purposes.”[6]

Cherry Point has a deep cultural, historic, and spiritual significance to the Lummi people who have a longstanding history of opposing development of the property.  It’s worth consideration that Cherry Point is located within the usual and accustomed areas of several federally recognized tribes, including the Lummi, Nooksack, Swinomish, Suquamish and Tulalip Tribes as well.  Xwe’chi’eXen was also the first site in Washington State to be listed on the Washington Heritage Register and is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. 

All this being said, I want Cherry Point too.  It has been a glorious day of paddling and aside from the oil tanker and a few beach walkers combing the shore it has been a quiet and peaceful day.  It would be hard to picture a bustling coal port here on this land.  It would be hard to for these waters to absorb hundreds of super-sized ‘Panamax’[7] ships rolling in and out every year, in addition to all of the vessel traffic present from the industry already here.  My kayak is 17’ and weighs 300 lbs on a good day so I’ve got nothing on a 950 foot Panamax.  As the light starts to dim we slowly paddle home, trying to stretch the day out as long as we can.  I feel a heavy sigh come on and feel Cherry Point’s tired eyes on my back, shaking her head, “oh, you silly humans”.

Sources:

November 2010. Cherry Point Environmental Aquatic Reserve Management Plan.  WA State Department of Natural Resources. http://www.dnr.wa.gov/Publications/aqr_cp_mgmt_plan_2010.pdf

Stark, Ann. February 2008. Lummi Nation Atlas. Lummi Natural Resources Department.

Background Information on the Lummi Nation. National Museum of the American Indian Education Office.  http://nmai.si.edu/environment/lummi/Homeland.aspx

1974. Document: Boldt Decision. Center for Colombia River History. http://www.ccrh.org/comm/river/legal/boldt.htm

---

[1] Consistent with the Federal Indian Law and Policy of the day, the Lummi and other Coastal Salish peoples were commonly relegated to reservations and promised cash, schools and health care in exchange for fishing, harvesting and hunting rights.  The signatories of the treaty long protested the government’s failure to uphold their end of the bargain and respect fishing rights.  The issue made it to the Supreme Court in the landmark Native American civil rights case: United States v. Washington.

[2] Erosion is a natural process but without vegetation on a hillside or a bluff there is not a lot to keep soil in place.  We see a lot of staircases built from the private residences descending the bluffs and in these cases where the construction cleared out vegetation, the bluff is clearly melting away.  From our kayaks we can see that many of the staircases along the shore have fallen and smashed below, been abandoned or are dangling by a thread as the bluff that once supported them has given way. 

[3] Washington Department of Natural Resources

[4] http://lnnr.lummi-nsn.gov/LummiWebsite/Website.php?PageID=235

[5] P.1 NMAI. Background Information on the Lummi Nation

[6] p.4-5 WDNR. Cherry Point Environmental Aquatic Reserve Management Plan

[7] The proposed coal terminal wharf would be able to accommodate vessels too large to transit the Panama Canal (known as Cape-sized ships) and Panamax ships with capacities up to 250,000 dry weight tons.  Cherry Point’s shoreline already receives 850 annual transits and the proposed terminal would hundreds more.  

Collaborative Canoeing. East Fork Nookachamps Creek + Lower Skagit. Early February.

By Matt Schwartz, Baykeeper Intern

The fog hangs heavy as the canoes slide one by one down the bank, over the sticker bushes, under the bridge, over the rocks and into the water.  We hope we look as swift and sprightly as East Fork Nookachamps Creek does this morning.

Members of the North Sound Baykeeper Team, Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, a representative of the Swinomish Tribe, and RE Sources volunteers quickly populate five canoes and slip downstream away from the launch point.  The East Fork Nookachamps proves to be as nimble as she appears.  Overhanging brush, blackberry bushes, sweepers, strainers, bouncing betty's and a host of other moving water features have us dancing, whooping and occasionally swimming around the sudden turns.  The stream is pumping at a fairly high water level today and we are on our toes.  Actually, we are on our knees, in order to lower our center of gravity in the canoe.  Anyhow, there’s lots to observe and miles to go.

Many reaches of  Nookachamps Creek are listed on Washington State’s Water Quality Assessment List, known as the 303(d) list, as required by the Clean Water Act.   This list categorizes waterways for which beneficial uses– such as drinking, recreation, aquatic habitat, and industrial use – with a number from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most polluted.  Well, that makes the hot shower after paddling in fecal coliform all day feel that much better.  The East Fork Nookachamps is listed as category 5 on the 303(d) list for low dissolved oxygen.  This means that the oxygen is being consumed by bacteria to decompose organic material, and may not sustain healthy fish populations.  Streams with low dissolved oxygen not only make life difficult for fish, but can create dead zones.  In addition, high temperature levels “due to human actions” earn the East Fork ratings of “polluted” and “water of concern”.  Its levels of fecal coliform, likely due to livestock manure, earn it more official “polluted” gold stars.  The East Fork Nookachamps is a classic example of many of Washington’s waterways under high stress.

The fog lifts and our group of canoeists squint into the sun and continue downstream.  Several reasons for the ‘polluted’ status become evident.  Many of the banks are bare of riparian vegetation - trees and shrubs have been removed for pasture, crop fields and timber harvest.  Historic forests have been converted to pastures that are grazed right up to the bank of the stream - the fences are actually in the stream in one spot.  We can see that some farmers allow their livestock to actually get into the water to drink, eroding the banks and dropping manure right into the water.  The water is brown,  and sediment is evident.  It appears that in some areas, logs have been removed from the stream, and some  reaches have been physically straightened.  This is bad news for migrating salmon, who greatly benefit from resting areas afforded by log jams and wood structure.

But there’s good news, too: some areas of the creek have high quality side channel rearing habitat, which is essential for juvenile salmonids, which will soon be starting to emerge from eggs.  A few areas have wide buffers full of mature trees.  If allowed to fall into the water these trees create jams and essential hiding and resting places for migrating salmon.  Some areas of the creek have complex wood structure (making canoeing challenging!) and other areas appear to have had the wood removed.  In several areas new riparian plantings are evident, some in narrow strips along the creek, and others in wider areas.

From our viewpoint, some reasonable remedies seem clear:  livestock should be kept out of the water, muddy manure should be kept away from any areas that would drain to the stream, wood structure should remain whenever possible, and wider riparian would be a great start.  It might not save the East Fork Nookachamps from the 303(d) status but these remedies might make a positive change.   

Alas, the fogs lifts and the skies become blue and spirits are high as we cruise underneath a nesting pair of bald eagles.  Several immature baldies who haven’t yet grown into their white heads and tail feathers, scout the creek for a fishy lunch from a towering cottonwood tree.   We make the group decision to finish off the East Fork and soundlessly float into the much colder and voluminous Skagit River.  Only two rivers on the west coast are bigger than the Skagit.  It is famous for providing key spawning habitat for salmon- it is one of our last remaining river systems that contain healthy populations of all five native salmon species.  The Skagit also supports the largest wintering population of bald eagles in the continental United States.  However, despite its designation in 1978 as a Wild and Scenic River System, habitat degradation, overharvest and rapid development along the Puget Sound have led to a massive decline in its salmon.

We paddle out into the middle of the Skagit River - it feels huge and lazy after the hairpin turns that kept us awake and alert all morning.  We eventually haul out on river right and call it a day.  Time to wash off the fecal coliform and chart the course for the next voyage.

For more info:  Puget SoundKeeper Alliance plans to paddle one river in peril for every month of 2013.  Find out more: www.pugetsoundkeeper.org

Source: Dept. of Ecology.  Water Quality Assessment  for Washington. http://apps.ecy.wa.gov/wats/Default.aspx