For years, water flowing through the basin has been contaminated with fecal coliform. Ninety-three water-quality monitoring stations in the river basin failed fecal coliform standards from 1996 through 2004.
Now, about 80 percent of those monitoring stations show sharp improvements in water quality. They now meet the federal standards. Officials believe the remaining 15 sample sites also likely meet the standards, but they haven’t been tested yet, according to the EPA.
That’s terrific news for the 2,660-square-mile river basin.
Officials credit the water quality turnaround to a concerted effort by local, state and federal partners to tackle pollution sources, including agricultural runoff and failing residential and commercial septic systems.
“The partners in this watershed have been working well together, and it shows,” said Dave Rountry, water cleanup coordinator for the state Department of Ecology.
In addition, more than $90 million in state grants and loans has been used in the past five years to build new sewage treatment plants in Chehalis and Centralia and upgrade seven others in the watershed.
Rountry said a big difference-maker has been a 1998 state law that required dairy farmers to better manage their livestock waste.
The Chehalis River watershed, which flows through Lewis and south Thurston and Grays Harbor counties before emptying into Grays Harbor, supports an economically important shellfish industry, sport and tribal fisheries and other recreational use. Those uses and the health of people coming into contact with the water are threatened when bacteria levels from human and animal waste exceed safe levels.
The improved water quality tests show that a strong partnership is in place along with plans and projects that are paying big dividends in terms of ridding the Chehalis River Basin of its water contamination problems.
It’s important to sustain that momentum.
