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Scientists: Puget Sound species in decline as pollution increases

By John Dodge | The Olympian • Published March 27, 2008

Scientists gathered Wednesday to share their latest research on what ails South Sound, painting a picture of a shallow, poorly circulating water body with a host of pollution problems on the rise and many species in decline.

Local projects

Two South Sound projects to better protect water quality in the face of development pressure are among eight Puget Sound projects funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The grant awards were announced Wednesday at a science symposium in Tacoma.

The grants include:

•$624,675 to help Thurston County with countywide drainage assessment to identify where stormwater improvements and low-impact development would improve water quality.

•$625,000 to the Squaxin Island tribe to create an incentive-based program to encourage landowners to be environmental stewards in the Oakland Bay watershed. The goal would be to eliminate shellfish harvest closures caused by pollution in the bay.

The grants awarded through the EPA's West Coast Estuaries Initiative are designed to help local governments and tribes protect watersheds, said Elin Miller, EPA regional administrator. "The Puget Sound needs our help," Miller said. "And we can start at the watershed level by adopting smarter land-use patterns and better management practices to protect water quality."

The research presented at the South Sound Science Symposium sobered the crowd of 400. It also drove home the fact that the root causes of a South Sound ecosystem out of whack are not fully understood.

Population growth and all of its trappings — including polluted stormwater runoff, nitrogen and bacteria loads from human and animal waste and habitat loss — seem to lurk behind many of the signs of an unhealthy Sound, the science suggested.

Preliminary studies suggest that more than half of the toxic chemicals delivered to South Sound come from stormwater runoff that originates from urban areas, noted Puget Sound Partnership toxics reduction program manager Scott Redman.

He said the waters of South Sound, defined as the inlets south and west of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, receive an estimated 4,200 tons of petroleum products via stormwater runoff each year.

"Those facts alone justify programs to better manage stormwater," Redman said.

All that oil oozing into South Sound makes a strong case for a vehicle-testing program to detect and require repairs of oil leaks, said Bill Dewey, a spokesman for Taylor Shellfish, the region's largest commercial shellfish-growing company.

Shoreline

South Sound has 450 miles of shoreline, a distance equivalent to driving from Tacoma to Missoula, Mont., said Tom Mumford, a state Department of Natural Resources marine scientist. Thirty-five percent to 40 percent of that shoreline has been altered in some way, often by the construction of bulkheads.

Hardening of the shoreline disrupts the near-shore habitat and the marine life that lives, feeds and seeks sanctuary there.

Floating kelp beds have all but disappeared from South Sound, but at least 24 invasive species have arrived in recent years.

"There are quite a few, and a bunch more are coming," Mumford said.

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