Everyone in Kitsap County, Wash., lives in some watershed that drains to Puget Sound. Because the 393-square-mile area looks pristine, the county’s Surface and Stormwater Management Program (SSMP) team found it difficult to convince residents that there were water-quality challenges.

 

Consequently, the team developed approaches with visual and physical benefits. “If people can swim in our waters, eat the shellfish, and watch salmon returning to our streams, then they have hard evidence that our individual actions, combined with those of our neighbors, can affect our watershed’s health and that of Puget Sound,” says Theresa Thurlow, senior program manager of SSMP in Port Orchard, Wash.

 

Through initiatives such as benthic macroinvertebrate biological monitoring, salmon habitat assessment, identification of outfalls in urban and commercial-industrial developments, education and outreach, and commercial property inspections, the county program achieved its goals, while attaining state and national recognition.

 

Powerful partnerships

From its inception, the county’s SSMP gained notice for innovative approaches. One strategy was to form partnerships with sister agencies. “After identifying potential solutions for impaired waterways, we looked for entities with the expertise to execute the programs,” says Thurlow. “We then offered to sponsor them if those agencies partnered with us.”

 

For example, the county sponsors the Pollution Identification and Correction (PIC) program, but the Health District runs it because it wants beaches and waterways kept open and shellfish beds kept healthy. The county-funded agricultural waterways impact program is executed by the Conservation District because it prevents soil erosion and preserves farmland. The county also sponsors its Stream Team and shoreline watershed assessment programs through the Department of Community Development.

 

The county created the PIC program after the state Depart-ment of Health (DoH) began classifying shellfish beds as prohibited because of bacteria and other contaminants. Teams sampled monitoring stations in waterways with high fecal coliforms numbers, then traced the pollution back to homeowners with failed onsite systems.

 

“Sixty percent of properties, from rural residences to shoreline homes, have onsite systems,” says Thurlow. “The county is surrounded by water because it is on Kitsap Peninsula, which juts into Puget Sound.”

 

Success story

The crown jewel of the PIC program is the Yukon Harbor Watershed Restoration Project, a cooperative effort of the Health and Conservation Districts with money from a grant and matching SSMP utility fee funds.

 

Yukon Harbor, an older residential area in the Colvos Passage/Yukon Harbor watershed, has ample public beach access and shellfish beds. The DoH had closed the beds years before the project began. Watershed monitoring showed fecal coliforms, coming mainly from onsite systems, as a prime pollutant. Failed systems and poor farming practices also compromised salmon habitats.

From May 2003 to August 2006, SSMP members surveyed 378 parcels and found 51 failed onsite systems, 15 suspected failures and 16 nonconforming systems. “This was the highest of failure rates for PIC projects,” says Thurlow. “Systems failed because of age, poor soils, proximity to surface waters, high water table and tidal effects.”

 

Repairs ranged from replacement of broken pipes to complex alternative technologies designed around lot limitations. Service contracts were required on 31 systems. The Health District’s educational campaign taught homeowners how to operate and maintain their systems, identify conditions that could cause premature failure, reduce nutrient contamination and manage animal waste.

 

The Conservation District’s efforts to improve livestock and pasture management and implement best management practices reduced the number of high-priority agricultural sites in the watershed from 22 to four. In autumn 2008, the DoH reclassified 900 acres as approved for shellfish harvesting. “That’s a major success story for water quality,” says Thurlow.

 

Floodplain restoration

The Clear Creek Floodplain Restoration Project illustrates how the SSMP upgrades infrastructures. Flooding in Silverdale, a commercial-urban area, caused property damage and blocked the main doors of a fire station.

 

Studies identified the flood mechanisms. The stormwater pipes were too small to convey heavy runoff to Clear Creek. During large storms, the creek overflowed. Flood elevations in the creek caused runoff in stormwater pipes to back up into a bowling alley and adjacent properties.

 

“Silverdale was built on a filled-in marshy area,” says Thurlow. “Our plan to restore the marsh added more than 66,600 cubic feet of floodplain storage.”

 

The county excavated 7,400 cubic yards of fill, then removed a concrete box culvert to restore the stream’s capacity and improve habitat. Workers built a concrete footbridge for hikers to cross the creek and used 600 cubic yards of excavated material for boardwalk approaches and landscape berms.

 

Not all SSMP projects involve restoration. One problematic program was establishing a consolidated spill response hotline. Mindy Fohn, water quality program manager, led the effort. “We partnered with all the unincorporated communities, the Department of Emergency Management, the Department of Roads and Traffic, and other entities,” she says. “Because our hotline was developed to correspond with Kitsap One, the county’s information line, we partnered with Public Works Information Systems, which handles that.”

 

The biggest challenge was to make people understand that the hotline was for reporting spills and illegal dumping, not responding to them. “We educated our staff, city staffs and the people manning the hotline,” says Fohn. “We also designed a flow chart listing situations, specifying which district had jurisdiction, and telling whom to call.

 

“This is not an enforcement action. The hotline is so that we know what is going into the waterways. The Health District investigates illegal dumping and is the enforcement arm.”

 

Property inspection

The SSMProgram maintains the county’s stormwater infrastructure, which includes 229 miles of stormwater pipes; 11,000 catchment basins; 600 detention ponds; 133 biofiltration swales; 255 oil-water separators; and 319 manhole control structures.

 

Workers clean the catch basins yearly, dewatering the debris at a county facility. They also inspect the pipes based on location, age and signs of failure.

 

Maintenance of the 600 storm-water ponds includes annual inspections, cutting back cattails, expanding the capacity of some ponds and dredging. Workers replace the dredged material with engineered soil to help increase infiltration.

 

The program keeps expanding. The Commercial Property Inspection Program ensures that private stormwater systems on commercial sites are maintained properly. Funding comes from a utility fee based on impervious surface area and other factors.

 

“Our inspectors inspect catch basins, vaults, and detention ponds, then explain to owners what should be done if the facility isn’t functioning as designed,” says Fohn. “With almost 100 percent compliance, water quality is improving.”

 

The inspector program is working so well that she is expanding it. “We want inspectors to look for potential sources of pollution that may enter the stormwater system, offer free technical assistance on controlling the sources, and instruct owners on how to manage hazardous wastes at their sites,” says Fohn.

 

The county also is developing a program to recognize business owners for maintaining their storm-water systems. “It’s a public thank you that dovetails with our Clean Water Partner awards,” says Thurlow. “Green is a large movement here, so the awards have a commercial value in the community.”

 

Influencing behavior

The SSMP team includes elementary and high schools in its education programs. “We want to reach children while they are still young enough to influence behavior changes,” says Thurlow. One such influential program is Salmon in the Classroom.

 

Elementary students tend salmon eggs, donated by the Suquamish Tribe, each January. The Central Kitsap Kiwanis Club donates the aquariums, food and educational materials. The eggs hatch in three to four months. When the fry are large enough, children take them to Clear Creek. Besides releasing the fish, the students learn about salmon habitat, plant trees, test water quality and examine stream invertebrates.

 

Another program, EnviroScape, demonstrates the cumulative effects of people’s behaviors by using different colors in water to simulate pollutants. “At first, the water in the tank is clear, but the cumulative effect of all this separate pollution is ugly brown water,” says Thurlow. “That’s what makes nonpoint pollution such a challenge — it involves everyone. This model helps youngsters understand it.”

 

The county also partnered with high school seniors to get a grant to study what is in runoff from group car washes. “We helped them develop the budget and protocol, decide how to take samples, and determine what to do as a scientific approach,” says Thurlow. The study is ongoing.

 

Stream Team

The Stream Team, administered via the Department of Community Natural Resources Division, involves the public in monitoring and restoration. Individuals or groups adopt their local stream, then provide information to SSMP through biological and physical monitoring. Volunteers are trained in county-sponsored workshops.

 

The East Kitsap Nearshore Salmon Habitat Assessment is an example of Stream Team work. Two teams, walking the 156 miles of East Kitsap shoreline, collected data on GPS units and digital cameras, and in notebooks. Volunteers traversed barnacle-covered cobble to knee-deep mud looking at sediment, vegetation, armoring, over-water structures, bank height and outfalls.

This baseline study provided scores for each section of shoreline. The scores were used to identify and set priorities for restoration and conservation projects that would best support salmon recovery.

 

The Stream Team also collects data for outfalls (6 inches or larger), ditches, swales, stream mouths and large seeps. Outfall data includes a photograph, longitude-latitude, physical description and visual observations. If sufficient flow is present, team members sample for bacteria, nutrients, oil, detergent, glycol, turbidity, pH, conductivity and temperature.

 

“When tests show a potential problem, we initiate an investigation,” says Thurlow. “Occasionally, we refer cases to the Health District for further assessment.”

 

Through multi-agency efforts, the SSMProgram is protecting water quality and reducing flooding. Residents are seeing hard evidence in reduced backups, open beaches, and a resurgent commercial shellfish industry. And in the fall, salmon again battle up cool, clean streams to spawn.