October 22, 2002

Environmental Watch: Tacoma Water cuts Green River use

TACOMA -- Tacoma Water is reducing its draw from the Green River to help support threatened chinook salmon.

The water reduction marks the third straight year the utility has responded to requests from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Muckleshoot Tribe to reduce its use of the Green River during the fall chinook return.

Tacoma Water has reduced the amount of water it takes from 72 million gallons per day to 48 million gallons per day. Water supplies are being supplemented with well water. The pumping costs are being subsidized with a $25,000 grant from the state Department of Ecology.

Tacoma Water expects to use the wells in place of its Green River supply until fall rains begin. Federal climate experts have said the Northwest should expect a drier and warmer winter this year because of the El Nino climate phenomenon.

'Salmon Stewards' wanted for Carkeek Park

SEATTLE -- The city of Seattle's Parks and Recreation department is looking for volunteers to become "Salmon Stewards" for Carkeek Park.

Duties include providing public education on weekends and perhaps to school groups during the week. Volunteers will receive training from naturalists before beginning their duties. Volunteers are required to commit to at least four weekend shifts.

For more information or to register call the Carkeek Environmental Learning Center at (206) 684-0877. The orientation day is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 26, from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Hawks Prairie dump's neighbors to split $4.8M

OLYMPIA (AP) -- A judge has approved a plan to distribute $8.5 million from a settlement of the Hawks Prairie landfill lawsuit.

About 1,200 homeowners, property owners and residents who have lived around the foul-smelling, gull-infested dump since 1990 will split $4.8 million.

The Tacoma law firm of Gordon, Thomas, Honeywell, Malanca, Peterson & Daheim sued Thurston County and landfill operator Skagit Sand and Gravel for mismanagement of the dump. The firm gets about $3.7 million of the settlement money.

The settlement money came from insurance policies carried by the defendants and the county's solid waste reserve fund.

Plaintiffs alleged the noxious odors of rotting garbage and flocks of gulls defecating on nearby cars, roofs and yards nauseated residents and drove down property values.

The county closed the landfill and started shipping its refuse to Eastern Washington in May 2000.

Survey: Steller sea lion population on rise

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- A new survey indicates that the Steller sea lion population in Alaska is increasing for the first time in decades.

A June aerial survey of 84 places from the Gulf of Alaska to the Aleutian Island chain where the marine mammals regularly haul out found more than 19,300 adult and adolescent animals. That's about 5.5 percent more than the 18,300 counted two years ago at the same locations.

While the results are preliminary, they point in a good direction.

The survey matches reports from working fishermen, who say they've seen more sea lions lately, said Al Birch, executive director of the Kodiak-based Alaska Draggers Association. The group represents 55 trawlers and long-liners from the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.

Steller sea lion numbers fell more than 80 percent over the past 25 years, confounding scientists for nearly two decades. The sharp declines in the population has led to commercial fishing restrictions and environmental lawsuits. The animals were listed as endangered in 1997.

Even with this latest increase, the sea lions were still more than 5 percent below the number tallied in 1998 and 34 percent below 1991 at the same index sites, Sease said.

$56M cleanup begins in Hylebos

TACOMA (AP) -- Workers have embarked on a $56 million operation to dredge sediment and toxins from the bottom of the Hylebos Waterway.

Dredging began last week, nearly two decades after the federal government declared the channel off Commencement Bay part of Tacoma's Superfund site.

"It's really the first major step in the cleanup of the Hylebos. It's a watershed event," said Maury Wassmann, who manages the site for Occidental Chemical Corp., the company paying for the cleanup.

Mud at the bottom of the waterway was found to include dangerous chemicals, including benzene compounds used in pesticides, PCBs and arsenic. The chemicals are byproducts of pollution from the manufacturing companies that line the waterway.

The dredging operation calls for the removal of 32,000 cubic yards of sediment, enough to fill 3,200 dump trucks.

Engineers expect the dredging and disposal of the polluted sediment to be completed sometime in 2004.

Once the sediment is treated, it will be buried in the Port of Tacoma's Blair Slip 1, said EPA project manager Peter Contreras. The slip will eventually be paved over as a shipping terminal.

Cross-country land use protest fizzles

HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) -- Oregon property rights activists calling themselves the Sawgrass Rebellion wrapped up a cross-country convoy Saturday with a rally at a small Everglades community.

But the final stop fell flat for convoy members when few local residents showed up to protest an Army Corps of Engineers plan to flood much of their community. The leaders who invited them never showed.

Convoy leader Bill Ransom hooked up a 10-foot bucket on his trailer and left Oregon on his cross-country tour after receiving a letter from the Dade County Farm Bureau asking for help in saving farm land from the Everglades restoration project.

"We were five stops into the tour, in Nevada, when they called us up and said the whole thing was off," said Ransom as the convoy organized in a dusty gas station parking lot outside Miami. "But we had no intention of heading home, we don't care if there is only two people we are coming to see."

When the 50-car convoy reached the farm bureau in Homestead, the building was closed for the weekend.

"These are the people that invited us in the first place, and now there's nobody here," Ransom said as a group picture of the about 80 people was taken.

The convoy arrived at 8 1/2 Square Mile Area in the late afternoon, but in the end there were more there were more convoy members from around the country than there were residents at the scene to join the protest.

Ransom is also chairman of the Bucket Brigade, a group that fought for irrigation rights over a plan to protect salmon and sucker fish in the Klamath Basin, Ore., in 2001.