I just came across this web site that gives a ton of information on water quality in many Washington rivers.

I found some of the data very interesting!

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/eap/fw_riv/rv_main.html#3

According to the data, and at first glance only, the Sky is worse off at Gold Bar than downstream or in the Snohomish. I find that interesting considering all the grazing done downstream from Gold Bar.

First guess would be that grazing setbacks work and logging upstream doesn't, but who knows?

Skywalker,

I'm making a bit of a guess here, but I'd say that the reason for the lower quality up in Gold Bar is due to the Town of Skykomish...the entire town is a Superfund site, mainly from years and years of diesel and oil being spilled from trains at the old stockyard.

It dilutes out as you get farther downstream but up in Skykomish, it is constantly leaching into the river...

Fish on...

Todd

"the entire town is a Superfund site"

Seriously? Damn, you learn something new here every day. Thanks Todd.

Todd - Is there a list of the superfund sites in Washington? Also, for the layman (me and all my families - insert smiling greamelin with missing teeth here) can you nutshell what a superfund site is and what happens in a perfect world at each?



It's bank as in bank of river not bank as in bank - see you there

I'm fairly sure this isn't a complete list

http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/wa.htm#statelist

I think you can find more here

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/tcp/sites/sites.html

Bank of Duvall,

The abovel links provided by Rockhopper are as good as any for listing Superfund sites...

Hmmm....how do they and their cleanup work?

Here's how the law is set up...

1. The sites are identified.
2. All owners of the property are lined up, and I mean all, everyone who has owned it from the time of its contamination up to the present.
3. Each one of them is jointly and severally obligated to pay for the entire clean up.
4. The only way off the "pay" list is to have exercised due diligence in examining the property before you bought it and not found any contamination (nearly impossible), or have one of the very few other exceptions.

So that's who pays for the cleanup...everyone, in addition to tax dollars.

Next, the cleanup....

1. Every bit of contaminated ground or water is actually removed via very extensive digging...every molecule of the contamination is removed.

2. It is hauled off to a hazardous waste dump, of which there are few, and they are very expensive, where it is incinerated, again under very extensive and expensive conditions.

The site is certified as "clean"...

Since most Superfund sites are too big to do this to, e.g., the entire town of Skykomish, the more usual way is to completely abate the contamination. That is, it is cleaned up as much as practicable under the above haul and burn steps, and the rest is left in place. It is completely contained, and capped, and is supposed to never leak out of where it is.

That's the law in a nutshell...the litigation concerned as to who is going to pay for it is also very long and expesive. Clean up may take a relatively short time (six months or a year, in the case of something like a corner gas station whose tanks have been leaking), to decades, perhaps tens of decades (like Hanford, or the Spokane River).

As usual, the biggest winners are the contractors who get the bids to do the actual cleanup, as it is really, really expensive, and takes a really, really long time.

Usually a site is discovered and remediation is began after massive pollution and investigation, so many sites may never be returned to "pristine" conditions, and irreversible damage may have occurred.

It's more of a forward looking law...one that is intended to abate current pollution, and to prevent future pollution, rather than actually fix the problems caused by past pollution.

Some of the more infamous sites around here are:

1. Hanford, of course.
2. The Duwamish Waterway and Harbor Island
3. Commencement Bay (Tacoma Kraft Mill)
4. The bay on Bainbridge who's name is escaping me right now...
5. The Spokane River/Lake Couer d'Alene

Most estuarine Paper Mills and Smelters either are, will be, or should be Superfund sites.

I'll see if I can find a link to the law itself, if people want to read up on it...it's very long and arduous....

Fish on...

Todd

The bay on Bainbridge Island is Eagle Harbor the Wycoff creosote plant and I'm not positive but I believe the Navy also had a dumping site in Puget Sound that contributed to this being a super fund site

superfund cleanup site is where a corporation has privatized their profits off of resources that should be considered the property of everybody. then they subsidize the losses incurred thru clean up costs on to the public. its how rich people leach off of poor people. this is why i laugh when people think that welfare is bankrupting our system

lupo,

Not to turn this too much into a political thread, but...

Corporate welfare costs our country so much more money than does individual welfare that the comparison is silly...and the dollars involved when we are talking about subsidies to screw up the environment, then using public money to pay for the screwups, is one of the most disgusting aspects of our economic "plan".

Not only that, but the folks yelling so much to cut "entitlements" feel the most "entitled" to their corporate welfare checks and tax cuts and tax breaks.

However, I guess it's only "welfare" when it's someone else's welfare we're talking about...it's "good business sense" when we're talking about theirs.

Fish on...

Todd

Thanks Todd and RockHopper.

todd- you finished up my thoughts just perfectly.
folks scream over wasted pennies but will turn a blind eye to wasted billions and even blame the wasted billions on environmentalists or anyone but the folks that caused the mess

A few notes of context on the sky site.
The railroad that caused the fuel seep in the Sky was operating at the standards of the day. There where know real environmental standards in that day and people surely did not understand that an oil plume would travel to the river via the ground water. It also helped create an economic climate that allowed development of the region. Creating all the housing developments and business that pose a much greater risk to the sky and other local rivers than the oil plume ever will.

I grew up fishing that river from birth and I can guarantee you that the plume did less damage than all the people moving into the area and what the Boldt decision has done in the past 30 years. My grandpa drove the trains on that route for over 40 years. Electric's mostly with diesel generators. You would be shocked to see the grease pads they still use on the tracks to lubricate the train wheels.

As it turns out the major contributor to the Sky's moderate quality rating (for that 2001 testing year) was an exceedence of the allowed fecal coliform bacteria criteria.

My wild guess would be old, poorly designed, or non-existant residential septic systems, but it didn't appear to be a consistent problem up until then, so it's hard to say.

This Sunday I packed the family into the car and we travelled high up both the North and South forks of the Sky. The river must look deceiving as it appeared gin clear. Saw a few guys fishing way up the North fork..not up on the regs in that area but is sure looked fishy. So many creeks flow into the Sky up that way I find it interesting and surprising that it would be a "dirty" river.

that is how it often is with water. in fact when you study desert survival you learn not to drink out of anything that does not have algae or other aquatic plants growing in it.

you will also find that the higher you go on rocky mt rivers like the animas in colorado and they become basically fishless as you get high into the really pristine waters that look like they would be the best. reason is you are geting closer to all of the mining tailings with there heavy metals and seperation chemicals still leaching out of them

and of course when you are on the mighty coulmbia you notice how beautiful it is but you dont actually SEE that it is the most radioactive river inthe WORLD.

when you study "green" economies that grow like a tree (strongly rooted, sustainable) and compare them to "open market" economies that grow like a fire thru rapacious consumpion you find that our natural resources are about 50 times more economically valuable undeveloped rather than developed.

for instance take the profits from a wetland that is filled in and developed. it will cost society 50 times more over time from increased flooding/decreased habitait etc than if it was left alone or used in a sustainable manner

there is not one ounce of truth in the jobs vs the environment theory pushed so hard by the right wing

Lupo,

"there is not one ounce of truth in the jobs vs the environment theory pushed so hard by the right wing"

This statement may be correct economically. But what people forget is that our society like to make it's payments over time and not up front. Try to double or triple the cost of goods today to save tomorrow and tell me how that will fly in your life? I would hope we would do it and i do it personally but beer gut willy won't go for it.