Poisons in Puget Sound: where they come from
When it rains in Seattle (as it often does) water flows along city streets and sidewalks, picking up toxins, before it is sent to a storm drain and eventually ends up in Puget Sound. This is the largest polluter of the Sound, sending 52 million pounds of pollutants into it every year. That’s a conservative estimate but it’s nothing new.
What is new is a map, produced by a team of GIS students from the University of Washington that shows where the storm drains - that send the water into Puget Sound - are. Turns out there are 4,500 public manmade storm drains, according to the team. The map was produced for People for Puget Sound, a nonprofit that advocates for healthy policies for the sound. The map also includes 2,123 natural drainages that receive inputs from the watershed system of additional drains, and 297 storm drains from the Washington State Department of Transportaion and 70 bridges. Industrial and private drains were not included in the project.
What poisons end up in the sound? Yummy things like copper, zinc, mercury, flame retardants, PAHs, and petroleum hydrocarbons. Some of these pollutants, like phthalates, which are found in plastic bottles and packaging, get dissolved in stormwater, making them hard to remove, if not impossible. Pleasant.
Why should we care? Because, on a very base level, the Puget Sound is a huge economic driver that helps support our local economy. Not to mention the environmental aspects.
So what does the image look like? Here it is…
Bruce Wishart, policy director for People for Puget Sound, said the map shows the enormity of the stormwater problem which impacts the sound.
Heather Trim, urban bays and toxics program manager for the organization, said the students went well beyond their class project to create a terrific map that advances knowledge of stormwater inputs. “We have been told by agencies that it would be years before we could get this map and yet the students have produced this tremendous resource.”
How about it readers, is this image a tad surprising? Or is it what you would have expected?
Tags: Puget Sound, Seattle, stormwater, Water
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April 30th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Katie,
Thank you for publishing that map of the storm water outfalls! The students at the UW have done our community a terrific service by producing it, as have you for publishing it. I think that map will be an enormous resource in the effort to clean up the Sound. It not only locates the points of entry for the toxins which harm the Sound, but also represents an exciting educational opportunity for everyone in our community who cares about the health of the Sound.
Contrary to an article published in the Times last year, newer development does not contribute to the storm run off problem nearly as much as the older infrastructure. This is because new development is required to treat the runoff with some form of storm detention system. It is the older neighborhoods, such as mine in West Seattle, that contribute the most to polluting the sound as they were developed well before the current regulations (which protect the watershed) were put in place. The run off from these neighborhoods heads, untreated, straight into the Sound.
What if we could, one by one, build detention systems above each of these outfalls shown on the map? Realistically, this may be the key to truly cleaning up the Sound and while it may be an enormous project, now that this map exists, it seems comprehensible and doable.
Once again, thank you for publishing that map and please don’t let this topic fall off your radar. I truly believe you have found, in this map and this subject, the key to the kingdom in terms of cleaning up the Sound.