The Squaxin Island Tribe is appealing to Gov. Chris Gregoire the decision by the state Department of Ecology to reject a petition to protect Johns Creek. ”Ecology’s inaction does further harm to our treaty-based fisheries,” said Andy Whitener, natural resources director for the Tribe. “Salmon recovery should not have to bear a disproportionate share of the fallout from tough economic times.”

This is the second time in two years that Ecology has rejected the Tribe’s request to protect Johns Creek, citing the need for study on the connection between ground and surface water in the Johns Creek watershed. The Tribe’s petitions were based on a state law that closes a watershed to new well drilling activity if not enough information exists to establish that water is legally available.

If the Gov. Gregoire is serious about protecting the waters of Puget Sound, then she will direct Ecology to act. “Ecology’s excuse is the lack of resources. It takes a commitment to their responsibilities, not money, to close the basin,” said Kevin Lyon, the Tribe’s attorney. “The rule is simple: if you lack information, you don’t take water – especially when minimum flows are not being met.

Read more here.

The Squaxin Island Tribe has filed a second petition with the state Department of Ecology (DOE) to stop all new water withdrawals, including permit-exempt wells, in the Johns Creek watershed near Shelton. The action was taken to protect several runs of salmon that spawn and rear in the creek.

“There isn’t enough water in Johns Creek to support salmon,” said Andy Whitener, natural resources director for the Squaxin Island Tribe. Likely because of withdrawals from hundreds of domestic and municipal wells, the creek does not meet state mandated minimum flows to protect salmon.

The tribe filed the petition under a state law that closes a watershed from future withdrawals if not enough information is available to justify those withdrawals.

This new petition comes almost two years after the state declined an initial call from the tribe to protect Johns Creek. With the original refusal came the promise that the state would work with Mason County to develop ways to achieve minimum streamflows. “That so-called ‘alternative path forward’ never materialized,” Whitener said. “Neither the state or Mason County took any action.”

Read the entire news release here.

Anderson Good Choice to lead WDFW

The treaty tribes of western Washington look forward to continuing to work with Phil Anderson as director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).

Anderson was named the department’s permanent director Saturday by the nine-member commission….(read more at NWIFC website).

I toured the Deschutes Watershed on June 4th with 17 other members of the Deschutes Advisory Group.  The group is charged with implementing measures to address water quality issues identified in the DOE TMDL technical report.

One highlight of the tour was stopping at the mouth of Huckleberry Creek not far downstream from the upper Deschutes falls.  Prior to a 1990 rain storm and subsequent landslide on Weyerhaeuser property, about 10% of all returning coho in the Deschutes River system spawned in Huckleberry Creek.

We spoke with Peter Schmid, president of the local homeowners association.  He described how sediment (likely still from the 1990 landslide) continues to aggrade the Huckleberry channel.  He said the channel is now at least three feet shallower than it used to be.  He asserted that was the cause of the ongoing flooding issues the community faces.  When asked about salmon, Peter reported that he has seen none in the last couple years–not in Huckleberry Creek and not in front of his house in the mainstem Deschutes River.

At another stop in Pioneer Park, we saw first hand what a river likes to do.  A new bend in the stream channel formed during last winter’s storms.   It took out a portion of the gravel path leading west from the parking lot near the artesian well.   It will be interesting to see how tolerant the City of Tumwater and park users will be to letting a river be a river.  On a very hot June 4th, the inner tubers at least seemed to relish the new twist in the stream channel.

Outside of Shelton Harbor, the dioxin is distributed uniformly with an average concentration of 35 parts per trillion (ppt or pg/g). “At first glance, the distribution pattern suggests the dioxin may be a historical legacy,” said John Konovsky, the tribe’s environmental program manager.

Oakland Bay is a very productive shellfish growing area. Studies elsewhere suggest there is very little connection between dioxin concentrations found in sediment and contamination in shellfish:

• In a 2008 Ecology report on neighboring Budd Inlet, sediment samples weretested for dioxin and concentrations ranged from 3 to 60 ppt. Concentrations in littleneck/manila clam samples averaged 0.5 ppt.
• In Similk, Fidalgo and Padilla Bays, a 2006 study by the Swinomish Tribe identified a range of concentrations of organic compounds including dioxin in sediment, but levels in shellfish from those same sites were more uniform and much lower. The report also suggested that health risks from sediment exposure – such as digging for clams – are even lower than eating shellfish.
• A 2007 Humboldt Bay study concluded that dioxin concentrations in shellfish tissue were independent of dioxin levels in sediment. All the tissue directly tested and most reported in the worldwide literature was below concentrations considered to be a risk to human health. Without continual industrial output, dioxin levels in sediment and shellfish decline over time.

“It’s not surprising that shellfish accumulate very little dioxin and are safe to eat,” said Konovsky. “This is because dioxin builds up in fatty tissue and shellfish have a very low fat content.”

Scientists from the state Department of Health also believe that dioxin in the sediment of Oakland Bay does not pose a public health concern for shellfish consumers. When discovered in sediments elsewhere around Puget Sound, dioxin in shellfish has never been found at levels of public health concern.

“Oakland Bay has always been a favorite spot for tribal members to dig clams,” said Andy Whitener, natural resources director for the tribe. “The tribe is committed to working with state and federal governments to do whatever is necessary to clean up the bay. We want to absolutely guarantee the health of our tribal members and the entire community.”

(END)

For more information, contact: Andy Whitener, natural resources director, (360) 432-3800. Jeff Dickison, assistant natural resources director, (360) 432-3815. John Konovsky, environmental program manager, (360) 432-3804.

Reports Cited

Science Applications International Corporation. 2008. Sediment Characterization Study, Budd Inlet, Olympia, WA: Final Data Report. Department of Ecology, Olympia.

Swinomish Tribe. 2006. Bioaccumulative Toxics in Subsistence-Harvested Shellfish—contamination results and risk assessment. La Conner, WA.

Pacific Shellfish Institute. 2007. Status Report and Synopsis of Organic Pollutants in Relation to Shellfish Safety in the Mad River Slough and Humboldt Bay, California. Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District, Eureka.

The increase in clam mortality will set up an interesting experiment this summer.  There seems to be a relationship between clams dying and summer nutrient levels/bacteria concentrations in Oakland Bay.  If the hypothesis is correct, this summer’s bacteria concentrations should be higher than 2008 or 2007.   A hot and sunny summer will likely enhance the increase.  We will have the results of the experiment by October 2009.

The Squaxin Island Tribe released their winter 2008-09 water sampling results to the Oakland Bay Clean Water District Advisory Committee on March 4th.  Five samples were collected at nine stream mouths between October 2008 and February 2009.  Two of the sampling days, 11/12 and 1/7, occurred during major storm events.  All the samples were analyzed for fecal coliform bacteria at the Department of Ecology Manchester Lab.

The sampling results from the storm days were much higher than the non-storm days.  This is a very common pattern in Western Washington because stormwater picks up large quantities of bacteria as it moves across the landscape.

The results indicate that Uncle John Creek is still a leading source of non-point water pollution entering Oakland Bay.  While there have been significant improvements over the last couple years that have taken Chapman Cove (downstream of Uncle John Creek) off the Department of Health’s water quality threatened list, there is still need for additional improvement to meet water quality standards.

Other creeks like Shelton, Malaney and Goldsborough also play a significant role in moving bacteria from the uplands to marine water.  Their contributions to water pollution must also be investigated and reduced in the near future to meet water quality standards.

On the wall of my office is a photo of one of my co-workers, Joe Puhn taken during a habitat survey on the Deschutes River.  He’s standing in a few feet of water, hanging on to his float tube.  What’s interesting about the picture is the width, depth, and curviness (sinuosity) of the river.

We were doing the survey in the summer when most of the Deschutes runs wide and straight, shallow and hot.  Someone, probably kids looking for a better inner tubing experience, piled up rocks and gravel to narrow, deepen and add sinuosity to the channel to speed the river.

What is good for inner tubing is also good for fish — faster water makes more interesting tubing and sweeps out the fine sediment in spawning gravel (fine sediment can choke salmon before they ever emerge from the gravel).  Added sinuosity lengthens the river and allows the water to interact more with the cool, underlying gravel.

The state Department of Ecology recently released a draft report that outlines the various reasons behind the declining health of the Deschutes River.  One of the major obstacles faced by fish is high temperatures.  If water is too warm for fish, they can die from heat stress.

Most of the discussion around this particular aspect of the Deschutes has focused on the need to plant more trees and better manage riparian vegetation to shade the river from the heating effects of the summer sun.  But buried in the report is data that suggests planting trees is not enough to eliminate water temperatures lethal to fish (> 22 ^oC or 72 ^oF).  Much more has to be done to approach the overall natural background condition where the summer, system-wide 7-day average maximum water temperature can potentially be as low as 16.6 ^oC (~62 ^oF).

The current summer condition is about 23.7 ^oC (~75 ^oF) due to the influence of human activities.  Mature vegetation in a healthy riparian zone will lower that temperature by 4.5 ^oC (~8 ^oF), but improvements to channel conditions and microclimate can provide an additional 2 ^oC (~3.5 ^oF) of cooling.  Only with improvements to channel conditions can water temperatures lethal to fish be completely eliminated from the Deschutes River system.

One way to improve channel conditions and cool water temperatures is with large woody debris.  Planted trees will eventually fall into the river and create logjams.  These structures will vary the river, digging out deep, cool pools for fish to rest and creating fine sediment-free riffles for fish to spawn.

But that sort of solution is too far down the road.  We can get into the river today and build logjams that will start helping fish now, rather than a wait century or more for the trees to grow and fall.

The Squaxin Island Tribe recently built a series of logjams along Skookum Creek, and we’re already seeing the results.  Juvenile salmonids prefer the cover of the logs and arrived in large numbers the day after we completed the jams and they continue to seek refuge there.

The logjams that we built will bridge the gap until a few thousand trees we planted around the creek grow large enough to naturally build logjams.  This is the same sort of thing that we should do on the Deschutes.