March 1996 Edition

Hope we didn't cause you to miss the boat!

We might have gotten the word about the February meeting cancellation out too late to reach you. We used the newspapers and radio. The news release deadline for some papers created a situation where the meeting announcement was carried by a weekly on the same day that other papers carried a meeting cancellation notice. If you were confused you had every right to be. Under the circumstances it seemed wise to use an ounce of prevention and avoid any problems a night meeting might have caused. If our cancellation created a problem for you we are very sorry.

Wasn't that some flood? Words can't describe the havoc, destruction, communication problems, fear, anxiety, loss, frustration, anger, and helplessness created in such a short period.

All of those negative feelings were eased somewhat by the generosity of others and their willingness to help others less fortunate.

The brutal reality of the flood is that 24 hours of water will cause a lot of financial harm to many and everyone harmed by the flood faces at least a year of repair and cleanup.

Down in the Oakville area the flood waters were a total surprise. Even a late night vigil to 2 a.m. did not prepare anyone for the wall of water which rose over 2 feet in less than 4 hours. None of the typical resources (radio, TV, Internet news sources or neighbors) gave any idea what was in store for everyone the following morning.

Special Agenda for March 13

The flood is the big story in the basin. The CRC seminar for March will have a special, one time schedule.

At 6:00 p.m. we will host an open discussion, with some moderation, focused on your comments and concerns about the flood.

The purpose of this session will be to listen to your thoughts, capture them on paper. Why? You represent the resident wisdom in the basin and regardless of the flood outcome the knowledge you share and the comments you make are important.

While the CRC cannot promise anything we can provide a set of ears in tune with your concerns. We can and will, where appropriate, use your comments as we continue to deal with water quality, water resources and other related resource issues facing the Chehalis River basin.

This part of the program will last for two hours. You are welcome to join us at 6:00 p.m. or anytime after that.

At 8:00 p.m. we will close the open flood discussion topic and sit back and listen to a special presentation by Tom Skillings.

Mr. Skillings is a principle in the Engineering Firm of Skillings - Connolly. This firm is deeply involved in the Yelm 100% Waste Water Recycle project. This seminar will provide you with information and an opportunity to ask questions about a technique which may be used more and more in Western Washington state.

On Other Fronts

The CRC has a partner relationship with another watershed organization The other organization is the Chehalis Watershed Council. Also known as the CWC, the Chehalis Watershed Council is focused on watershed management issues.

The meetings of the CWC are decision making sessions. They are not seminars.

Who can join the CWC? This volunteer organization is open to everyone. The participation requirements are simple. After attending 3 consecutive meetings you are eligible to participate in consensus decision making. Why 3 meetings? The CWC membership felt that this simple requirement demonstrated continued interest in the health of the watershed, allowed full participation, and at the same time prevented any special interests from attempting to gain control of decisions simply by showing up for one meeting.

The CWC membership is looking for new participants. We want to see representatives from all counties, cities, businesses, farms, timber industry, and residents.

The CWC meets monthly. Typically it is the first Wednesday of each month. Generally the meeting is at Swede Hall. For further information contact the CRC Resource Library at 360/273-6137 and you can request more information and be added to the CWC mailing list.

Why are there 2 organizations? The CRC is focused on water quality and the implementation of the Chehalis River Basin Action Plan. Meanwhile new events take place daily in the basin. Most if not all of these events are outside the parameters of the action plan.

Recognizing this, the CWC was formed to address and deal with basin wide watershed management issues. It is the intent of the CWC to recognize and deal with issues before they become polarized or too hot to handle.

At the same time there are the normal growth and water use issues which face every region in the United States. It is felt that the people who live, work and deal in the basin are best suited to work together to come up with solutions in advance of need.

Seasons of the Chehalis

Washington Department of Ecology conducted an extensive study of the upper Chehalis basin. The results of that Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) study indicate that the area known as the Chehalis Reach simply has no capacity to carry the existing point and nonpoint pollutant load.

As controversial as the results are, they do reflect the state of the river and identify the actions which must be initiated if we are to reestablish a healthier system. The choice is ours. The CRC fully supports the recommendations contained in the TMDL study.

At our request the Washington Department of Ecology provided the following information which describes the Chehalis as we enter into spring and summer. The Chehalis in Fall/Winter will be in next months Drops of Water.

[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 articles, Ecology researcher Paul Pickett will explore the Chehalis River as discovered through the TMDL study.]

SPRING

Spring has come to the Chehalis Basin. 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.

Summer on the Chehalis

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.

The Spring chapter first appeared in an edition of the Fish Ladder. The Summer chapter appears in the Drops of Water for the first time. Next month the Fall/Winter Chapter will be presented.