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Vikings & Lobos sports coverage – page 8
Serving Orcas, Lopez and San Juan County
WEDNESDAY, September 21, 2011 n VOL. 40, NO. 38 n 75¢
Meredith Griffith/staff photo
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New wetland to filter stormwater Record number of by MEREDITH M. GRIFFITH Staff reporter
The latest public works’ project on Orcas Island has excavators uprooting trees, tearing out stands of shrubbery and creating a huge swath of broken soil behind the Village Green bandshell to build a constructed wetland for stormwater treatment. Some wonder if this really an improvement, noting an existing wetland indicated on county maps. “No one will set foot in that wetland,” said Shannon Wilbur, the county’s senior project engineer, saying the professionally delineated wetland comprises just 15 to 20 percent of the .93-acre property, and won’t be disturbed. Wilbur said current non-natives like blackberry, hawthorne and holly will be replaced with highuptake capacity native species, including cedar, fir, flowering dogwood, vine maple, nootka rose, salmonberry, huckleberry, ferns, bleeding heart, larkspur, camas, sedges, rushes and water parsley – nearly 6,000 plants. The constructed wetland will provide treatment for 40 percent of Eastsound’s runoff, with a treatment capacity of 370,000 gallons or 1.13 acrefeet at a time. It will be finished in October, and monitored by the county as it matures over the winter. It should be ready to receive piped runoff from “A” and Fern Streets in the winter of 2013. At present, two main pipes collect stormwater from the commercial core of Eastsound and discharge it through a single 55-inch outfall into Fishing Bay at the north end of East Sound. The antiquated system provides no treatment, and it shows: the sound is considered “polluted” based on the state’s Clean Water Act surface water quality standards, with low dissolved oxygen and sensitivity
to stratification and eutrophication. “High fecal coliform levels, total suspended solids and temperature have been found in stormwater water samples collected in Eastsound,” stated the county’s application for the EPA grant now funding the project. “A 2009 study discovered pesticides levels in clams collected near Eastsound’s stormwater outfall that are above federal food standards.” The 2,238-acre Fishing Bay/Ship Bay drainage basin includes Eastsound village and covers 1230 parcels. An untyped stream running north to south through both of Eastsound’s major wetlands finds its outlet in Fishing Bay. Wilbur said the new wetland won’t treat all of Eastsound’s runoff because there just isn’t enough space. An 18,700-cubic foot drainage basin in the wetland will provide primary treatment as particulate matter settles out; then the water will be filtered by an installment of new plants specifically chosen for their ability to remove pollutants; finally, the water will filter through the soil, presumably recharging Eastsound aquifers instead of being shunted into the sea. Located just south of SeaView Theater, tax parcel #271413011000, the project site was purchased by the county in 1994 for stormwater treatment. The wetland was designed in 2006, but not funded until the 2010 EPA grant was secured. County modifications of its initial plans in response to aesthetic review committee advice include a shallower settling pond with no bridge or safety fence, retaining a few mature trees, and rerouting the proposed walking path to loop 600 feet around the perimeter of the wetland.
Double vision
Matt Minnis/contributed photo
Matt Minnis took this image of two Orcas deer. Send us your cool island photos at editor@islandssounder.com.
salmon returning to Orcas hatchery Despite losing fish in the power outage, salmon are back to spawn in huge numbers by COLLEEN SMITH ARMSTRONG Editor/Associate publisher
The salmon are coming home. And this year, it’s in record numbers. A good spawning season for the Glenwood Springs Hatchery is around 700. In recent years, that total has gone down to as low as zero, but this season, the numbers have already reached 1300. “(In 2005) we began a new program that raised the chinook for a year and then released them, but they weren’t surviving that well, so we switched to releasing them at a much younger age,” said hatchery manager Mike O’Connell. “After three years, we saw the first results of that switch last year.” OPALCO and Bonneville Power Administration’s planned outage last week caused a slight hiccup for Glenwood Springs. “We were unaware of the Bonneville Power Administration’s scheduled outage for maintenance that included all of the San Juan Islands,” O’Connell said. “Our aerator lost power, causing the loss of fish. Fortunately, many survived and there are so many more fish waiting in the hatchery bay to come up the ladder that it poses no problems for us getting our egg take for 2011.” Last fall O’Connell counted 750 returning salmon, which return to the hatchery from September to October to spawn. This season has been a bumper year for the Chinook. “It’s safe to say we’ve had 1300 fish come up the ladder,” O’Connell said. “We have several hundred more in the bay … If it’s this good this year, it probably will be next year too, if the ocean conditions stay the same.” Long Live the Kings’ Glenwood Springs Hatchery is celebrating a milestone: its 25th anniversary. The hatchery is hosting an open
house on Saturday, Sept. 24 from 2 to 5 p.m. at 1649 Olga Road. It will feature tours of the hatchery, holding ponds, and grounds and science displays. The hatchery was created by Orcas Islander Jim Youngren in 1978, when he decided to find out whether a salmon run could be created in an area that had never before hosted one. His 300-acre property includes three natural artesian springs on the west side of Mount Constitution, which he funneled into a series of manmade rearing ponds that eventually pour down a fish ladder into a little bay. Youngren got his answer in 1982, when several hundred salmon returned to spawn. In 1986, Youngren founded the Seattle-based nonprofit Long Live the Kings, which now has two hatcheries: Glenwood Springs on Orcas and Lilliwaup Creek Hatchery situated just north of
SEE SALMON, PAGE 6
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