Drops
Of
Water
Issue 17 April 1998
The first people to find errors in spelling or word structure receive a free map of the Chehalis watershed. Send us an e-mail note telling us about the error.
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Issue 17 April 1998 |
This newsletter appears monthly in 45,000 households throughout the watershed. Printing is done by The Chronicle, and distribution is by the Chronicle, the Olympia Daily Olympian, the Tenino Independent, the Rochester Sun News and the Aberdeen Daily World. This is an early edition available only to WWW users. Please send us your feedback.
The first people to find errors in spelling or word structure receive a free map of the Chehalis watershed. Send us an e-mail note telling us about the error. |
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This is an early electronic copy of Drops of Water. Drops of Water is distributed monthly to newspaper receiving households throughout the basin. It went to print mid March and will be distributed during the following week. Watch for it in the Tenino Independent, the Rochester Sun News, The Olympian, The Chronicle and the The Daily World.
The newspaper insert is funded with a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This electronic edition is sponsored by the CRC.
Letters to the Editor, contributed articles and contributing partnerships are encouraged.
Comments via email to The Chehalis River Council
The Grays Harbor Chapter of Trout Unlimited (TU) has partner up with the Kids Fishing Foundation to develop a better aquatic education program for our area youth. The partnership will provide a closer knit organized effort to expose and educate the youth of today about how they can help to preserve and protect our natural resources.
The TU Aquatic Ed. program goals for 1998 will center around providing many different types of aquatic education outreach opportunities to our communities youth.
Some of the programs that TU will be involved in this year will be; kids fishing derbies, school programs, parks and recreation clinics, clinics for assorted youth organizations, community events and festivals, summer program clinics for youth, salmon in the classroom program and the development of the Boy Scouts of America TU / Explorer program below.
Boy Scouts of America (BSA), Trout Unlimited / Explorer Program!
This would involve a partnership between BSA and TU. The program would involve working with kids between the ages of 14 to 20 years of age. BSA would help provide kids for the program through the local High Schools in our area and provide TU with the basic start up of the program!
It is my belief, that such a program or partnership with the BSA Explorer program and our kids would provide many benefits to our community, our organization and the kids!
Some suggested projects that the TU/Explorer program could participate with would involve, TU Embrace A Stream Program, TU kids fishing events, Friends Landing events and projects, State Hatchery helpers, Salmon in the Classroom Program, kids fishing clinics, TU Trout Pond events and training in Aquatic Education (Wash. Dept. of Fish & Wildlife Aquatic Ed. Certification ).
Through working with these different projects and programs, the TU/Explorer will;
Grow with an understanding of, how important it is to preserve our fisheries resources and at the same time understand the important functions of the environment! The kids would also learn to communicate and work with others and develop an understanding of teamwork!
KIDS FISHING FOUNDATION / TROUT UNLIMITED GRAYS HARBOR CHAPTER
Norm Case, 316 W. Kennaston Montesano, WA. 98563
Work (360)532-2441
Fax (360)249-6801
Home Phone (360)249-6808
E-mail kidsfish@olynet.com
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A lot of time and attention is being given to water related issues across this state. In this watershed there are many groups working on water issues. In the upper part of the watershed cities and industry are attempting to deal with methods to handle discharges.
Actions and decisions that deal with the upper watershed also impact the lower watershed. If you live in Grand Mound, Porter, Montesano or perhaps around the estuary, you are part of the greater watershed. To help readers understand some of the issues we are reprinting material from 3 earlier issues in this edition.
Washington Department of Ecology conducted an extensive study of the upper Chehalis system. The results of that study indicate that there is simply no capacity for the river to absorb nonpoint or point discharges within the area known as the Chehalis Reach.
As controversial as this study is, the Chehalis River Council supports the conclusions and recommendations documented in that study.
Beginning in 1990, the Department of Ecology studied the Upper Chehalis River basin as part of the Chehalis Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) project. In 1994, the Department of Ecology issued three TMDL reports that describe the water quality in the Upper Chehalis and Black Rivers. In a series of three articles (reprinted in this issue), Ecology researcher Paul Pickett explored the Chehalis River as discovered through the TMDL study. The articles presented in this edition are:
Fall and Winter Arrive on the Chehalis
Spring on The Chehalis
Summer on The Chehalis
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Autumn comes to the Chehalis Basin slowly and quietly. The leaves start to brown and wither, rainy periods come just a little more often, and flows in the rivers and streams gradually increase.
With shorter days comes cooler temperatures. The warm surface waters of the Centralia Reach cool off, and slowly mix deeper, until the deep pools with their stagnant, anoxic water finally mix back into the whole river. Oxygen levels in the surface waters are gradually rising.
Despite the changes, fall is still a risky time for the Chehalis River. Although the problems of summer are easing, flows are still low and the season adds new complications. As the deep pools in the Centralia Reach slowly mix into surface waters, ammonia and other pollutants are released back into the river. Leaves are falling and plants in the water dying, adding to the overall load of oxygen-demanding pollutants. Bursts of rain flushing pollutants into the rivers and streams may be followed by stretches of warm weather and low flows.
The Chehalis River is still close to the edge, vulnerable to any spill or combination of problems. In October 1991, a treatment plant upset, combined with other pollutant discharges higher in the river, resulted in a complete loss of oxygen in the Centralia Reach. A week passed as the zone of no oxygen travelled downstream to the Skookumchuck River, where it was diluted and reaerated. Mysteriously, no fish died, perhaps because they moved downstream ahead of the low oxygen waters.
Typically in November, the rains begin in earnest. The leaves are gone, false summers past, and the rivers and streams move into their wet season. Cold, swift waters have raised oxygen levels so they are now at high levels. However, heavy rains and high flows bring a different set of problems.
As the rains come more frequently, the ground saturates with water and the stormwater begins to flow overland. If a septic system drainfield is old or poorly built, the sewage will surface and be carried away by the runoff. Barnyards fill with puddles and manure piles get drenched. If a dairy hasn't built a storage lagoon, manure guns may be spreading waste on soaked fields, where it will inevitably run off to the nearest stream or river. When the rain washes off the waste, it carries with it bacteria and other disease organism that will contaminate the rivers and streams.
When the rain hits the ground, trees, bushes and grass break the fall of the drops and slow the runoff of the stormwater. But where the ground is bare, the rain will break loose soil and carry it along. As the rain gathers into channels, it cuts into the ground, increasing its load of sediment. Eventually the turbid runoff reaches a stream where the sediment settles onto the stream bed, smothering aquatic life and clogging salmon spawning gravel.
Nature, left to itself, will cover the ground with vegetation as best it can. But when people develop land for their own uses, they often leave the soil bare. Poorly constructed roads, cleared building sites, plowed fields, livestock paths, and ruts from off-road vehicles can all be areas where the stormwater collects sediment that can pollute the streams and rivers.
Many of the winter problems in the Chehalis Basin become summer problems, and vice versa. The manure carried to the river which releases bacteria in the winter can fall to the bottom to rob oxygen in the summer. Areas cleared of trees that allow the sun to heat the river in the summer will be more likely to erode in the high flows of winter. Often a simple fix can solve a variety of problems.
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Leaves are uncurling on the trees along the river bank. Winter rains have soaked the ground, filling the streams and keeping them cool and high.
The days are getting longer. In between drizzly spells, the sun shines high and bright, warming the air, the soil, and the water's surface. As the leaves on the trees grow and the ground drains, the streams and rivers slowly drop. The dramatic changes we watch above the ground are matched by changes beneath the water's surface.
From its headwaters, the Chehalis tumbles through the eastern edge of the Willapa Hills, to be joined by the waters of Elk Creek. After the South Fork flows in, the river begins to change, flowing through more pools and slow stretches.
Once the Newaukum River joins it, it drops into the flat valley where the cities of Centralia and Chehalis sit. The ice-age glacier that covered Puget Sound filled this basin between the hills with the rock and silt, carried from its melting face by the ancient outwash river. The river as it enters this valley becomes slow, meandering, and wide - almost a long, thin lake rather than a river.
Through the spring months, this stretch of the Chehalis (which we'll call the Centralia Reach) is slowly transforming from a more typical river to something quite unusual. As flows drop and the speed of the water slows, the river becomes less turbulent. Oxygen in the air enters the river more slowly, and mixes into deeper waters poorly. The water's surface begins to warm, which also allows less oxygen to enter the water.
Like any organism, the river breathes. It needs oxygen for the life within it. Some creatures, like the young salmon, do not like it stuffy and will leave or die if the oxygen drops too low. Others, like the bacteria and other microorganisms, will use as much oxygen as they need as fast as it can be replenished from the air, even until virtually no oxygen can be found. Some of these organisms live in the sediments on the bottom, feeding off the rich muck deposited there. Others feed on the materials that flow into the river, including the treated wastewater from a city or factory, or the animal waste washed off a field by the rain.
As the days pass through May, the river in the Centralia Reach finds it harder and harder to replenish the oxygen in the water, and the oxygen levels drop lower and lower. Wastewater from Chehalis entering the river just below the Newaukum uses oxygen as it flows downstream, resulting in lower levels as it reaches the Mellen Street bridge in Centralia. By the end of May, oxygen levels in the Centralia Reach are too low for many of the most sensitive creatures.
With the inflow of the Skookumchuck River, the Chehalis is refreshed. The river drops out of the valley and resumes its journey down towards the sea. Cold water from the Skookumchuck and the vigorous churning of riffles and rapids restore the oxygen levels of the river. Scatter Creek and the Black River join the Chehalis as it flows past, and finally the River enters the wide valley of the lower river.
The Black River is a branch of the Chehalis system that deserves a tale of its own. Beginning in the broad wetlands south of Black Lake, it flows slowly down a flat valley that skirts the eastern edge of the Black Hills. As the rains of winter soak into the marshes and drain into the river, the water carries a dark color from the rich organic materials of the marsh. These materials also pull some of the oxygen out of the water, a natural process found in most wetlands.
After meandering through the marshes, two creeks add to the flow of the Black River as it passes the town of Littlerock. Waddell Creek brings clear, pure water from the Black Hills. Beaver Creek, on the other hand, carries to the Black River the telltale pollutants - bacteria, silt, and nutrients - that result when mud from eroded stream banks and manure from livestock are washed off the land by the rains. These problems were observed in the TMDL work of 1991 and 1992, but since that time, local citizens have been working hard to fence the creek and its tributaries and to better manage the livestock. With time and more hard work, Beaver Creek should run as clear and unpolluted as Waddell.
The Black River below Littlerock enters a long, slow stretch. Some have compared this part of the river to a Louisiana bayou or an English country stream. Like the Centralia Reach, as the flows drop in the spring, oxygen is less easily replenished. But flows in the Black are lower than the Chehalis. Even in spring, the deepest waters of the middle Black are cold and depleted of oxygen.
Even more than the Centralia Reach, the middle Black River behaves like a lake. The wide water surface, lack of shade trees, and slow currents allow microscopic floating plants called algae (or "phytoplankton") to flourish. In lakes, the kind of algae present changes from spring to fall, as temperatures, sunlight, and the amount of nutrients that fertilize the algae change.
Like a lake, the Black River has changing cycles of algae over the dry season. The long sunny days of late spring allow green algae to bloom. But as the days begin to shorten and conditions in the river change, the greens die back and other species take over. Small phytoplankton with beautiful, intricate silica shells called diatoms are often most common. At other times, the dominant algae are cryptophytes - tiny phytoplankton that propel themselves by whipping their little tails.
Given the right set of conditions, these phytoplankton could multiply until the Black River looked like pea soup. It's even possible that blue-green algae could appear - an algae that is sometimes toxic to dogs, cats, and humans. Fortunately, the Black River is still relatively low in one of the key nutrients that the phytoplankton require - phosphorus. If population growth in the Black River basin caused more phosphorus to enter the river from septic systems, stormwater, or wastewater, then the situation could deteriorate.
Meanwhile, on a spring day, the Black is dark and murky, but not green and turbid. As the river moves downstream from the lake-like middle stretch, it begins to meander and grow shallower. As it passes the railroad trestle near Rochester the river drops and enters an area of small riffles and pools thick with water plants. Like plants on land, these plants are just beginning to grow in the spring, only hinting at the lush growths that will crowd the river in the summer.
Winding through the valley between Rochester and Oakville, the Black River finally joins the Chehalis. As summer approaches, flows will continue to drop and temperatures rise. Soon the Chehalis and Black Rivers will face their most difficult season - the hot dog- days of August and the false summers of September and October. But during these long spring days, the cool, swift waters disguise the changes that are occurring within them.
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It's summer, and the sun beats down on the Chehalis Basin. Leaves fill the trees and grass covers the ground. The air is warm, and long clear days are only occasionally broken by a rainy spell. In the Chehalis River and its tributaries, flows drop, the water heats up, and in some places streams go dry.
For people, the summer weather is pleasant and easy - kids run barefoot in T-shirts, families camp in the forest and splash in the water. But for the Chehalis River, summer is a harsh and difficult time.
Pumps pull water from the channel for irrigation and stock watering. The water table drops as wells and roots draw on the waters stored in the ground. Very little is left to run through the tributaries into the River and out to the sea.
Where trees grow thick along the stream and river banks, the shade helps the water to stay cool. But where the banks are bare, the sun heats the air, the water, and the channel bottom, and the water gets warmer. In these areas, the fish and other creatures that love cool water are driven to whatever shelter is available, or perish in the heat.
With the warming of the water and decreased flow of the streams and rivers in the Chehalis Basin other problems appear. As the water warms, it carries less oxygen. Unless a riffle or rapids churns the water, oxygen moves from the air to the water poorly. Thus, slow, warm stream and river stretches are easily robbed of oxygen and regain the oxygen only very slowly. As the summer progresses through July into August, oxygen in the waters of the Chehalis River and its tributaries reaches its lowest levels as flows drop and temperatures peak.
The long days and warm temperatures also stimulate the growth of plants and algae in the water. In the slow, open, lake-like stretches of the Centralia Reach and middle portion of the Black River, microscopic floating plants called phytoplankton flourish. Where the channels are sunny and shallow, aquatic plants and attached algae grow. On clear days these plants produce excess oxygen, but at night they continue to breathe oxygen, as all living creatures do. This can make poor oxygen levels worse, driving them down to a minimum in the early morning. If pollutants that enter the river are high in nutrients, the phytoplankton, aquatic plants, and attached algae may bloom, resulting in large growths that may create a nuisance and drive early morning oxygen levels even lower.
The Black River and certain stretches of the Chehalis River have probably always had relatively poor water quality in the summer due to slow flows, summer heat, wetlands, and other natural conditions. Anywhere that human activities add oxygen-demanding or nutrient- rich waste materials to these stretches of the Chehalis or its tributaries, oxygen levels in the water that were naturally low are driven down even more.
These waste materials can come from many different sources. "Point sources" are concentrated sources such as a municipal sewage treatment plant, an industrial wastewater discharge, or a concentrated animal rearing operation. "Nonpoint sources" come from diffuse sources such as storm water, ground water, livestock range operations, or onsite septic systems.
Cattle may be raised in operations of all different sizes, from a few animals raised by a family to a large commercial dairy. The largest dairy farms may have hundreds of animals, and with those animals comes tons of manure. If poorly handled, this waste could reach the streams and rivers, where the fish would be suffocated, stream life poisoned by toxic ammonia, and the bottom smothered in muck. Manure on the bottom could continue to rob oxygen and release ammonia and other nutrients for years.
Where cattle can reach the water, the banks are beaten bare and the water muddied. The cattle leave their manure in the stream, where it remains to decay and rob the stream of oxygen. When fisheries staff from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service walked the basin in 1992, they found signs of this problem in almost every creek and river they examined.
Food processing companies use fields along the Chehalis to grow crops with their wastewater, and most dairies use their manure on fields as a fertilizer. The waste must be put on the fields at the right amount for the plants, or the excess will flow down to the ground water or over the surface to the nearest stream. If the field is right next to a stream or river, the excess waste in the ground water may quickly reach the stream.
Wastewater from city sewers or from industrial operations continues to flow to treatment plants day and night, where pollutants are reduced before discharge to the river. Although treated to levels set by national standards, pollutants still remain in the wastewater that the river must assimilate.
Every so often a summer downpour hits the Chehalis Basin. Where the ground is hard and bare, or on paved areas, the water runs quickly off into drains and channels, and on to the streams and rivers. This stormwater can carry with it pollutants from whatever wastes are laying on the ground - livestock and pet manure, fertilizer, trash, or yard waste. A slug of this polluted stormwater may hit the river during the storm, and a day later when the good weather returns, it is still in the river moving downstream, full of bacteria and using up oxygen.
In the Centralia Reach, the Chehalis River feels the problems of summer the worst. Here, the river becomes very wide and meandering, almost like a long, narrow lake. The City of Chehalis and Darigold release their treated wastewater here, which mixes slowly into the river as it moves downstream. At bends in the river deep pools have formed. Here cold water lies trapped at the bottom, while the warmer water flows over the top. Salzer Creek enters, itself depleted of oxygen and full of pollutants. Ground water seeps into the river which may carry pollutants from a number of sources such as a dairy, a landfill, or a field where wastewater is being spread.
In the deep pools, oxygen from the surface barely penetrates the upper layer of warmer water, and the sediments use up what little oxygen is present. In these pools, oxygen disappears, and the chemistry of the water is transformed. Hydrogen sulfide is formed, with its characteristic "rotten-egg" smell; although unpleasant to the nose, it is toxic to fish. The lack of oxygen also allows ammonia and phosphorus to enter the water at high levels. The bottom of these pools are areas completely hostile to fish and most other aquatic life.
In the surface waters of the Centralia Reach, oxygen drops to its lowest levels. Temperatures at the surface soar in the wide unshaded stretches, reaching levels near the surface that are almost too high for a salmon to survive. Any salmon trying to move upstream, as they begin to do in late August, will be forced to move through a narrow layer between the hot surface waters and oxygen-starved bottom waters. Salmon juveniles that might otherwise enjoy the quiet waters of the Centralia Reach are absent due to the harsh conditions, and the only resident fish are squawfish or other warm-water fishes.
In the long, hot days of summer, the Chehalis River is the most sensitive. Burdened with low flows, high temperatures, and oxygen-demanding pollutants the river teeters on the edge of disaster. An accidental spill or unlucky combination of problems can send it over the edge, knocking oxygen down to zero, releasing toxic ammonia, and leaving behind dead salmon and other aquatic creatures. The fish kill of August 1989 showed this to be true.
As the days grow shorter, the waters of the Chehalis Basin finally begin to cool, and the rains return with greater frequency. Summer weather may linger into the autumn months, and with the rains come new problems. But the arrival of the fall chinook signal that flows are rising, and the long, hard days of summer are finally passing.
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As the Chehalis Basin enters the 21st century, the citizens and communities of the basin face a daunting task. Years of neglect and a lack of knowledge has hammered the river, until it has become a real possibility that streams will run dry in the summer and salmon runs will be lost forever. A long road lies ahead, but it is a path that residents of the Chehalis Basin share with citizens in watersheds all over the nation, and the challenge is being accepted. The solutions come not from pointing fingers and fixing blame, but from communities working together and each citizen doing his or her part.
For the rural home-owner, onsite septic systems can be repaired and properly maintained. People rearing livestock can fence pastures and limit access to streams. Dairies can work with their Conservation District and the Natural Resource Conservation Service (formerly known as the Soil Conservation Service) to develop a farm plan that manages their cattle waste and uses it as a resource.
Residents of the Centralia and Chehalis urban areas face some difficult decisions. From late spring to early fall, the Centralia Reach simply does not have the capacity to assimilate oxygen-demanding wastes. To protect this sensitive area, municipal and industrial wastewater must be removed from the river during this period, and storm water controls need to be improved. Other communities have found solutions to similar problems, by reuse of the waste water, creation a regional sewer system, or the construction of retention ponds and wetlands. The solutions come with a price tag, but state and federal funds are available that may provide some relief.
On top of all this is the question of water supplies for the Chehalis Basin and the protection of flows in the Chehalis River and its tributaries. Water rights exceed the available water, and future supplies are uncertain. Water quality and the life that depends on the water cannot be protected without adequate minimum flows in the river system. The solution to this problem will come from everyone in the basin being involved and working together.
The list is long of the agencies and organizations that can help to protect the water quality of the Chehalis: federal agencies like EPA and the US Fish and Wildlife Service; the Department of Ecology and its fellow agencies such as Health, Fish and Wildlife, the Conservation Commission and DNR; the Chehalis and Quinault Tribes; county and city governments; the Conservation Districts and the NRCS; local businesses and industry; and citizens groups such as the Chehalis River Council, the Chehalis Watershed Council, the Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force, adopt-a-stream groups, and other community groups. With the passage of each year, the problems become clearer and the search for solutions more important. The whole Chehalis Basin will find the answers together - we all live downstream.
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by Margaret Rader
Discovering the Unknown Landscape: A History of America's Wetlands by Ann Vileisis Island Press, 1997
We've all heard the statistics. As Vileisis puts it, "Overall, 221 million acres of wetlands once graced our nation's lower forty-eight states with a rich mosaic of life. More than half of these important landscapes no longer exist." This book traces a history of loss and chronicles the changing attitudes of the settlers from Europe and their descendants about wetlands. Caught up as we frequently are in controversies about how to identify wetlands, how to preserve them and mitigate their loss, this book provides a long perspective and calls for no less than a change in culture if we are to stop the inexorable downward trend.
Vileisis describes how, to the first European settlers, what we call wetlands were "dismal swamps," linked by images such as Pilgrim Progress' "slough of despond" to whatever is dark and evil. Later wetlands represented opportunity: drain them and make a lot of money, whether selling real estate in Florida or planting more and more crops.
This is more than a book about wetlands, however. It is a history of water policy in the United States. It tells the history of the great American institutions that grew up to deal with wetlands issues: the Soil Conservation Service, the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and others. She also tells of the federal legislation that shapes our current ways of dealing with wetlands; how these laws got passed and how they have been enforced. Anyone attempting to understand the changing role of the Corp of Engineers in wetland protection, for example, should read this book.
The book is also gracefully written and filled with great stories about entrepreneurs and dreamers who saw opportunities in controlling the rivers and draining the swamps, and how their plans almost always went awry. It also tells of those who helped change the cultural attitude toward wetlands, people like Mrs. Augustus Hemenway of Boston, who, with William Brewster, founded the Audubon Society and groups like Ducks Unlimited, who saw dramatic decreases of wildlife in their favorite hunting areas. When scientists began to understand the values of wetlands in the early 20th century, long-entrenched attitudes began to change.
Vileisis points to the essential difficulty for understanding and dealing with wetlands: land is property, and our thinking is guided by concepts of "property rights." The waters of the country, on the other hand, have been understood as belonging to all of us. But wetlands are both land -- we can put a fence around it -- and water -- it flows and knows no boundaries. This is the key to why it has been so hard to shape public policy and attitudes about wetlands. As Vileisis puts it, "Americans were stuck somewhere between the conventional view of wetlands as property and the ecological view of wetlands as a life-support system."
Vileisis takes heart from the resiliency of nature, but in her closing chapter she says, "...while there have been changes in attitudes, policies, and laws, and marked decrease in the rate of wetlands loss, the destruction of wetlands continues because powerful interests cling to the status quo that calculates its profits in the ledger of short-term private gain with little concern for the common good." For those of us who work to change this cultural attitude, this book extends our sense of connection to those who lived before us. Vileisis says, "Informed by history, we can remember the trade-offs already made and turn away from the mistakes and misunderstandings of a time when we knew no better."
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This is the second in a two part series about the role each of us can play to help assure that no more of the creatures with whom we share Planet Earth will become extinct at our hands. We have already lost the dodo bird, the passenger pigeon, Stellar's sea cow and many others. Some plants and animal species are at a crisis point and we average citizens can help to turn the tide in their favor. Below is a rich mix of practical advice from all around the globe: From the first installment: 1. GET OUTDOORS AND LEARN all you can about nature. 2. CONTROL YOUR CAT to keep it from killing native wildlife. 3. THINK LOCALLY; ACT LOCALLY to improve the life of people and wildlife and plants in your community. 4. GROW NATIVE PLANTS to keep the gene pool healthy in the plant world.
And now on to the other suggestions: 5. DON'T BUY ENDANGERED SPECIES OR PRODUCTS MADE FROM THEM. When you travel outside the U.S., learn which species are in trouble in your destination country and refuse to buy products made from these plants and animals. Examples are turtle shell jewelry and combs, or stuffed turtles in the Caribbean, orchids taken directly from the wild or black coral jewelry. Some of these may be legal to buy where you are but illegal to bring into the U.S. Be sure and check the origin of wild bird species such as parrots, to make sure they were bred in the U.S.
6. THINK ABOUT FUTURE GENERATIONS. How do you want to leave this world for your great-grandchildren? Every time a sensitive natural area is destroyed or greatly changed, that piece of ground with its natural features is lost forever to future generations. Of course, we need to live somewhere, but how much land do we really need to change so drastically? Do we want clean rivers, green forests and lots of wildlife for them to enjoy? If so, we need to take some action in our generation. We can correct some mistakes from the past by improving habitat and creating more of it - in our yards, on our farms, in our parks. We can work for more public natural areas - more parks, more scenic corridors, more green belts, more plantings along streams and around fields (like hedgerows in England). Seek out to make natural any area on your property where human use is not intense.
7. RESTORE LOCAL HABITATS. This is a natural followup from the above. In every populated area, and some not so populated, are "orphan lands" which have been used and abused over the years and are choked with non-native plants and weeds, such as reed canary grass or wild blackberry. Small streams may be denuded of vegetation or river banks crumbling down. We can "adopt" places like these, with the cooperation of the present landowner, of course. We can discover what plants and animals lived there before the land was disturbed and make efforts to restore the piece to its former natural state. This might take years, but the effort needs to start at some point. Future people, plants and animals will benefit from our initiative.
8. VOLUNTEER AT A PARK OR NATURAL AREA. Not only will you learn a tremendous amount about your chosen area, but you will be helping to educate the rest of humanity about the value of the natural world. In these days of ever tightening budgets for parks and conservation areas, when paid staff can only cover the bare administrative minimums, you could provide a great service to the public and the park as well. Did I mention FUN? Most park volunteers thoroughly enjoy themselves - meeting people, improving their skills and spending lots of time in their favorite natural haunts.
9. TEACH YOUR CHILDREN to respect the world they were born into, so that they can sustain it or improve it during their lifetimes. That's a tall order in these days when there are so many serious challenges in parenthood. But you can expect that, after they finish sorting out their own philosophies, they will remember what you taught them about their natural world.
10. VALUE LIFE AND WILDERNESS. Extinction is irreversible. We lose diversity, beauty, a genetic resource, a natural wonder, a souvenir of the past. But underneath these there is another spiritual reason. Life is a sacred thing and we ought not be careless about it. (Second in a series of two articles)
Janet Strong, President
Chehalis River Basin Land Trust
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The Grays Harbor Conservation District (GHCD) is proud of the results from our continuing efforts to improve the water quality within Grays Harbor County. With the approval of numerous grants dealing with Salmon Habitat Restoration and Water Quality, the GHCD in cooperation with Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) formerly the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) has utilized Best Management Practices (BMP's) (NRCS national standards, practices and specifications) to accomplish this. The main focus of these programs is to exclude livestock from waterways by fencing the stream corridors. Whenever fencing is proposed, alternative water sources have to be considered--especially if the livestock previously utilized the waterway as a watering site. The most used watering alternative is pasture pumps. These enable livestock to receive water from a source beyond the fence by using a diaphragm pump (similar to a pitcher pump) designed such a manner as to allow the livestock to pump their own water. These pumps can lift water 26 feet up a vertical slope and transport the same water horizontally up to 120 feet. (See attached photo). GHCD utilizes funding for these projects from the follow grant sources: USF&W Chehalis Fisheries Restoration, USF&W Ecosystems, Washington State Conservation Commission Implementation, Washington Dept. of Ecology 319, Displaced Fisher Program, Jobs For the Environment and Weyerhaeuser Corporation. Also, in the past, the USDA Farm Service Agency has provided several other programs. The majority of these programs and grants have cost share components involved where landowners contribute toward a project either monetarily, labor and/or equipment usage. The combination of all these agencies, programs, and private funding sources enables the GHCD to assist numerous landowners in three different but related areas or BMP'S. The majority is directed toward livestock exclusion. The New Zealand style of fencing is utilized the majority of the time; the most important reason is cost and flexibility. Since the federal specifications allow for the use of bedlogs (using one post with a 4' block of wood underground) instead of double "H" braces for comers and line post spacings of up to 100 feet, the cost is reduced dramatically. This additional line post spacing provides increased flexibility in the fence which is needed in Western Washington because of the risk of floods annually along the waterways. The second aspect is for the incorporation of the pasture pumps as alternative watering devises. An aspect considered is the revegetation of denuded stream banks. This is needed to control not only the water temperature of the stream, but to assist in erosion control. Since July of 1996 the GHCD has implemented 126, 663 linear feet of permanent power fencing, 8,705 linear feet of barbed wire fencing, 62,750 sq. Ft. of revegetation and 16,250 sq. Ft. of stream bank stabilization. Going back to the beginning when GHCD started offering these programs and obtaining grants in 1993, a total of 469,920 linear feet of permanent power fencing has been installed (or 89 miles). We consider these figures to be a major accomplishment towards the goal of improved water quality. In past years we utilized three different labor forces for the construction of our projects. The first crews that we used were the Washington Dept. of Ecology Washington Conservation Corps. These crews are designed to employ and train youth that either dropped out of school or had problems finding jobs, and were between 18 to 21 years old. These crews were used during the formative years of the GHCD's implementation of water quality grants. The second and continuing crews that have been used are the Jobs For the Environment (Displaced Timber Workers) Program, which is currently being administered by the Washington Dept. of Natural Resources. This program is now accessible by annual grant applications. Another crew that was used were the Displaced Fisher Program, administered by the Washington State Conservation Commission through grant applications. At the present time the Displaced Fisher Program has expired and will not be reinstated, leaving us with the Jobs For the Environment crews as the only labor force to construct the BMP's . All three of these labor programs have been retraining for dislocated workers. The GHCD employs the old adage of "get the most out of a dollar". This means utilizing different funding sources and sometimes combining several sources in order to stretch dollars to the maximum. We would at this time like to thank all of our cooperators who have allowed us to assist them in the implementation and management of water quality BMP'S. Without private landowners' interest and patience, these accomplishments would not exist and we could not have done our job to improve water quality. For more information you can contact the Grays Harbor Conservation District at 360/249-5980 Back to top or back to home page or back to Whats New Drops of Water started as a small newsletter for 80 volunteers who contributed their time, knowledge and effort to produce a watershed wide plan. The plan dealt with water quality issues in the watershed. The volunteer newsletter expanded to over 800 recipients and since September 1996 (thanks to grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, assistance from Weyerhaeuser, and support from the Oyster Growers Association) it reaches 45,000 households in the watershed. Why is there a basin wide newsletter? The issues are many - and the legislature and other have spent a lot of time attempting to address them. Back in September of 1996 wee reported: "Did you know that in 1995 (most recent USFWS figures) Grays Harbor Conservation District restored over 74,000 feet of streambanks?" Well take a moment and read their newest report of accomplishments! Thanks to their efforts and the cooperation of landowners an immense amount of progress has been made. We try to present articles dealing with water quality, water quantity, fisheries, fisheries resources, streambank restoration and related activities. Each of these involve the resources so many residents depend upon in this watershed. Local volunteer groups, nonprofits, tribes, local agencies and state agencies which deal with our resources are invited to submit their articles. Each contributor writes their own material and you have the benefit of reading what they consider to be the successes and issues you might want to know about. Perhaps you have ideas of your own, we welcome them. We welcome guest editorials and in each issue there is a section devoted to youth.
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The Chehalis River is in trouble. Under natural conditions, slow moving portions of the Chehalis River are limited in the amount of oxygen they contain. Pollution from many different sources can reduce the level of dissolved oxygen even further. Aquatic life adapted to the natural conditions of the Chehalis River, but the added stress resulting from human pollution can be fatal. In 1989 a number of large salmon returning to the Chehalis and Black Rivers died because of poor water quality. Two years later, an accidental overload of a wastewater treatment system resulted in the discharge of enough excess effluent so that the level of dissolved oxygen actually dropped to zero in the river downstream of the discharge. Other similar incidents have been documented over the years.
Loss of shade and changes in the flow regime of the river make the problem worse. The riparian zone along the river system has been altered dramatically since settlers first arrived. Logging, agriculture, and clearing for homes have removed the tall trees and dense riparian canopy that shade much of the river system in the summer. Taking water out of the river for irrigation, drinking, and other uses, has reduced the flow during the same period of the year.
High water temperatures and low levels of dissolved oxygen during the summer violate state standards for water quality established to protect aquatic life like fish, and other beneficial uses. When those standards are being violated, the Department of Ecology is responsible for identifying sources of pollution that contribute to these problems and ensuring that the pollution is brought under control.
Detailed water quality studies of the Chehalis River resulted in the development of a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the Chehalis River upstream of the town of Porter. The TMDL identified sources of pollution that contribute to low levels of dissolved oxygen and sets limits on how much of those pollutants can be discharged to the river. Ecology submitted a pollution control strategy to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of the Upper Chehalis River TMDL. EPA approved the TMDL in October 1996.
The TMDL identified two major sources of pollution that are degrading water quality. One source is municipal/industrial discharges between the Skookumchuck and Newaukum Rivers. Ecology is controlling these point sources of pollution by modifying each facility's National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit to restrict the discharge of pollutants during the critical months during the dry season. For some of these permitted facilities, this will mean developing alternative disposal methods, such as land application of high quality wastewater, or discharging to a different part of the river.
These changes are going to be expensive. As a result, lawsuits were filed against Ecology challenging the limits placed in the individual NPDES permits. Since early 1997 Ecology has been meeting with the parties in the lawsuit to reach a mutually acceptable solution that protects the river and minimizes the cost for the dischargers. By tying the amount of discharge to the actual flow in the river it appears that these objectives can be met. During the dry season (usually summer and early fall), there will still be long periods of time when some of the facilities can not discharge to the river at their present location. One discharger is pursuing land application of high quality wastewater. Another is beginning to plan for a completely new up-to-date wastewater treatment facility. The third discharger is looking at upgrading its current facility and building a summer outfall approximately seven miles down river from its current location.
The second major source of water quality degradation is nonpoint pollution --the accumulation of pollutants from diverse sources such as runoff from urban areas, roads, farm fields, etc. Dairies are one source of nonpoint pollution that were specifically identified in the study as a source of organic materials that degrade water quality in the Chehalis River and its tributaries. Under the TMDL approved by EPA Ecology made a commitment to inspect all dairies in the upper Chehalis River Watershed. Ecology began making those required inspections in January 1998. Ecology and other agencies have publicized these inspections at technical assistance workshops and other special events over the last year.
Washington State has a Clean Water Act permit program that applies to any dairy where contaminated runoff to surface water occurs. Under this permit program, any dairy with a discharge to surface or ground water must apply for permit coverage and implement the equivalent of a farm conservation or waste management plan. If a dairy has a farm plan, conservation plan, or animal waste management plan, that is up-to-date, and has been fully implemented (all structures and management called for in the plan are in place) the dairy should pass the inspection without finding any major concerns. It is always possible, however, that the inspection will identify a discharge of pollutants to surface or ground water that was not addressed in the existing plan. If a discharge is found, the dairy must apply for coverage under the NPDES and State Waste Discharge General Permit for dairies. The permit will establish a schedule for developing and implementing an animal waste management plan that manages dairy waste and prevents pollution.
Programs to control pollution from other nonpoint sources such as urban stormwater runoff, failing septic systems, and nondairy livestock will also need to be implemented. Ecology will work cooperatively with local government to control these nonpoint pollution sources.
Kahle Jennings
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The Chehalis River is in trouble
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