Rain gardens are a green infrastructure tool that works!  They are affordable, easy to install and effective at addressing pollutants and reducing excessive flows.  Where soils are appropriate, you can direct your roof or driveway runoff to a specially designed and vegetated depression in your yard which will slowly soak the rain into the ground.  Metals and other pollutants are then filtered in the soil through natural processes.  Rain gardens often feature native and drought tolerant plants and are easy to maintain.

Rain gardens are beautiful additions to your property or your neighborhood.  A new study out of California has shown that green features in homes add value to the resale price.  In addition to actually installing a rain garden, you can get many of the same benefits to help with stormwater impacts by simply leaving existing native vegetation on your property, or creating areas of native plants.

There are many examples of residents, communities, and local governments benefiting from using these tools all around the Sound and Straits.  Not only can green infrastructure projects reduce stormwater impacts, they can also help with a major problem – combined sewer overflows.  In King County, swales, similar to rain gardens, are planned to soak up the rain and filter pollutants in the Barton Basin in West Seattle.   Not only is this method effective at managing runoff – it also means less disruption to neighborhood streets and significantly reduced public expense since storage tanks are not needed.  Added benefits of swales are the beautiful gardens and their influence in calming traffic thereby creating walking friendly areas for the neighborhood.

People For Puget Sound strongly supports the use of green infrastructure to reduce combined sewer overflows and stormwater pollution rather than relying on the traditional constructed engineered massive projects.  These green efforts can be at your home – in the form of a rain garden, a cistern or a section of retained native vegetation or they can be bigger city or county projects along roadways.

Tom

More info on polluted runoff

Puget Sound Rain Garden campaign

Newly arrived, my supervisor, Rein Attemann, told me I am going to work on a SMP project with him….SMP- what? I had no idea what he was talking about so he took me to a community workshop for shoreline property owners in Bremerton on June 22^nd. The workshop served as an on-site introduction to shoreline ecology and restoration.

Perfect – exactly what I need to learn. Before heading out, I read up a little what SMP is:

• SMP stands for Shoreline Management Plan
• The goals are to:
  • Protect ecological shoreline functions
  • Accommodate appropriate uses on shorelines
  • Maintain public access along shorelines
    
    

Everything sounds good so far- and later at the workshop I dug even deeper into the world of SMPs.

Bulkheads – yes or no?

It seemed pretty clear what the end goal of the SMP was, but I did not understand what was actually being done to achieve them. On the ferry over, Rein showed me bulkheads along the shorelines. Bulkheads are “mini seawalls”; they are manmade structures built along shorelines with the purpose of controlling beach erosion.  We could see some concerns, though, looking at the bulkheads along the shoreline, at how the silt at the base gets ‘scoured’ by water forced down to the bed.

At the forum, I listened to the presenters explain how the bulkheads served to restrict marine wildlife’s access to nutrients that come from the shore. They gave many biological and geological arguments in favor of removing bulkheads to create a more natural gradient on the shore.

The failing bulkhead in Bremerton

The second part of the workshop was a site visit to a beach in a public park nearby. The park was of interest because it had an old failing bulkhead that was to be removed. This public space provided a space to experiment with what would happen to land after the removal of a long standing bulkhead.

Failing bulkhead at the public park

We went to the park during an extreme low-tide and what was amazing was the variety of fauna within a few meters of the bulkhead, driving home the importance of understanding how the bulkhead interact with that part of the beach.

One point that I hadn’t thought about was role of shoreline trees, shrubs and grasses. The presenter demonstrated the relationship between both sides of a bulkhead through a photo of winged insects taken out of a forage fish’s stomach. These insects had fallen into the water from overhanging branches onto the beach and into the water where they become food for fish and wildlife; bulkheads serve to separate the shoreline from the vegetated zone, disrupting this process.

What a great day out and around at Puget Sound! I have not only got a better understanding of the issues facing Puget Sound, but I am also highly motivated to bring my knowledge to work! Rein, get me to work!

I was introduced to some of the local wildlife

The Puget Sound Partnership is Washington State’s government agency in charge of restoring  Puget Sound.  In this latest legislative session, the Partnership was a target for significant budget cuts. People For Puget Sound and many environmental groups expended a lot of time and money to protect the Partnership even though there have been disappointments with the agency in the past as this recent Crosscut article points out.

Yes, the Partnership can do more – a lot more – but I, and the leaders of 40 environmental nonprofits, along with elected officials, experienced scientists and many other stakeholders feel that supporting the Partnership is our best chance to secure the funding, accountability, and coordination required to protect Puget Sound over the long term.

The Partnership was created to establish and implement an Action Agenda that puts us on the path to recovering Puget Sound and its wildlife and fish populations, while protecting our quality of life and local economy. It is critical that the Action Agenda is strong, focused and effectively implemented.  We must therefore balance our efforts to support the Partnership with our efforts to push them to do more and do it quicker. This is not an easy balancing act.

I, along with People For Puget Sound board member Tracy Collier, Sue Patnude and members of the People For Puget Sound staff, serve on several Puget Sound Partnership committees where we synthesize and translate science on Puget Sound, influence the focus and content for the environmental targets and prioritization, and facilitate a coalition of environmental groups. The debate is often heated and frustrating because the Partnership lacks any direct enforcement authority and must push the agenda through collaborative means.

Even so, in the coming year, People For Puget Sound will be pushing hard on the Partnership  to live up to its potential.  After the Partnership passes the updated Action Agenda on August 6, it will need to stop dithering and lead the charge. People For Puget Sound will continue to play the role of the watchdog and monitor progress. All of us who care about recovering Puget Sound recognize that the stakes are too high, and failure is not an option.

Tom

In the past few months, for example, People For Puget Sound has hosted three Policy Cafés at a pub in Everett. More than 60 attendees had the opportunity to drink a beer, eat some snacks and learn fascinating information on an issue related to Puget Sound. Attendees heard first-hand from leading researchers about global warming’s evil twin – Ocean acidification, about noise and sonar and killer whales, and about how DNA is helping us understand the mysteries of sea otters and their nearshore environment.

• Did you know that the slightest change in PH, about 0.2- 0.3, in your blood will put you into a coma?  PH changes can cause major problems for aquatic organisms as well and that concerns marine scientists.

• Or that, increased noise in water reduces the ability of killer whales in a pod to communicate with each other?  Imagine the constant sound from the 4,000 vessels that travel through the Strait of Juan de Fuca every year in your living room.

• Or that, historically sea otters never inhabited Puget Sound, but were prevalent in all other inland estuaries along the west coast like San Francisco Bay?

Whether we are hustling in the halls of the state Capitol during legislative session or working with state agencies to strengthen environmental safeguards, the public’s input is essential to encourage lawmakers to make the right choices to protect Puget Sound.  That input needs to be based on solid information and knowledge so I encourage you to attend a future Policy Café or follow us on Facebook for news items and science updates so you can be a part of the groundswell of knowledgeable, inspired citizens that demand protection for Puget Sound.

After 23 years, the negative effect of the oil spill is evident in the dwindling number of orcas in the pod.  In fact, the presenter predicted that the pod might eventually die out because they are struggling to reproduce. The reproductive rate doesn’t seem to be sufficient to sustain the pod over the long run.

Puget Sound’s already vulnerable resident killer whales could share the same fate if Puget Sound doesn’t have adequate oil spill protection. Of particular concern is the tanker traffic coming from British Columbia due to the increased flow of tar sands oil from Alberta.   Over the next few years, we could see an even greater number of these vessels entering Puget Sound and tar sands oil is particularly worrisome because its higher density makes clean up more difficult.

People For Puget Sound, along with supporters and allies, championed an oil spill “preparedness” bill which passed by the Washington Legislature in 2011. The Department of Ecology is now developing regulations to implement this law and our goal is to ensure that the shipping industry has state-of-the-art equipment and trained personnel to respond if an oil spill happens in Puget Sound.

Your support and advocacy makes it possible for us to hold the Department of Ecology and the shipping industry accountable when it comes to preventing oil spills. There is work to be done, but I am confident that with your help we can protect Puget Sound and our killer whales from a fate like those in Prince William Sound.

Storming the Central and West Sound Conference:

Theme: Making connections for Puget Sound: Bringing teachers and non-formal educators together

For teachers: Clock hours provided and substitute reimbursement as funds are available

Registration fee is $35, which includes lunch, coffee/tea. (Note: If this fee is an obstacle to attend, please inquire about scholarships, see contact below.

Visit the conference's website.

Find more information and register here.

Increasingly, marine ecosystems throughout the world are being managed in accordance with the concepts of Marine Spatial Planning.  This concept is similar to the Coastal Zone Management that led to the Shoreline Management Act and Critical Areas Ordinances of the Growth Management Act in Washington and Watershed Based Management that has been a critical component of our water resource, water quality and salmon recovery efforts.  But Marine Spatial Planning can work further away from the shoreline too.  As we learn more about what’s down there in Puget Sound, we find that different habitats and the species they depend on occur in uneven patterns.  Submerged high profile rocky reefs support dwindling rockfish populations, tidally formed submerged sand waves support millions of sand lance, kelp and eelgrass beds are more highly developed in some places than others and all of the Sound’s marine life respond to oceanographic currents and upwelling which concentrate food in certain places.

How do we manage such a patchy ecosystem?  Some existing tools are already in the toolbox and those need to be added to and sharpened if we are going to save the Sound’s best places.  People For Puget Sound is at the forefront of designating, protecting and building capacity to support implementation of the state’s Aquatic Reserve system managed by the Department of Natural Resources.

We are entering into a 2 year program with 4 other partner organizations to set up citizen stewardship committees whom will be reviewing permit requests along the boundaries of aquatic reserves, watchdogging for unpermitted activities and assisting with baseline inventories of habitats and species.

We participated in the development of the Rockfish Conservation Plan which instructs Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to develop a system of no-take marine reserves to restore rockfish populations and continue to urge collection of the data that will be needed to site reserves in the right places to take advantage of the remaining rockfish and other marine biodiversity in the Sound.

Marine Spatial Planning also allows for us to designate appropriate places for future development of things like fisheries and aquaculture, energy production facilities and transportation infrastructure in places that will have the least negative impact on our human and natural resources.

To learn more about Marine Spatial Planning and what People For Puget Sound is doing, contact Doug Myers, Director of Science.

I'm a diver. Yes, one of those crazy types you see at local beaches throughout Puget Sound, carrying about 100 pounds of equipment and plodding carefully down into the frigid 45 degree water for roughly  an hour of intense wildlife viewing. In spite of the challenges, I am hooked. It's like birding. Underwater. With fish.

Fishwatchers, by the way, are very similar to birdwatchers - getting caught up in finding new species to add to their life lists. For instance, the colder winter months are the ideal time to find the oh-so-cute-but-no-bigger-than-your-thumbnail Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker in shallow eelgrass beds throughout Puget Sound. The name alone is hard to resist.

But while I'm down there enjoying myself, I, along with hundreds of other Pacific Northwest divers, am gathering important data that will go into a publically-accessible online database, housed at www.REEF.org.

A growing number of divers in the Pacific Northwest have been conducting REEF surveys on their recreational dives since 1997, and have done over 14,361 surveys.  Talk about dedicated citizen scientists!

Divers are taught how to identify local fish accurately through classes, self study, and most recently through REEF-sponsored 'Fishinars': fun, interactive and informative fish ID webinars that are free and  open to the public for teachers, students, landlubbers and divers alike.

Then divers take this knowledge into the water and identify all the fish, and a select set of invertebrates, they see on their dives. Each species sighted is assigned one of four abundance codes. Other important information is noted: location, current strength, time of day, visibility, depth, bottom time, habitat type, etc.

The data is submitted online through www.REEF.org, error-checked, and then passed into the database.  That's where you come in. It's right there for you to use 24/7!  For instance:

• Want to know what's seen off your neighborhood beach?
• How about getting the scoop on rockfish populations in Puget Sound?
• Need some subject material for a school report or a class lesson plan?
• Want to know the difference in a given species' population between 'then' and 'now'?
• Need some data to assist you in your communications with Puget Sound policy-makers?
• Want to become a better-informed citizen or consumer of local seafood?

More and more divers are getting involved by conducting REEF surveys - and if you're a diver we welcome you to join us. And if you're a tried-and-true landlubber, we also welcome you to join this active, enthusiastic group by becoming a REEF member (it's free), and by using the data.

More information about REEF's Volunteer Survey Program can be found here.

The REEF database can be accessed here.

You can sign up for Fishinars here.

Janna Nichols is the Outreach Coordinator for the Reef Environmental Research Foundation.

You can reach her by email here.

As a new member of People for Puget Sound (new to the world of advocacy as well), Environmental Lobby Day was an exciting experience. There was something special about meeting the legislators that represent my neighborhood, and without Lobby Day I likely never would have taken the opportunity to do it. Putting a legislator’s face behind the name and stump speech that appears in the annual voter’s pamphlet was also illuminating. The handouts covering some of the environmental legislation making its way through the State Congress were comprehensible, concise, and skillfully compiled, and I was impressed with the efficiency with which the day proceeded.

More importantly, Lobby Day presents a very important (to me, at least) example of effective outreach. “Outreach” is more than emails, booths, and marketing, though these are also important components. These are the means to a crucial end, which I believe to be “enablement”. The degree to which someone has been enabled to affect change is truly the most accurate measure of a good outreach effort.

“Enablement” through outreach is also about meeting people more than halfway. We, in the Puget Sound region, live in a particularly well-educated and conscientious environment. We care about the ecosystem in which we live and our natural surroundings uniquely define us. However, most people simply cannot be as active or involved as they would like ordinarily, and one of our jobs at People For Puget Soundis to provide the opportunity to maintain and restore the Puget Sound to anyone who wants to. We try to accomplish this on an individual as well as institutional level. Sometimes this involves updating a listserv with our restoration events or setting up an informational booth at an Earth Day festival. On January 25^th, People For Puget Sound, along with its sponsoring partners, organized Lobby Day.

Robert Franco-Tayar is the Outreach Coordinator  or People For Puget Sound

If you have ever been to a habitat restoration event with People For Puget Sound, you know we are always tackling those pesky invasives, digging out blackberry to make room to plant a variety of native plants in their place.  But what’s so bad about those blackberries?  They provide food, shelter and organic matter for the soil don’t they?  And why are native plants so great?  Two intertwining concepts set native plants above the invasive ones, diversity and timing.

Diversity-

Invasive plants like blackberry and scotch broom create big stands of only blackberry and scotch broom.  This doesn’t provide a whole lot of options for a varied group of animals, birds and insects.  Low diversity in vegetation results in low diversity of animals.

Timing:

This also ties into the timing factor.  Within a huge stand of blackberry, the plants all flower and fruit at about the same time.  There is abundant food for birds and critters at that time, but pickings are pretty slim otherwise.  Timing is where native plants really shine.  The plants and animals here in the Northwest, and in other areas of the world, have been growing and living together for thousands of years.  They have had time to work out pretty intricate relationships.  Bird migrations are often timed to coincide with the flowering and fruiting of a particular plant.  Even garden cultivars of that native plant, bred for color or ease of maintenance, may flower and fruit at a slightly different time and the migrating birds are too late or too early to benefit.  Also, a diverse stand of native plants provides a continuous source of food as each species flowers and fruits at different times throughout the season.  Even insects have developed attractions to certain plants over the years, and when those plants are next to a stream, and the wind blows the insects into the water, they become food for the fish in the stream, which have developed instincts toward eating just those insects that those native plants attract.

So that’s a quick look at why we plant native plants on our restoration sites and spend so much time and energy, with all our fabulous volunteers, pulling out blackberry roots and yanking out scotch broom.

Katrina Beach is a Sound Steward who works on restoration ecology projects with People For Puget Sound.

Recently, I have been inspired that we have found a part of the solution- in the web of mushroom mycelium that runs through soil and rotted log, and can be found just about anywhere in Puget Sound with dirt and green growing things. Mycelium are akin to the roots of plants, growing into a network of fine thread-like tendrils that penetrate the soil or wood substrate the mushroom prefers. One cubic inch of soil can contain over 8 miles of mycelium, creating a vast and diverse ecosystem made up of a multitude of species of fungi and their associated microorganisms.

Over the last decade or so, researchers have explored the amazing capabilities of fungi to contribute to restoration in two key ways- by processing and eliminating contaminants and by improving soil quality and thus plant survivability.  People For Puget Sound is applying this innovative science at restoration sites around the Sound in a couple of ways:

• Mycoremediation of contaminants such as fecal coliforms and petroleum products using material inoculated, or seeded, with native mushroom species to either filter out toxins (i.e., mycofiltration) or break them down into harmless byproducts.  Essentially, the mushrooms “eat” the toxin, or alter it so it is no longer dangerous.  We are applying mycoremediation at our Cayou Lagoon site on Orcas Island. For more information, see our mycoremediation page.
• Mycorestoration to improve soil quality at restoration sites via the use of mycorrhizal mushrooms that form associations with the roots of plants, resulting in a beneficial nutrient exchange and greater plant survivability.  Native plants are treated with mushroom “spawn”, made up of native varieties that are known to form mycorrhizal bonds.   In our case, the native trees and shrubs were inoculated with a root dip before planting. We are using mycorestoration to improve plant survival at Union Slough near Everett, Terminal 105 along the Duwamish, and Maury Island Marine Park.  Want to know more? Check  out the mycorestoration information on our Echo-Tech page.

The key to this exciting and experimental technology is the ecology of the mushrooms themselves.  Fungi are decomposers.  Threadlike mycelium, the underground bodies of the mushrooms we see emerging from tree trunks or the forest floor, secrete enzymes that break down cellulose and lignin.  These complex molecules are the building blocks of plant tissue.  Made up of long chains of carbon and hydrogen, they are similar in composition to many organic pollutants such as pesticides, industrial chemicals, and petroleum products- substances that humans produce and release into the environment. The challenge is to identify the appropriate mushroom species to remediate for a given toxin- once you get this right, the results can be amazing.  In one field trial, Oyster mushrooms were found to remove 95% of the PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) from soil heavily contaminated with diesel fuel.  In addition, a pilot project near the Dungeness River found that mycoremediation was significantly more effective at removing fecal coliforms and ammonia than rain gardens alone.

The potential of these technologies to provide solutions to some of the most widespread and problematic inputs of pollutants to Puget Sound is inspiring.  Mycoremediation can address a wide array of contaminants- from fecal coliform bacteria like E. coli, to complex man-made chemicals including pesticides and industrial pollutants such as dioxin, to petroleum products and more. Mycologist Paul Stamets from Olympia-based Fungi Perfecti, who pioneered many of the mycoremediation techniques we are applying in the field, captures this potential perfectly in his inspiring and informative book Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. “Our fungal friends equip us with tools to act responsibly and repair our shared environment, leading the way to habitat recovery.”

This is fascinating and exciting science, and People For Puget Sound is working hard to bring this research out of the lab and into the field.  Our partners and colleagues around the region and the country are eagerly watching and waiting for the data that will come from the experimental mycoremediation and mycorestoration projects at our restoration sites.   Data that will hopefully document the incredible potential of the mushroom kingdom to provide the tools we need to harness ecology to heal the ecosystem.

Author Rachel Benbrook is a Restoration Ecologist for People for Puget Sound.

In the early dark and rainy morning hours in January, I found myself still half asleep talking eagerly to a long time staff member of People For Puget Sound. We were on a chartered bus heading south to Olympia.

We had a mission- to garner support from our state legislators on three environmental priorities. Hell or high water, hundreds of passionate citizens from around the state were determined to clean up Puget Sound, establish a state wide electronic waste recycling program, and promote energy independence through renewable fuels.

At the end of the day we had made significant headway. At the end of the legislative session all three bills were passed and signed by the Governor. That was in 2006.

Each year thereafter, we have achieved many legislative successes and stood our ground as opponents attempted to roll back our environmental laws, regulations and funding.

2012 legislative session will be no different in terms of the scope of the issues, the urgency of the times, and the need for citizens to have a voice. As Rep. Dave Upthegrove (33^rd) said last year in his address to lobby day attendees, “A citizen from our district who communicates an issue to us is more powerful than any paid lobbyist, because at the end of the day we represent you.”

Ah, music to any citizen’s years. Unfortunately not all our legislators have that perspective and therefore we need to hold them accountable. Remember elected officials work for us, not special interests.

On Wednesday, January 25^th I will be in Olympia for the annual Environmental Lobby Day.

Will you join me in Olympia that day? Will you join the throng of hundreds of like minded citizens?

We will descend upon the state capitol advocating for three environmental priorities from our state legislators in the face of unprecedented budget deficits.  We'll be celebrating 20 years of Environmental Lobby Day this year, so we have some major victories to remember and challenges to look forward to in the future.

See you in Olympia on January 25^th!

Click here to learn more about the Environmental Priorities Coalition's -2012 legislative package.

For more info email our Advocacy Manager Rein Attemann.