Anacortes Nonprofit Combating Salish Sea Pollution With The City
By Joshua Solórzano
December 5, 2022
Through monitoring stormwater outfalls, Friends of Skagit Beaches, in coordination with the city of Anacortes, discover and fix sources of pollution.
Tim Gohrke holds a sample from a stormwater outfall above some water quality testing equipment at his home in Anacortes, Wash. Although he doesn’t have a scientific background, now that he’s retired, he spends time learning how to use this equipment while managing Friends of Skagit Beaches.
Due to the lack of sufficient employees, the city of Anacortes cannot thoroughly monitor every accessible stormwater outfall, nor do they legally have to.
Stormwater, according to the Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology), is rain and snow melt that runs off rooftops, paved streets, highways and parking lots. Stormwater outfalls are where all of that water spews out of, often into bodies of water. In Anacortes, stormwater outfalls lead to the Salish Sea.
Despite stormwater being the leading threat to pollution in bodies of water, the city of Anacortes’s Stormwater department has one employee: Dianne Hennebert, Anacortes’s Stormwater Program manager.
Because Anacortes has a municipal permit, Hennebert said that instead of the city monitoring their stormwater, they pay into an Ecology program called Stormwater Action Monitoring, otherwise known as SAM.
“Within the permit, you have the option to do your own monitoring and assessment program, where you set up studies and you monitor and gather samples and bring them to the lab. So that's Option A,” Hennebert said. “Option B is to pay into the Department of Ecology program where we're using this bigger pot of money, so they can do more comprehensive studies.”
According to Ecology’s website, SAM is a collaborative program funded by more than 90 cities and counties. Its goal is to conduct effectiveness studies, status and trend studies, and to create source identification projects.
Despite paying into that program, Hennebert said they still aren’t ignoring the stormwater in Anacortes, and she has some help from a local nonprofit.
“We also do system screenings. So I go out and check outfalls, but I don't check them nearly as often as the Friends of Skagit beaches do,” Hennebert said. “It's not like we pay into this and then don't pay any attention to what's going on in our stormwater system. But it means that we're not collecting thousands worth of water samples.”
Through paying into SAM, Hennebert said they get a good idea about what’s going on in the region rather than just knowing about what’s happening in Anacortes.
Although Hennebert doesn’t have the time to monitor each stormwater outfall thoroughly, she said she’s very grateful that a local nonprofit, Friends of Skagit Beaches, helps her monitor the stormwater outfalls in Anacortes.
Friends of Skagit Beaches has been doing stormwater outfall monitoring in Anacortes since 2020. Since then they have uncovered multiple sources of pollution.
One of the sources of pollution they uncovered was from a company that converted used motor oil to petroleum. Because the pipes were more than 50-years-old, they were leaky, and this made its way into the ocean through a stormwater outfall. Another major source of pollution they found was a construction site that wasn’t controlling their erosion. Because of their improper erosion control, all the silt was falling into Fidalgo Bay, covering up the gravel for salmon, not allowing them to lay their eggs.
Tim Gohrke is the president of Friends of Skagit Beaches. He said stormwater is where humans and salmon intersect.
“Stormwater is the conveyance method that brings our society and culture and preferences for how we wish to live into contact with salmon,” Gohrke said. Gohrke’s nonprofit, Friends of Skagit Beaches, monitors the accessible stormwater outfalls.
Gohrke said Friends of Skagit Beaches tests every accessible stormwater outfall each month for differences between ambient air temperature and water temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity (an indicator or potentially harmful chemicals in the water), pH (power of hydrogen), turbidity (sediment suspended in stormwater), unusual smells and unusual algae.
Friends of Skagit Beaches tests for a few more things than Hennebert, but they also can test more stormwater outfalls than she can, and more often.
“I really appreciate that there are people who care. They take the time to get involved, and none of them are getting paid to do this. They’re doing it because they care about our community, and they care about the Salish Sea,” Hennebert said. “I feel very fortunate to work for a community and live in a community where people care about these things, and they’re paying attention to these things. I can’t singlehandedly know about every single stormwater issue that comes up, so knowing there are people who are keeping an eye [out] so the city can address it is a huge benefit.”
Gohrke first became President of Friends of Skagit Beaches on January 1, 2020. Gohrke said after hearing a talk from the Ecology permit inspector, he realized there was only one inspector who couldn’t inspect every permit holder.
Because of that, he got interested in seeing if he could monitor the stormwater outfalls, where every permit holder's discharge eventually comes out. From there, he contacted Friends of Skagit Beaches, who at the time was doing outreach and education but not yet stormwater monitoring.
“So I called the gal who was the chief at the time and got the idea to ask her if she’s willing to help see if we can get funded with a grant and see if there’s something we can do,” Gohrke said.
From here, he took the position of president and began his effort to monitor Anacortess stormwater outfalls.
At his home in Anacortes, Wash., Tim Gorhke keeps all his stormwater outfall testing equipment in his shed.
Gohrke said polluted stormwater could affect fish, so it’s important to pay attention to it because much of the stormwater in Anacortes settles in the Salish Sea.
One example of pollutants in the water that affects fish negatively, Gohrke said, was copper dust. Everytime people tap the brakes on their cars, it emits copper dust. That copper dust settles on the road, and from there when it rains all that copper dust washes into storm drains and then eventually into the Salish Sea.
“When salmon encounter water that has trace amounts of copper in it, it confuses the salmon and they can’t find the river they were trying to go to, to lay their eggs. They get lost.” Gohrke said they use their sense of smell to know which river they need to go to lay their eggs, which is commonly where they were born.
Something else that ends up in the water that negatively affects fish is rubber dust from car tires, a chemical named 6PPD. This washes into the storm drains and then into the streams. Gohrke said if Coho salmon come in contact with 6PPD, within minutes they will die. Things like this that end up in the stormwater naturally wash into the drains when it rains. So it is hard to stop these, but through their efforts Friends of Skagit Beaches has had a few successes, and they have a clear goal for what they want to accomplish.
Gohrke said that out of all of the measurements they’ve taken, eight percent of them have had troublesome numbers. He said that eight percent sounds low, but with the majority of pollution in bodies of water being from stormwater, Gohrke wants to make that number better.
“What we are really after is we’d like to make it become four percent, and then after that over a number of years become two percent,” Gohrke said. “But, I’d bet that it’s going to be a real struggle to get down to four percent because the sources of all the pollution that we’re picking up on, Dianes gotta find em.”
Joshua Solórzano is a fourth-year Visual Journalism major and Spanish minor. He reports on all things interesting, but at The Planet Magazine, his job is to bring in the voices of the community, specifically the voices of those doing things environment-related. Habla español con fluidez