Our second Chuckanut Bay Day event on September 19 was a lot of fun again. Thank you Lisa Balton, Chris Brown, Shelley Halle, and Marie Hitchman for making this a great day. We had torrential rain that morning but the day cleared and was gorgeous. A small group of very interested locals come to our event, and judging by their feedback, they enjoyed it very much.
One of the things we asked people about was their stewardship behaviors. Most people reported numerous good stewardship practices. The top four were:
avoid using pesticides and fertilizers,
keep litter off the beach,
avoid feeding wildlife, and
include trees and shrubs in their landscaping.
The water quality of Chuckanut Creek is pretty good. However, the Department of Health has discontinued their marine water sampling for now because the marine water quality was not clean enough to warrant further testing.
The causes of the fecal coliform pollution in the area remain something of a mystery. According to the Whatcom County Marine Resources Committee the most likely causes are:
failing septic tanks,
congregating wildlife, and/or
pet waste.
Beach Monitoring
This year’s beach monitoring has wrapped up and Jane Lewinski has once again offered to enter the data into our data base. Thank you Jane! The beach monitoring team was so wonderfully independent again this year that I don’t even have good photos of their work to share with you. I have special thanks to Margo Ferdon for coordinating the effort! This great team also included: Jeanne Bogert, Chris Brown, John and Margo Ferdon, Marie Hitchman, Gene Hoerauf, Corrine Hughes, Rose Lavoie, Jane Lewinski, Richard Nevels and Kristine Penrod. If you have photos of beach monitoring days I would surely love to include those. And if I’ve forgotten to thank you – please don’t be shy!
Rain Garden Outreach
Our rain garden team has been making some great connections and strengthening our outreach messages with great testimonials and a fresh display with the help of Vincent Alvarez, in our office. Thanks Bob Hendricks and Richard Nevels for your great work on this. Do you belong to a garden club, homeowners association, or civic group? Would you like to help us spread the good news about rain gardens? We would love to talk to your group. Call me to find out more!
Stormwater Management: One Backyard at a Time
For those of you who missed this great program, you can view it from your home computer online by following the link below. The first hour was the most relevant to our area and the panel discussion at the end was interesting. http://eces.wsu.edu/video/stream.html
Built Green Expo
Our Extension office hosted an entire track of presentations called “Sustainable Lifesytles” at this year’s Built Green Expo. We had Sustainable Landscaping, Rain Gardens and Rain Barrels, Low Carbon Cooking, Community Wind Power, Greener Cleaners and more. While the Expo was not nearly as well attended this year as it has been in years past we made some great connections.
Thanks to Bob Hendricks, Gene Hoerauf, and Richard Nevels for your great help teaching people about rain gardens, thanks to Mark Collins for helping out with the well-water screening for nitrates, and special thanks to Dac Jamison for giving the rain garden presentation.
4-H Natural Resources Curriculum
Our youth education team is diving into this wonderful and substantial project and coming up with great ideas. There are so many interesting facets to this project – what are the central concepts we want kids to know? How do we create a curriculum and is fun, field-trip oriented and hands-on? How do we encourage kids to ask lots of good questions?
The possibilities are endless and the team is making good progress towards crafting something that is manageable, meaningful, and most of all, fun for kids! Thanks to Steve Bailey, Edradine Hovde, Jim Kreiji, and Jennifer May for your hard work!
Chris Brown from the Skagit County Beach Watchers has been doing a lot of great work with us up here in Whatcom County and apparently has been burning the candle at both ends. He recently confided to me that he’s the first member of his class to reach the 100 hours mark. Wow! A big round of applause for Chris everyone!
I was inspired to check out our online hours database so that I could report on this class and I’m happy to say that Shelley Halle and Rose Lavoie are tied for the lead in hours for this class with about 35 hours logged apeice. Nicely done ladies!
However, for the year no one is coming close to Heather Mackay from the class of 2007 who has contributed 121 hours thus far. Way to go Heather!!
Second place for all classes is another tie with Gene Hoerauf and Jane Lewinski neck in neck at about 59 hours.
Thanks everyone for all you do (and for logging your hours)!
This is a great time to log your hours if you haven’t done so already. Let me know if you need help, or if you have actually reached 100 hours for the year but you were keeping it a secret. As always, using the database to log your hours is the most helpful to the program but I will happily accept information from you in the form of emails, letters, and back-of-the-envelope notes (really!), if that’s what works for you. The hours help me to tell the story about our great Whatcom County Beach Watchers.
Creosote Resurvey
Big thanks to Joe Ssebbanakitta, Jane Lewinski, Claudia Olejniczak, Sue Brown, Margo and John Ferdon, Chris Brown, Marie Hitchman, Gene Hoerauf, and Jeanne Bogert for helping to resurvey the reach at Cherry Point in preparation for the upcoming removal effort.
Joe shows how successful our beach clean-up efforts were on that day, too. The most interesting thing we found (I think) was the whale skin which was still on the beach from the recent stranding on Cherry Point.
The Department of Natural Resources is planning to do the removal at Cherry Point during the week of October 5. They have a WCC crew scheduled for Monday through Thursday of that week.
If Beach Watchers are interested in helping, Lisa Kaufman with the Deparment of Natural Resources would love the help. Monday and Tuesday you could assist the WCC crew with finding and gathering the debris, and Wednesday (and possibly) you could assist with choking the materials and continuing to collect smaller debris and trash for placement onto the boat. Full disclosure: I’m not exactly sure what “choking the materials” means but I’ve asked Lisa for some clarification which I’ll be happy to pass on to you if you are interested. If you know feel free to share your insights with us! ;-)
Kayayking Eelgrass Project
Thanks go to Corrine Hughes (and her friend), Kristine Penrod, and Lisa Balton for helping Chris Fairbanks out with his neat eelgrass restoration research project. They had lovely weather to be on the bay and together with other community volunteers, successfully collected a lot of eelgrass seeds.
Rain Garden DVD
Our rain garden DVD was finished this summer and we celebrated in style with a release party at Pastazza. You can view the finished product right here:
The Conservation District has supplied us with 2 big boxes full of Rain Garden manuals that we can provide to interested members of the public. This spring they will be selling rain garden planting kits in addition to their usual selection of great plants.
Our next step is to bring it around to community groups. Do you belong to a community group that might be interested in learning more about rain gardens? Would you like to help spread the word by answering rain garden questions, coordinating presentations, or in other ways? You are welcome to get involved!
Chuckanut Bay Days part 1
Thanks to Corrine Hughes, Shelley Halle, Lisa Balton, Chris Brown, and Marie Hitchman for helping to make our first Chuckanut Bay event a great success. The evaluations I received were very positive and everyone seemed quite interested and appreciative of your efforts. Thanks also to Doug Stark and the great Beach Naturalists team who helped make this such a fun event.
Did you miss it? Never fear, we’re doing it all again this Saturday so come on down and join us between 9 and noon at the end of Fairhaven Avenue at Chuckanut Bay.
Built Green Creative Team
I’ve heard from a few of you about getting involved in the Built Green Conference. So far our ideas for presentations include:
rain gardens, rain barrels, a wholistic approach to Low-Impact Landscaping low carbon cooking, adapting to global warming, septic maintenance, creative reuse station for kids, hands-on how-to replace your faucet or put in a programmable thermostat.
Do you have more ideas for this? Would you like to be involved in making this a super-cool event? Let me know and you’ll be part of the built green creative team! The BIA’s Built Green program has offered WSU Extension a full track for the conference – this means we have an opportunity to present educational material from 10 am to 5 pm. The conference date is October 17 and we would be sharing the planning for this with the Master Composters, the Carbon Masters, and Sue Blake our Water Resources Educator.
Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force San Francisco Public Listening Session September 17, 2009 2:30 – 6:00 PM
Provide Comments These meetings are taking place in Anchorage, San Francisco, and Providence. If you're plans don't take you to Alaska, California, or Rhode Island this week, you are invited to:
submit comments on the Council For Environmental Quality website http://www.whitehouse.gov/oceans,
View the live webcast at: http://www.cal-span.org/
Or listen to the meeting on the conference call (not interactive, listen only): (888) 769-8760 (up to 100 lines) Participant Pass code: 67311
Great Stuff from Heather Mackay
Heather, Watershed Master/Beach Watcher from the class of 2007 is a treasure trove of information which, happily, she shares with us. Here are some of her most recent contributions
Attached you’ll find what she describes as a useful, fairly non-technical overview of climate change adaptation issues for coastal systems. Water management is like a bubble market Below you can listen to Margaret Catley-Carlson, Patron Global Water Partnership (GWP), Sweden on the 'breakthrough idea' of the Global Agenda Council on Water Security at the Summit on the Global Agenda held in Dubai 7-9 November 2008.
Finally for those of you who have yet to be introduced to Holub’s classic analysis: 10 Water Laws of the West By Hugh Holub (1998) http://hughholub.com/
Introduction: It does not take a law degree to understand water law and policy in the western United States. Ten basic legal and historical principles govern the rights to and uses of water in the West. By understanding these ten Water Laws of the West anyone can then understand the current issues of water and its relationship to the future of the West.
I. The Law of Gravity: The First Water Law of the West is the Law of Gravity. Water runs down hill. The initial uses of water in the West involved the use of gravity to tap rivers and divert their flows into canals for delivery to farms and mines. This is also known as Newton's Law.
II. The Law of Los Angeles: The Second Water Law of the West is the original law of Los Angeles. This L.A. Law states that "water runs uphill to money". The development of energy technologies to lift water against the pull of gravity is the basis for modern Western civilization. Los Angeles pioneered the effort to defy gravity with money in the early 1900's with its Owens Valley Aqueduct. Southern California is now served with a network of pipelines and canals such as the Metropolitan Water District's Colorado River Aqueduct. Phoenix, San Francisco and Denver also utilize massive pumping and diversion systems to transport water from great distances in defiance of gravity to serve their growing urban populations.
III. The Law of Supply Creating Demand: The Third Water Law of the West, also invented by Los Angeles, is that "if you don't have the water, you won't need it." This is sometimes stated as "he who brings the water brings the people". Both are attributed to William Mulholland, a pioneer director of the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (DWP). Los Angeles and other Western cities operate on the premise that in order to assure growth of their cities, water supplies for the future must be developed well in advance of that growth. This is in contrast to the general approach in Western cities of developing freeways and other public infrastructure long after the growth has actually happened.
IV. The Law of I Got It First: The Fourth Water Law of the West, embodied in the West's surface water laws, is the doctrine of "prior appropriation" translated into "first in time is first in right". First in time for most water uses in the West were farms and mines. Instead of "first in time is first in right", we have seen the evolution of "we've got more votes than you in the state legislature" to decide who gets water.
V. The Law of Beneficial Use: The Fifth Water law of the West is that to have a right to water it must be "beneficially" or "reasonably" used on that appurtenant land. This is only understood in the context that water left flowing in a river maintaining the survival of fish in that river and vegetation growing along side that river was not originally defined as a "beneficial" use in Western water law, whereas drowning gophers or growing rice in deserts were deemed "beneficial" uses. In recent years, environmentalists have succeeded in gaining recognition of "instream" beneficial uses of water and a new category of water rights is beginning to emerge to preserve flows in rivers. However this process is emerging only after most rivers and streams in the West have been dammed and dried up by diversions of the flows to the previously established beneficial uses. To fully appreciate why this happened, it must be remembered that the fish in these streams only recently were able to obtain the services of water lawyers via various environmental and conservation organizations.
VI. The Law of Worthless Land: The Sixth Water Law of the West is that without a water right or access to water, land is worthless. There is not enough water available to use all available land for all the potential beneficial uses. Thus lands with water rights or access to water have value for use, whereas land without water rights is known as the desert, with zero value except when being subjected to state and local property taxation. It is also a historic fact that farmers, ranchers and miners figured all this out about a hundred years before the average city council or environmental group, thus most Western water laws are heavily weighted in favor of using water for farming, ranching and mining. This law is also known as the "appurtenancy" rule meaning the rights to the use of water are tied to specific parcels of land, which are usually owned by farmers, ranchers or miners.
VII. The Law of Expropriation: The Seventh Water Law of the West focuses on how water (and other natural resources) are obtained for Western civilization. This Law depends on finding some fairly impoverished and unsophisticated water right holder (usually Indians, farmers, or rural communities) on the other side of the mountain a city can steal water rights from. Los Angeles pioneered this approach by buying up the Owens Valley on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada for water rights nearly 90 years ago. What we are now experiencing is not so much a water shortage, but a shortage of people on the other sides of the mountains who are willing to let their water resources be stolen from them by cities.
VIII. The Law of the Price is Right: The Eighth Water Law of the West is that there is no water shortage if the price is right. It is widely believed in city halls that the farmers will sell their water rights if the price is high enough so the farmers can go raise martinis in La Jolla instead of cotton in the Salt River Valley of Arizona, or the Imperial Valley in California. Thus when someone asks "is there enough water for Los Angeles or Phoenix to grow?" the answer is probably yes--if you don't care about how much the water will cost.
IX. The Law of Water Monopoly: The Ninth Water Law of the West is that water management in an arid environment almost always results in the creation of a water monopoly. Thus (along with the discovery of fire and religion) the first steps towards civilization included the construction of irrigation ditches and the immediate creation of some sort of bureaucracy to run the system. Not surprisingly where irrigation water monopoly civilizations rose, they lasted for thousands of years. The Westlands Irrigation District in the Central Valley of California and the Salt River Project in Arizona are merely the modern counterparts of one of humankind's most ancient of institutions--the water monopoly. Many western urban areas figured out the value of water monopoly and created enormously powerful regional agencies such as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Central Arizona Water Conservation District in Arizona, to do essentially the same thing--building vast networks of canals to bring water to their constituents.
X. The Law of Vanishing Civilizations: The Tenth (or Last) Water Law of the West should be called the Hohokam Law of Water and Gravity. Under this law, if there is no rain, there is no water to flow down hill. What went up--the buildings and the civilization--may crumble to dust if Mother Nature decides to hold a long drought. Lying beneath the streets of Phoenix are the ruins of the ancient Hohokam Indian metropolis that vanished prior to 1400 AD. Phoenix is the second city to be built on the same site in reliance on the erratic flows of the Salt River. Californians prayed for rain for the last six years (apparently successfully) because they didn't have enough water to flush their toilets. Many Southern Californians had been heard to ask "what do you mean this used to be a desert?"
Conclusion: The principles that govern Western water law and policy have a long and somewhat distinguished history. It should also be noted that similar arid environment ditch-dependent civilizations ultimately collapsed under extreme environmental stresses, internal political conflict, and invasion by barbarian hordes. This is worth contemplating after a six year drought with various water interests fighting over who will get water in times of future shortages while the streets of Santa Monica or Scottsdale are filled with RVs with New Jersey license plates.
On Thursday, July 9 the Master Gardener Foundation toured several exciting rain garden and rain garden variations in the Lake Whatcom watershed. The gardens were all beautiful and the Master Gardeners were intrigued.
Jean Waight began the tour by relating the history of the Palmgren project. For those of you unfamiliar with the project, the Palmgren family decided to replace a deteriorating bulkhead on Lake Whatcom with a beautiful soft-shore protection approach that provides nearshore habitat, and to drain their soggy lawn by incorporating a large rain garden which slows and filters stormwater from their home. The rain garden area has filled to overflowing with lush growth. Area frogs also enjoy it! It was a delight to see that the soft-shore approach had also held up well over time.
Sue Brown, Kay McMurran, and Dawn LaTurco described the demonstration rain garden project that they undertook last year at Kay’s home. The garden is getting gorgeous and Kay reported she’s never seen the rain garden overflow. This is truly amazing when you consider the torrential rains and flooding we experienced this January.
The tour finished up at Sue Taylor’s property with a look at some of her innovative methods of dealing with stormwater and her careful stewardship of Lake Whatcom. It’s a destination not to be missed for any garden/native plant enthusiast. Thanks everyone for continuing to be a resource to our community!
Updates on Chuckanut Bay Days
This training was a great success. Shelley Halle, Corrine Hughes, Marie Hitchman, Chris Brown, and Lisa Balton were joined by Doug Stark and the Beach Naturalists on a surprisingly chilly morning last Thursday. We learned a ton about Chuckanut (Mud) Bay, the marsh and the creek. I discovered, among many other interesting things, that the area was called Mud Bay even before the railroad trestle went in, that unmarked (i.e. wild) Chinook salmon have been found in the bay, that the marsh is the highest quality salt marsh in Bellingham, and that fish don’t like to swim through culverts if they don’t have to.
Our Chuckanut Bay Team is gaining this information for the purpose of sharing it with the Chuckanut Bay neighbors. We hope to support the appreciation neighbors already have for their special place and inspire even greater stewardship.
If you would like to lend a hand and take a nice walk through a pretty neighborhood sometime during the week of August 10, we would love help with hanging door hangers announcing the upcoming educational events at the bay, let me know! If you would like to join us, mark your calendars for August 29, and September 19.
Chris Brown points out the zonation apparent on the sandstone
Beach Watchers Evaluation
As you know, Sue Blake is directing an extensive evaluation of the Beach Watchers program. Thank you everyone who has been participating in that process. You know you can always log the time you spend on surveys or providing feedback as part of your hours. Just call if "Program Support." As part of that she's asked me to get some feedback from all of you on the newsletter. Is it useful to you? Do you enjoy reading it? Do you wish it provided something more or different? It would be wonderful if you you drop me a quick email on your impressions of the newsletter. Or you could send it directly to Sue if you wish at sgblake@wsu.edu.
Rose and the Seal
Rose Lavoie keeps a neat blog that I’ve included her before. Her most recent post is her story about helping a stranded seal pup with the Marine Mammal Stranding Network. You can follow Rose’s experiences here: http://really-rose.blogspot.com/2009/07/wolf-hollow.html
The Marine Mammal Stranding Network can always use some more helping hands. One job that would require minimum training but would be a real help is providing crowd control in the event of a major stranding. Staying approximately 50 yards from any marine mammal is the law and it makes good sense for human and animal safety. Having helpers explain that to curious onlookers would help MMSN responders work with the animal. If you’d like to help out, just contact Bob Ryerson at 758-4124 or flowol8 AT aol.com.
Essence of Bellingham
Wendy Harris is a fantastic photographer and her talents were recognized this year in the Essence of Bellingham photo competition. Her tidepool photo, Anemone and Rain, won "Best of Subject (Plant Wildlife) Amateur" and her photo of a purple shore crab received an honorable mention.
Anemone and Rain by Wendy Harris
Recycling Questions
Have you ever wondered where you can take styrofoam peanuts, ink cartridges, or other unusual items for reuse or recycling? I stumbled on this great resource with the Washington State Department of Ecology while I was researching an article for the Shore Stewards program on pharmaceuticals in the environment. To access the website just point your browser to 1800recycle.wa.gov, or fortress.wa.gov. The search engine is a little counter-intuitive but you can really be specific in your search. You can look for a “drop-off” service, “pick-up,” “mobile collection,” or a “you-ship.” Then you specify whether you are seeking a residential or commercial service, your county, and the type of material you are looking to recycle in the last drop down menus (phew). If you get stuck you can call the Department of Ecology for help at, (you guessed it) 1-800-recycle!
Local News and Local Government
I appreciate the updates on local goings on I receive via email from Watershed Master / Beach Watcher Kathy Berg and also from the Baykeeper. To get on their mailing lists just send an email request to: chairkathy@birchbayinfo.org and/or waters@re-sources.org.
Wow! It’s been an amazing couple of months. We’ve got a great new class ready to lend a hand in Whatcom County and we’ve had terrific team work from experienced Beach Watchers.
Low Tide Walks and Beach Clean-Ups
Thanks to Lisa Balton, Steve Bailey and Bob Ryerson for helping the Gooseberry Point neighborhood association with their Earth Day celebration and beach clean-up. This great team shared information about what lives on their beach and juiced up the neighbors to enhance their stewardship for the beach.
And thanks to Lisa Balton again, Margo and John Ferdon and Jennifer May for lending a hand with the Northwest Indian Colleges Service Learning beach appreciation and clean-up day on the Lummi Reservation. I'm so glad we had a chance to work with our tribal neighbors through the Northwest Indian College!! Hurray!
If anyone has pictures of either of these events I would really love to have them.
Rain Gardens
We did a lot of Rain Garden Promotion this spring
Great Big Thank Yous go to
Beach Watchers Bob Ryerson and Sue Brown, who were joined by Master Gardeners Katharine Harrison and Dac Jamison and Master Composter/Recycler Kay McMurran who did a super job at the Conservation District’s Annual Native Plant Sale in March.
Bob Hendricks, Rose Lavoie, Jeanne Bogert, and Bob Ryerson at the Master Gardener Plant Sale in May.
And Jean Waight, our Beach Watchers intern Sarah Burnett, Crystal Wojcik, and you guessed it, BOB RYERSON, at the Backyard Habitat Fair.
Jean Waight has a lovely blog called Green Tea and Sympathy with a humorous take on "Going Green." Check it out! http://greenteasympathy.blogspot.com/
And Bob Ryerson has been very active in the Marine Mammal Stranding Network and has in fact become their volunteer coordinator. Way to go Bob!
Forest Conservation Tour
We also had a fantastic team teaching students about the healthy forest, healthy stream, healthy fish connection at this year’s Forest Conservation Tour. Big Thank Yous go to Shelley Halle, Jennifer May, Jim Krieji, Steve Bailey, and Rose Lavoie.
And finally a round of applause goes to Jane Lewinski for entering all of the Beach Monitoring Data from 2008 into the online database!! Thank you, thank you, thank you.
