9/2 Salish Sea News & Weather: Tox-Ick, rain gardens, Elwha fish, pinks, BC grizzlies, Padden Cr, in-lieu mitigation, Adventuress, dead owls

West Seattle action. PHOTO: Katie Campbell

Thanks for your kind comments and thanks to our Man on the Peninsula for the shout out yesterday announcing this ‘new’ news service in his Olympic Peninsula Environmental News blog

Three-day weekend, great weather forecasted. If you need assurances: Upcoming Warmth

Keep an eye out for the Tox-Ick Monster in West Seattle. That’s Sustainable West Seattle’s “emblematic metaphor for what toxic runoff is doing to our communities, which is robbing us of our salmon, our orcas, our shellfish economy, and our health” says creator Corbet Curfman. Sustainable West Seattle  launches community events aimed at curbing Puget Sound’s toxic monster  

And West Seattle might actually be the next Center of the Universe. Katie Campbell of EarthFix reports on how Neighbors Fight Stormwater Pollution by Building Rain Gardens    These are some of the 700 rain gardens built to date in a campaign promoted by Washington State University and Stewardship Partners to install 12,000 rain gardens in Puget Sound communities by 2016.  “Twelve thousand gardens will absorb approximately 160 million gallons of stormwater each year,” said Stacey Gianas of Stewardship Partners.

Can we be guided by good science and careful monitoring to ensure the success of salmon restoration after the two Elwha Dams are removed? We should be, write guest columnists Jacques White, Michael Schmidt and Lars Mobrand in the Seattle Times. Ensuring fish restoration after the Elwha dams come out

Up north, the millions of Frasier River pink salmon are bringing jobs to local commercial fishers and processors. John Stark in the Bellingham Herald reports that “Doug Thomas, president and CEO at Bellingham Cold Storage, said his company and the processing firms who rent space in its facilities have been busy hiring workers for the 24-hour-a-day job of getting the fish unloaded, cleaned and frozen. ‘There's well over 1,000 people who are working on the salmon operation,’ Thomas said.”  Fishing boats making a good haul of pink salmon this season

Up further north, William Housty and members of Heiltsuk First Nation are collecting and having analyzed hair from the grizzly bears with whom they share the land. “The research has clarified the vital importance of salmon to grizzly bear populations and how salmon runs affect reproduction and the size of bears.” Grizzlies' hair sheds light on their habits in B.C.

So it is the habitat after all: No habitat, no fish. There’s a short stretch of Bellingham’s Padden Creek where a brick tunnel built more than a century ago traps salmon returning to spawn. The creek can be rerouted because Bellingham has the chance to use a state-funded grant and low-interest loan that’s part of $111 million available to local governments. Bit by bit, that’s what it’ll take.  Bellingham gets state grant for Padden Creek restoration project

Christopher Dunagan in the Kitsap Sun reports on what may be another approach to mitigating the negative environmental effects of large scale developments. The state and feds are reviewing a possible agreement by the Navy, which wants to build an explosives handling wharf at Bangor, to pay the Hood Canal Coordinating Council “a dollar amount based on the assessed environmental damage. The council would, in turn, oversee restoration projects that coincide with the larger goals of restoring Hood Canal.” Mitigation program could work for counties

Avoid eating shellfish in months without an ‘r’. Now it’s September and state Department of Health says that samples show no sign of paralytic shellfish poisoning, aka red tide, so recreational harvest can begin on Strait of Juan de Fuca beaches. Shellfish closure lifted from Dungeness Spit to Neah Bay 

Our friends at Sound Experience have returned ‘home’ to Port Townsend on the Adventuress after a summer of educational voyages ‘round the Sound. They’ll be doing some fundraising and then participating in the annual Wooden Boat Festival. Adventuress back home for fundraising for educational events
 
People For Puget Sound executive director Tom Bancroft was, among others, talking on KUOW about Saving Orcas In The Northwest and is, among others, appointed to the Puget Sound Partnership Ecosystem Coordination Board.

Yesterday it was good news for the bluebirds of San Juan Island; today executive director Kol Medina of the West Sound Wildlife Shelter reports from Bainbridge that it’s been A bad year for island’s owls
 
Now, your three-day weekend tug weather--
WEST ENTRANCE U.S. WATERS STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA- 300 AM PDT FRI SEP 2 2011
  TODAY
 W WIND 10 KT BECOMING NW IN THE AFTERNOON. WIND WAVES 1 FT. SW SWELL 5 FT AT 19 SECONDS. CHANCE OF RAIN AND DRIZZLE EARLY.
 TONIGHT
 W WIND 10 TO 15 KT...BECOMING SE 10 KT LATE. WIND WAVES 1 OR 2 FT. SW SWELL 5 FT AT 18 SECONDS.
 SAT
 SE WIND 10 TO 20 KT...BECOMING E 10 TO 15 KT LATE. WIND WAVES 1 TO 3 FT. SW SWELL 5 FT AT 18 SECONDS.
 SAT NIGHT
 E WIND 10 KT IN THE EVENING BECOMING LIGHT. WIND WAVES 1 FT OR LESS. SW SWELL 4 FT.
 SUN
 LIGHT WIND BECOMING W 10 TO 15 KT IN THE AFTERNOON. WIND WAVES BUILDING TO 1 OR 2 FT. SW SWELL 5 FT.
 MON
 W WIND 10 KT. WIND WAVES 1 FT. SW SWELL 5 FT.

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