drugs_in_water
Hampton Roads treating wastewater till it’s good enough to return to aquifer.
Rebuilding depleted drinking water supply could also reduce rate of sea level rise, slash pollution.
Rebuilding depleted drinking water supply could also reduce rate of sea level rise, slash pollution
By Karl Blankenship on March 15, 2017
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Little more than a day before, the water pouring from a tap outside the York River Treatment Plant had been wastewater: a mix of sewage flushed down toilets, soapy water drained from bathtubs, food wastes washed down the sink and industrial waste piped into sewer lines.
Now, the water coming out the silver spigot was crystal clear, filling a clean glass that said “SWIFT” on its side.
And it tasted like, well, water.
Despite its checkered past, the water was good enough to drink —maybe too good, according to officials from the Hampton Roads Sanitation District, which operates the York River plant and a dozen others in southeastern Virginia. Instead of just treating wastewater and discharging it into the river as they’ve done for decades, district officials say they’ve now produced a valuable resource that can solve multiple problems facing the region.
“We don’t have to waste the water,” said Jamie Heisig-Mitchell, the HRSD’s chief of technical services. “We can actually use it for something that benefits the state.”
In an effort that may redefine what is doable at the region’s wastewater treatment plants, the district is proposing to take the treated wastewater from seven of its nine largest facilities, then treat it again to meet drinking water standards.
But instead of having people drink it, they want to pump it into a deep aquifer underlying the region. That would help rebuild eastern Virginia’s depleted water supply, they said, as well as reduce the rapid rate of sea level rise in the Hampton Roads area. It would also slash nutrient discharges far beyond what the district must do to meet Bay cleanup goals. Hence the SWIFT acronym, which stands for Sustainable Water Initiative for Tomorrow.
Supporters say the $1 billion project could provide all of those benefits without increasing costs for the district’s ratepayers beyond what’s currently projected — if the district is allowed to postpone some needed fixes to address sewer overflows.
The project represents a huge change in thinking for the regional agency which, since its creation in the 1940s, has focused simply on treating wastewater and discharging it into the river. “We spend our lives trying to improve the environment, but we still pollute,” said Ted Henifin, general manager of the sanitation district. “We put out water that is highly treated and meets the needs of the receiving water body, but we don’t feel great at the end of the day.
“We are going to feel wonderful if we can pull this off.”
Local governments are on board because it could also substantially reduce costs to control stormwater runoff. State officials credit the sanitation district for the kind of innovative thinking they say is needed to not only help meet Bay cleanup goals — but to maintain those reduced nutrient pollution levels into the future.
Environmental groups also agree the concept has merit, though they want to see more details. They are concerned that, while the project helps the region’s big rivers and the Bay, it could delay improvements to local streams.
Nonetheless, the vision put forward by HRSD has injected an air of optimism into environmental discussions at a time when issues facing the Bay are often expensive — and complicated — said Peggy Sanner, assistant director and senior attorney with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Virginia office.
“We all furrow our brows, and we trudge forward,” she said. Then, she added, “you go to meetings where SWIFT is discussed, and everybody leaves with a lighter heart.”
“People are understandably excited by it, but we can’t abandon caution.”
A new direction
The district has never been in the drinking water business. The HRSD was created by the state as an independent agency with its own rate-setting authority to clean up sewage problems in Southeast Virginia which, back then, were contaminating shellfish beds and swimming beaches.
Today, it handles wastewater for 1.7 million people — collectively, more than any other utility in the state. Its 13 plants treat 160 million gallons a day, and serve 18 cities or counties.
The genesis of the SWIFT project, officials said, came as the district engaged in long-range planning the last couple of years. It had invested $500 million over the previous decade to upgrade its wastewater treatment plants to meet Bay nutrient reduction goals.
Still, officials realized that more costly requirements could be coming. There are growing concerns about various emerging contaminants in wastewater discharges that can harm aquatic life, such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products. And, if other nutrient sources don’t meet their Bay cleanup goals, wastewater plants could be on the hook to make up the difference.
HRSD officials worried that they could face a series of incremental, and potentially costly, upgrade requirements in the future. Further Bay-related nutrient reduction upgrades alone could cost another $750 million, according to district estimates.
Officials began toying with the idea of incorporating the maximum feasible treatment technology at their plants. “Our thought process was ‘let’s take our water all the way to drinking water, and maybe the regulators won’t do anything more to us,’ ” Henifin said.
But it would be clean drinking water that’s not immediately needed in the Hampton Roads area, which relies on reservoirs for most of its supply and already has treatment plants to handle that.
Then, officials hit on the idea of injecting their treated water into the ground. The region sits above the huge Potomac Aquifer, a major water source for much of Eastern Virginia. Commercial and residential wells there pump out an estimated 144 million gallons a day, which far exceeds its recharge rate.
Those withdrawals also contribute to land subsidence in the region. Water levels in the Hampton Roads region are rising at the rate of about 4 millimeters a year — the highest pace in the nation outside New Orleans. About half of that is attributed to rising sea levels, and the other half to sinking land — much of the latter caused by withdrawals from the Potomac Aquifer.
Also, it is a confined aquifer, which means it’s largely surrounded by dense layers of rock and clay, so water in the Potomac Aquifer was pressurized — so much so that when wells were first drilled into it, the water came out on its own, without the need for pumps.
That’s no longer the case today. And as pressure in the aquifer has been reduced, scientists are worried it could start drawing in salty ocean water, ruining the aquifer as a drinking-water source. The potential lack of a reliable water supply has raised concerns about future economic growth in much of the state east of Interstate 95, which is above the aquifer.
The HRSD plan would pump 120 million gallons a day of treated drinking water into the ground. That — along with natural recharge — would help re-pressurize the aquifer, prevent saltwater intrusion and maintain it as a viable water source.
“There will be no development in eastern Virginia if we don’t have a water source,” Henifin said. “So, putting this water into the aquifer really creates a future for eastern Virginia that doesn’t exist.”
Although the greatest impact would be in Virginia, computer modeling shows that the benefits of repressurizing the aquifer would actually reach into Maryland and North Carolina, he said.
Injecting treated water could slow the rate of sea level rise in Hampton Roads. The region is already suffering from increasing rates of flooding, and whole city blocks in Norfolk are being elevated for protection. Tidal marshes, which provide valuable habitat for many species, are being lost faster than they can migrate to higher ground.
Injecting water won’t end sea level rise, but will reduce the rate by about a quarter, giving localities — and ecosystems — more time to adapt. “No one has put a value on that, but it’s huge,” Henifin said.
Not a new concept
The sanitation district last year began experimenting with treatment technologies that can purify wastewater into drinking water at its York River plant in Seaford. This year, it’s building a larger demonstration project at its Nansemond treatment plant in Suffolk, which will be capable of processing 1 million gallons a day, then pumping it into the aquifer.
If no problems crop up after that project has run for a year, the HRSD would like to move forward with incorporating the technology at seven of its nine largest plants. (One of the others discharges into the Atlantic Ocean and is not bound by Bay cleanup requirements, and the other is being retired.)
While no other place in the state is doing precisely what the Hampton Roads district plans, other utilities are doing aspects of it. In Northern Virginia, the discharge from an upstream wastewater treatment plant flows into the Occoquan Reservoir, from which the Fairfax County Water Authority draws and treats drinking water. In the Hampton Roads area, the city of Chesapeake pumps excess treated drinking water into an aquifer, where it is stored until it’s needed during dry spells.
But across the nation, California’s Orange County has been injecting heavily treated wastewater into its aquifer, as the HRSD is proposing, for four decades. Today, it’s injecting about 100 million gallons daily.
“We see wastewater not as a waste, but as a resource,” said Michael Markas, general manager of the Orange County Water District, at a workshop last December sponsored by the William & Mary Law School.
The process takes less energy than it does to pump water from Northern California or the Colorado River, Markas said, and it’s considerably less expensive than desalinating ocean water. One concern voiced by scientists and others is that new chemicals, or those not recognized as problems today, could inadvertently be pumped into the aquifer and pose a threat in the future. The district has a scientific advisory panel to identify potential new contaminants; it is now testing for about 400 substances, but none has reached levels of concern in treated water, Markas said.
The nonprofit National Water Research Institute has organized a similar expert panel to advise the HRSD.
HRSD officials also note that no one will be drinking any of their injected water anytime soon. Groundwater near the proposed aquifer injection points only moves at the rate of 3–30 feet per year. The nearest wells to any of those sites are more than a mile away, and some of those go into shallower groundwater above the Potomac aquifer. The HRSD is planning a survey of wells near proposed injection points.
“It could be hundreds of years before anyone would be withdrawing the actual water molecules that we put in there into their wells,” Henifin said. By that time, any potential contaminants of concern would have been considerably diluted by other aquifer water, he said. Further, the contaminants would likely have been filtered out by passing through the clay and sediment particles in the aquifer, part of the natural cleansing system in groundwater.
Covering the cost
The sanitation district is under a court-approved consent decree requiring it to address overflows of raw, but diluted, waste from its sewer system, which take place during heavy or prolonged rains when the ground is soaked and water infiltrates into the sewer lines.
Those overflows amount to about 5 million gallons annually, a fraction of the 160 million gallons of effluent the district’s facilities treat daily. But the HRSD estimates it would cost $2.2 billion to fix.
To make the $1 billion SWIFT project possible, the district will propose, in a plan due to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in October, that most of the sewer overflow work be delayed. Instead, the HRSD would use the funds now planned for sewer repairs to turn wastewater into drinking water and inject it back into the aquifer. That, they argue, would slash the HRSD’s nitrogen discharges into the James River from 3.4 million pounds annually now, to 500,000 pounds.
Henifin said the HRSD still plans to address some sewer overflow issues — those with the greatest public threat — but the bulk of the improvements would be put off until after 2030 when the SWIFT project is completed.
At about that time, he said, the bonds that were used to finance Bay-related wastewater upgrades a decade ago will begin expiring, freeing up money to complete the sewer overflow work without major rate increases.
“By rearranging some things, and slowing down the wet weather work, we can actually put [SWIFT] in front without changing that rate projection,” Henifin said. “We really believe with the environmental benefits of this project, this is the one to work on first.”
Environmental concerns
Environmental groups credit the HRSD for putting forward an innovative proposal that could accelerate the nutrient cleanup of large rivers in the area, as well as the Chesapeake. But they also have some concerns, particularly about whether smaller creeks and other local waters would share in the broader benefits.
Because some sewer overflow work would be delayed, environmental groups would like more details about how fixes would be prioritized, and how long it would take before the upgrades are completed.
Likewise, they want to keep an eye on the technologies being used for SWIFT, as well as the safeguards that the sanitation district is planning — including trying to anticipate issues, such as new contaminants, that may not be evident for years.
“It is new, and there are just a lot of questions that go along with that,” said Jamie Brunkow, the Lower James Riverkeeper. “Our job is to be a voice for the river so we try to keep an eye on any potential impacts that could come forward in the future.”
The biggest question that he and others have is what will become of the pollution reduction “credits” that will be generated if the sanitation district slashes its nutrient discharges far below what’s required — nearly eliminating them in many places.
The HRSD would like to see some of those credits used to reduce the burden on local governments in the area of meeting stringent stormwater pollution reduction requirements set in the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load, or pollution diet, which are to be met by 2025. Although the HRSD is not responsible for stormwater, Henifin said the same ratepayers are paying for both projects and should get some financial relief. By some estimates, Bay-related stormwater improvements could cost communities in the Hampton Roads area about $1.8 billion.
The SWIFT project would make huge nutrient reductions compared with the relatively modest ones to be achieved through stormwater controls. The biggest impact of the project would be in the large tidal rivers, where wastewater discharges would largely come to an end.
Smaller creeks, though, tend to benefit more from stormwater upgrades, environmentalists contend. “There are a lot of people who fish boat and swim in those areas, and stormwater is really their biggest concern,” Brunkow said. “It is not the wastewater.”
Sanner, of the CBF, said local officials have indicated stormwater work would continue, albeit at a slower pace, but “we’d like to see that spelled out.”
Only a handful of credits would be needed to offset stormwater improvements, though. Another looming concern for environmentalists is what would happen with the potentially millions of pounds of nutrient credits that would remain.
Virginia has regulations that restrict how such trades could take place, and typically, trading is supposed to occur in areas near where reductions are made. But environmentalists worry the surplus credits will create a temptation to allow increased nutrient discharges in more distant places — perhaps even other river basins — than is currently allowed.
“We need to be aware of that possibility,” Sanner said. She suggested that a portion of the credits should be “retired” and not used at all.
Long-term implications
Russ Baxter, Virginia deputy secretary of natural resources for the Chesapeake Bay, acknowledged that the proposal, if it goes ahead, will create issues “and we’re going to have to work through those.”
But he is hopeful that the project will help spur innovations by other treatment plant operators. The HRSD is the largest wastewater entity in the state and is better situated to undertake a unique project — which requires a lot of experimentation and monitoring — than most others. “But there may be things that are learned or technologies that are used in this that will help other, smaller plants examine different ways of water reuse,” Baxter said.
He credited the HRSD for “going out on a limb” with a proposal that deals with multiple regional problems when all it had to do was address a sewer overflow problem. Most importantly, he said, the sanitation district is tackling one of the biggest issues facing the region — how nutrient reductions would be maintained after the 2025 Bay cleanup deadline, even as the region continues to grow.
“They’re not thinking about tomorrow. They are thinking about serving a growing area over the long term, and how they are going to do that while protecting water quality,” Baxter said. “So, I give them a lot of credit, because that is the way we have to think now.
“All of this doesn’t stop in 2025. It keeps going on and on.”
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Dwindling salmon and treaty rights in the Puget Sound.
Pacific Northwest tribes are fighting crowds, pavement and pollution to protect the centerpiece of their culture: The region's fabled salmon runs.
Editor's Note: This story is part of "Sacred Water," EHN's ongoing investigation into Native American struggles—and successes—to protect culturally significant water sources on and off the reservation.
TULALIP, Wash.— The flat-bottom boat weaves across bends in the broad, mud-colored Qwuloolt Estuary, scaring up squawking blue herons and geese along the sloping banks of muck. Scattered log booms poke out.
“A little more than a year ago we were driving cars out here," says Francesca Hillery, a Tulalip Tribes spokeswoman, tucked tightly in a raincoat and baseball cap to protect against the early autumn drizzle blowing in from the Sound as the skiff glides across the water.
In August 2015, the U.S. Army Corps cut the levee, and water from the Ebey Slough poured in, flooding 375 acres of farmland. The breach marked an end to centuries of diked-up farming. The estuary is part of the Snohomish River flood plain and about three miles from where it empties into the Puget Sound.
This spot is the crown jewel of the Tulalip Tribes' effort to restore salmon habitat.
“The whole premise of salmon recovery is returning things to a natural state," says the boat's pilot, Todd Zackey, Tulalip Tribes' marine and near-shore program manager.
Zackey drives the boat up onto the soft mud shore. Sitting in the bow I start taking pictures—not exactly sure of what. The landscape looks like a giant flood plain bordering a suburban neighborhood.
Zackey helps me out. “Now that's what we want," he tells me, directing my lens to a spot where replanted Sitka spruce have taken hold.
The value of estuaries takes some explaining to me, a lifelong Midwesterner. I was here in the rain and the muck as part of my investigation into water, injustice and rebirth.
Struggles are easy to find across the United States. On the Crow reservation in Montana I spoke to a mother who couldn't give her daughter tap water for fear it'd make her sick. I visited Chief Plenty Coups spring, a sacred source for drinking and spiritual rejuvenation after traditional sun dances. Today it's so full of poop bacteria it can't be used.
I also traveled to northeast Wisconsin to meet Menominee tribe members fighting a proposed open pit mine that would sit next to buried ancestors and potentially poison their namesake river. I stood on the banks of that industrial river as Menominee Indian children—in colorful dresses, flanked by mothers and grandmothers—clutched copper jugs of river water in ceremony to protect it.
"The whole premise of salmon recovery is returning things to a natural state."-Todd Zackey, Tulalip TribesAll the while a battle rages in North Dakota as the Standing Rock Sioux and ally tribes—including both the Crow and the Menominee—protest the Dakota Access pipeline.
The Puget Sound tribes were supposed to be my success story—a strong, united band of tribes here in the Northwest using legal muscle, science and culture to protect the salmon runs so crucial to their people.
But tribal water conflicts are more nuanced than convenient bins of “solution" or “struggle."
The Tulalip are one of dozens of Pacific Northwest tribes—both in Washington state and British Columbia— intertwined by their reliance on and reverence for salmon. This cultural icon is under assault from development, pavement, pollution, farming and a changing climate.
There are about 624 populations of salmon in Washington state, grouped by where the fish spawn. Each river and watershed—19 major watersheds drain into Puget Sound alone—has a different trend. But the overarching theme is constant and ominous: Salmon populations have declined roughly 90 percent over the past three decades, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In response to this, since 1985, tribes have reduced salmon harvests by an estimated 80 percent. And that loss has rippled through the region's Native American culture.
This is the "struggle" part of the story.
Traditional foods are “spiritual foods also," says Larry Campbell, tribal historic preservation officer and elder at the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. More than physical health is at stake when resources are sullied or disappear: Without salmon, members cannot teach harvest practices to children, and the connection to the rivers and bays where harvests take place thins and breaks.
The tribe, says Campbell, is losing the ability to “feed the spirit."
And that's what I saw across the nation. Tribes are in a constant struggle to retain tradition, culture and rights in the face of development, pollution and climate change. The Menominee Indians of Wisconsin are entrenched in battle over a proposed open pit mine near burial grounds along the Menominee River, where their creation story begins. The Crow Nation in Montana cannot drink water from their taps due to bacteria and heavy metals; the solution—a reservation-wide water treatment system—is still a decade out. In North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux and allies continue to camp near, pray over and protest the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline carrying Bakken oil to market near their reservation.
For much of the past year, Environmental Health News has investigated these Native American efforts to reclaim their culture by, in part, fighting to preserve important cultural touchstones like water and salmon. Here in the Pacific Northwest, this sacred water once held strong runs of salmon. But the health of the streams, sloughs, estuaries and sea no longer proves adequate for the fish or the tribes.
“Collapsing fisheries are mirroring collapsing habitat," says Fran Wilshusen, director of habitat services for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission based in Washington state.
"Collapsing fisheries are mirroring collapsing habitat."-Fran Wilshusen, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission Estuaries are not sexy. They smell. They suck your boots off. They get used as dumping grounds. But they are crucial refuges for salmon.
If such estuaries aren't available, juvenile fish will sometimes go straight from the river to the ocean, where they confront predators and other threats—fishing pressure, temperature swings—prematurely, while still developing. The estuary is like middle school for the fish before they head off to the big high school of the Pacific Ocean—that is, if in high school the seniors ate the freshmen.
Just 17 percent of original estuary area remains in the Snohomish River delta, due largely to stream diversions such as diking and tidal gates. Qwuloolt—meaning “marsh" in the Lushootseed language of several Native American tribes along the Puget Sound—is one small piece in a massive restoration puzzle.
The Tulalip are one of 20 Washington state tribes grouped together as Coast Salish peoples who, along some First Nation Canadian counterparts, share a common history along the interconnected coastal waterways from Olympia, Wash., up to West Vancouver, Canada. The waterways, together referred to as the Salish Sea, have long provided physical and spiritual nourishment for the tribes along its coasts.
By treaty, Washington state tribes are entitled to half the harvestable fish each year. When it comes to decision-making, their science—on fish abundance, habitat, degradation—stands equal to data compiled by the state and feds. They've unified, largely through an annual Coast Salish Gathering and the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, to integrate and amplify their voice. Along the Puget Sound alone there are 17 recognized tribes.
“There is no place on the Puget Sound not under some tribes' authority," Wilshusen says.
A landmark 1974 court decision, which spurred development of well-run and influential natural resource departments within the tribes, has propelled the tribes to a level of standing in state natural resource management largely unprecedented in the United States.
And this is where the solution part of the story starts.
Tribal restoration projects dot the Sound's western edge and on inland rivers. Before Qwuloolt, the face of this effort was on the Lower Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula—the largest dam removal in U.S history. The dam blocked salmon migration and denied the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe's fishing rights for more than 100 years.
Tribes also flex legal muscle—most recently the "culvert case" forcing the state to remove salmon-hampering culverts. Their victory is emblematic of the evolving nature of fishing treaty rights.
I've been overwhelmed by the often amorphous history of U.S. treaties and Native sovereignty. Tribes have consistently ceded land and rights. Each treaty forces an adjustment to their lives and ways based on the whims and demands of the majority white society and our current government.
Take the Tulalip. Today the tribe counts about 4,000 members. It was officially formed in response to the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Forced to give up large swaths of land, the tribes told treaty negotiators they wanted the reservation to be at Tulalip Bay because it had plenty of timber, creeks and fish. It was full of healthy salmon populations.
"Whether it's funerals, weddings, the birth of new children, we eat salmon."-Debra Lekanoff, Swinomish Indian Tribal CommunitySalmon populations ebb and flow for a variety of reasons. However, recent trends are concerning. In the Snoqualmie and Skokomish rivers, which converge to form the Snohomish River just south of the Tulalip reservation, wild spawning chinook are down 45 percent and 53 percent, respectively, compared to 1990 numbers.
Some of the slack has been taken up by hatchery fish, in an effort to continue living as “salmon people."
“Whether it's funerals, weddings, the birth of new children, we eat salmon," says Debra Lekanoff, intergovernmental affairs liaison with the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. “We signed treaties to keep living the lives that make us who we are as Native people."
Wild spawning chinook of the Skagit River, which empties into the Skagit Bay just south of the Swinomish reservation, are down 40 percent since 1990.
Four decades ago widespread, conspicuous civil disobedience rocked the region as the Coast Salish fought to protect treaty rights. The tribes tussled with police and state natural resource officials in the "Fish Wars" of that era. Native Americans refused to adhere to state-imposed fish regulations and continued harvesting salmon off-reservation with fishing nets. In the most dramatic example, police raided a camp along the Puyallup River in 1970 with tear gas and arrested about 60 people.
This culminated with a landmark court decision called the Boldt Decision—named after the judge, George Hugo Boldt. The finding reasserted the rights of Washington tribes to co-manage fish with the state and continue traditional harvesting. The Boldt Decision not only protected fishing rights but mandated the tribes get their “fair share," which Boldt interpreted as 50 percent of the harvestable fish.
“That was a really important moment for the tribes," says Julia Cantzler, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of San Diego. "They'd been fighting for recognition of treaty rights, and had been systemically marginalized because of state law."
Related: Tribal commissions fight for fishing rightsYou don't see the public clashes on the scale of the Fish Wars anymore. But the undercurrent of anger and friction is once again upwelling.
This year the tribes and the state of Washington couldn't come to an agreement for salmon harvesting—the first such dispute in 40 years—because the tribes wanted more stringent protections for coho and chinook. The state and many non-tribal angling groups disagreed.
As talks dragged this spring, tribes and the state closed almost all fisheries to coho because of their languishing numbers.
This was the first year that a “zero option"—meaning no fishing—was discussed, says Tony Meyer, division manager at the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
In early summer the parties eventually came to a compromise, one that included closing salmon fisheries early in a number of rivers and on Puget Sound piers.
This may be the new normal—and sign of strife to come.
“This is a clear denial of treaty rights," says Jim Peters, a habitat policy analyst with the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and a member of the Squaxin Island Tribe.
Commercial salmon fishing: "An expensive hobby"
Jason Gobin—tall, broad-chested, heavily bearded—has lived on Tulalip land “since he was a baby." He's seen both sides of the salmon issue—not only as the fish and wildlife director for the Tulalip, but also as owner of two commercial fishing boats.
He's weathered back-to-back coho runs with "lows we haven't seen since the 1950s, at least in the Snohomish [River]," he says. “I've started to say commercial salmon fishing is just an expensive hobby."
One of the many Qwuloolt Estuary herons.
Gobin laughs and shakes his head, but the smile fades quickly. In the Snohomish watershed wild spawning coho were down a whopping 95 percent last year compared to 15 years ago.
"If Tulalip didn't have a hatchery raising fish, we simply wouldn't have a ceremony."-Jason Gobin, Tulalip TribesThe Tulalip have a salmon ceremony every June—cedar fires, drumming, singing. The celebration is to honor the first King, or chinook, salmon to return to local waters to spawn. Tribal elders bless Tulalip fishermen and share a traditional meal with friends and guests.
Planning starts months before—families start sharing meals and stories of salmon, singing songs, teaching dances. The ceremony was revived in the mid-'70s.
This annual cultural event is now entirely dependent on hatchery-raised fish. “If Tulalip didn't have a hatchery raising fish, we simply wouldn't have a ceremony," Gobin says. About 75 percent of the salmon caught in the Puget Sound are hatchery fish, according to the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Coho and chinook salmon are two of the most popular species, but there are also chum salmon, pink salmon and sockeye salmon (as well the close salmonid cousins steelhead, bull trout and coastal cutthroat trout). Puget Sound chinook are listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, as are steelhead.
“One big issue is armoring the shorelines" says Jeanette Dorner, salmon ecosystem recovery director with the Puget Sound Partnership, a state agency central hub of hundreds of organizations, groups and tribes invested in the Sound.
“People love shoreline property, once they own those properties, and get too close to shoreline, they worry about erosion," Dorner says. “So they armor it … this does significant damage to shoreline habitat for salmon and fish that salmon eat."
Deforestation is another huge driver. Between 2006 and 2011 forest cover in the Puget Sound watershed declined by about 153 square miles, a footprint larger than the city of Seattle. Forests along streams, which help keep water cool and clean for salmon, declined 2 percent over the same time. A lot of this is driven by population growth.
In addition to habitat concerns, pollution—legacy and ongoing—is contaminating water and the fish. Banned polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), still plague salmon, especially chinook that remain in the Sound their whole life, which leaves them with higher loads of the chemical. Earlier this year scientists also reported that Puget Sound salmon were full of drugs such as Prozac, Advil, Benadryl, Lipitor and even some cocaine thanks to wastewater discharge.
“Turn on any televised sporting event here like Monday Night Football, they show Pike Place [Market] in Seattle, and people throwing around fish," Peters, of the Squaxin Island Tribe, says. “It looks beautiful, but that doesn't show what's going on, fish are full of poisons."
And climate change is compounding these impacts. Seawater was not only warmer than average in 2015, but some water temperatures were the warmest on record, according to Puget Sound 2015 report released by the Puget Sound Partnership.
But progress and restoration exist. The feds, state, tribes and organizations spent more than a billion dollars on salmon recovery across Washington state over the past 15 years. Hundreds of organizations in the region focus on salmon recovery.
In the Snohomish River Basin, for example, the Tulalip Tribes and partners restored roughly 860 acres of estuary tidal marsh over the past decade along with 240 acres of riparian habitat.
The Swinomish Tribe this year reported restoration of 33 acres of pocket estuaries over the past decade in the Skagit River Basin, and removal of 179 of 209 culverts on private and state owned forest roads. Also, 80 percent of private and state owned forest roads were repaired or abandoned over that time. Such roads increase erosion and can foment landslides, both of which wreak havoc on salmon habitat.
Such efforts got a boost in October when the Obama Administration, along with the state and tribal leaders, announced that the White House would throw more federal weight behind Puget Sound restoration. The announcement earmarks about $800 million via the state, feds and tribes, which will largely go to restoring estuaries and improve fish passage on rivers where there are dams.
Culture in one hand, lawsuits in the other
Money and partnerships are good, but Washington state tribes long ago realized a need to take their fight to the courtroom.
“We come to the table with our culture in one hand and our legal, policy knowledge in the other," says Lekanoff, of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. And they've clocked some victories.
One of the most important treaty rights decisions in years came this summer. A federal appeals court ruled that the state of Washington must repair culverts, pipes under roads that block salmon from getting to their spawning grounds. Tribes filed the original lawsuit in 2001.
They won a summary judgment on the case in 2007 and again in 2013, which mandated the state spend more than $1 billion repairing culverts and restoring 1,000 miles of salmon habitat.
In the 2013 decision, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez referenced the treaty implications of such development: “Governor Stevens (Washington's first territorial governor) assured the Tribes that even after they ceded huge quantities of land, they would still be able to feed themselves and their families forever."
The “Culvert Case," as the lawsuit has been dubbed, may seem a small step, but Lekanoff says these victories will keep salmon and tribal traditions alive. It's the latest evolution of a new legal and regulatory framework—embodied by the Boldt Decision—that equates habitat protection with treaty rights.
Just months before the culvert ruling, Pacific Northwest tribes, led by the Lummi, prevailed in a bid to halt the Cherry Point coal terminal because it would impact their treaty-protected fishing rights. In May, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied the permit for the new terminal, killing the idea.
And Washington state's Supreme Court in October started hearings on a lawsuit by the Quinault Tribe, which is suing the City of Hoquiam and the state over a proposed oil transportation and storage hub at the Port of Grays Harbor, which the tribe argues could harm tribal commercial fishing in the area.
“It's always tug of war, how to make our cultural foundations adapt to today's problems," says Campbell, of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. “These foundations were put in place when the population was only tribal people."
Standing Rock and a mother's hug
In late August, Lekanoff is zipping around the tribal offices. “I'm so sorry, I have to take this," she says repeatedly as the office phone rang during an interview. She's helping organize the day of Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby, whose office is decorated wall-to-wall with photos and commemorative memorabilia, including a traditional drum and a picture of him with President Barack Obama.
Lekanoff is also coordinating with folks from Standing Rock—the scene of an ongoing protest led by North Dakota's Standing Rock Sioux tribe over a proposed oil pipeline near their reservation. She had just returned from the camp, and talking with her a few days later, the meaning and feel of the movement clearly still resonated profoundly.
Hundreds of tribes—including the Swinomish—have pledged their support to the Standing Rock Sioux. It's been a national story for months— a fight for sovereignty, a voice, resistance in the face of development.
These are old, constant battlefronts for Native Americans. But the amount of attention from the government and mainstream media is new.
Lekanoff is coordinating with others on getting canoes to Standing Rock to join the protests. When she snaps back to the interview, she talks about what it means to feel home for both Natives and non-Natives.
“Standing Rock felt like a place of being," she says. “You know that feeling of mom hugging you?"
I put aside my notebook and tell her I'm moving to Sault Ste. Marie, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, soon.
She smiles broadly, holds up one finger, vanishes behind a cubicle wall, and returns with two cans of Swinomish salmon and a heavy wool hat with a whale design made in her native Yakutat, Alaska.
“Where you're going it's cold," she says, patting my hands. “This is for your new home."
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'The Pantanal is national heritage': Protecting the world's largest wetlands.
Spanning Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia and home to 4,700 species, the Pantanal wetlands are under threat from deforestation and agriculture. But local people are taking on the challenge to protect this unique region.
Inside a small aircraft, decorated with a polka-dot jaguar design, Ângelo Rabelo checks data on a small laptop computer. “We’re approaching a river spring!” he shouts over the plane’s noisy engine.
Below, the Paraguay river in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state snakes between clusters of vibrant green forest and extensive patches of farmland. The plane flies over a large, barren-looking stretch of light brown land where soy is being grown. A small buffer zone of trees separates the crops from the river, in which lies a pulsating spring.
Rabelo is the head of local NGO Instituto Homem Pantaneiro, which works to conserve the Pantanal region by monitoring waterways and promoting sustainable practices with the local population. The Paraguay river “is like the main artery feeding the veins of the Pantanal’s body – if this artery gets blocked, the whole body breaks down”, he says.
The Pantanal is the world’s largest wetland territory. Located mostly in Brazil but also covering Bolivia and Paraguay, the wetlands cover an area of 170,500 sq km – equivalent to the combined size of Belgium, Holland, Portugal and Switzerland. It’s home to 4,700 species of plant and wildlife, including endangered species such as jaguars, giant anteaters, giant armadillos and the hyacinth macaw. Thousands of local people make a living from the land, through small-time farming or fishing.
Pantanal, Brazil. A hyacinth macaw in flight.
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The Pantanal is home to several endangered species, including the hyacinth macaw. Photograph: Joel Sartore/Getty Images/National Geographic Creative
But the Pantanal’s waterways – essential to all life in the region - are threatened by deforestation, soil erosion from expanding industrial agriculture, and infrastructure projects.
I am seduced by the natural beauty and the constant renewal process of the waters
Angelo Rabelo
Maintaining this unique region is an uphill struggle that requires a multi-pronged approach, but activists and local and international NGOs are taking on the challenge.
Some are Pantaneiro – as the locals are known – by birth, others by vocation. Whether their work involves monitoring and preserving the rivers that sustain the wetlands, keeping tabs on endangered species, or pushing for better protective legislation, they are united by a passion for the Pantanal that is both infectious and inspiring.
“Today, I still feel like the first time I arrived in the Pantanal,” says Rabelo, a former forest police colonel. “Seduced by the natural beauty and the constant renewal process of the waters.”
An influx of ‘asphalt farmers’
Cowboy guiding cattle, livestock in Pantanal Matogrossense
Mass farming in the region began in the 1960s under Brazil’s then military government. Following huge floods in 1974, many farms were brought to the edge of bankruptcy and land value plummeted.
Since then, and as Brazil’s economy grew during the 2000s, agriculture has made a comeback in the region, with cattle and soy two of the country’s biggest exports. In the past five years especially, the Pantanal has seen an influx of farmers from other parts of Brazil. They are known as “asphalt farmers” as they live in the cities instead of on the farms, unlike the traditional farmers of the region.
“They come to the Pantanal because of the cheap land prices,” says Dr Catia Nunes da Cunha, the coordinator of the Pantanal Ecological Studies Centre at the Federal University of Mato Grosso. “In Sao Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, where there is good infrastructure, you can’t buy cheap land. They often acquire the land [in the Pantanal] for below market price because the local farmers are struggling to make a living.”
The change from local, mainly subsistence, farmers to macro-scale agriculture producers, who have no personal connection with the land and use intensive farming techniques and machinery, is regularly cited by academics and NGOs as one of the main threats facing the Pantanal.
According to WWF Brazil, some 40% of the total area of the upper Paraguay river basin in Brazil has already been deforested, and 30% of springs that feed the Pantanal are at ecological risk and require urgent action.
Marshy landscape in the Pantanal wetland, Corumba.
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The wetlands cover an area of 170,500 sq km – equivalent to the combined size of Belgium, Holland, Portugal and Switzerland. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
Analysts point to rising soy production in the region as an especially worrying trend due to the use of agrichemicals that can run into the waters.
“We don’t know where these chemicals are coming from or what’s in them. This is the frontier region, so chemicals that are banned in Brazil can be smuggled in from Bolivia and Paraguay,” says da Cunha.
Further complicating the situation is a severe lack of resources available to local police. In the Pantanal city of Cáceres, Captain Thiago Martins de Souza of the local environmental military police says his battalion has just 25 officers to cover 22 municipalities, and only one working 4x4 truck.
Instituto Homem Pantaneiro runs a project called Cabeceiras do Pantanal, which monitors nearly 1,000 water springs and areas of farmland near river banks via monthly plane excursions.
Results are sent to the research department of the local federal university for analysis and if there are any infractions, such as a farm encroaching too close to the banks of the river which can cause soil erosion and interfere with its flow, the environmental police are alerted and the property owner can face a hefty fine.
Infrastructure interrupting the environment
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Beyond agriculture, the increasing use of hydroelectric dams to create energy in the region is also a major threat.
“If you put a series of dams together on one river, you are going to cause interruption to the environment,” says Júlio César Sampaio da Silva, the Cerrado Pantanal programme coordinator at WWF Brazil. In 2012, the organisation launched the Pantanal Pact, a project to protect the Pantanal’s waterways across 25 municipalities, 70 institutions, the public and private sectors, and civil society. The overuse of dams alters the Pantanal’s annual flood and drought patterns, he explains.
There are around 50 dams in the upper Paraguay basin, with another 80 planned. According to Pierre Girard, a professor at the Centre for Pantanal Research, 70% of the hydroelectric energy potential in the region has already been used, leaving just 30%, which will not bring significant benefits. “But it’s a profitable business, given the high cost of energy in Brazil,” he says.
A waterway connecting Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay to transport agricultural products to the ocean is also planned, but a construction date is still to be set.
“The Paraguay river is like a snake; it’s very curvy and they intend to make the waterway in a straight line. Can you imagine the kind of impact that this would have? This is a big problem,” says da Silva, referring to damage of the local ecosystem that would be caused if the river banks were altered artificially.
One million visitors a year
People riding horses in the Pantanal, Brazil
Flying from the Pantanal’s highlands – the Planalto – where the farms and dams are located, to the lowlands – the Planicie – soaring over vibrant green forests and shiny silver lakes , it’s easy to see why one million tourists pass through the Pantanal each year.
Ecotourism is a growing industry, upheld as a way to preserve the region and supplement the locals’ incomes.
At the Pousada Amolar guesthouse, a Unesco heritage site in the Pantanal conservation area of Serra do Amolar, vet Diego Viana works with Instituto Homem Pantaneiro to collect data from 30 cameras set up to monitor jaguars.
Part of Viana’s work involves visiting communities across the Pantanal and advising them not to kill jaguars, for which Pantaneiros can earn a great deal of money from rich cattle farmers. Viana says that an onceiro – a jaguar killer – can earn up to BR$1,000 (£250) from a wealthy farmer, the equivalent of a month’s wages. Killing jaguars in illegal in Brazil, but the perpetrator has to be caught red-handed.
Viana says that while farmers lose cattle to jaguars, therefore reducing profits, killing them is a short-sighted solution. “The jaguar is at the top of the food chain. Kill the jaguar and you will have more deer, more capybara – animals that transmit diseases to cattle,” he says.
Farmers cutting down trees to make more space is also an issue, adds Viana. “The more they degrade the environment, the more likely that a jaguar will attack their cattle.”
Brazil’s forest code provides no specific protocol for the Pantanal. A recent, controversial change to the code in 2013 – brought in under pressure by the powerful agribusiness lobby – has reduced the buffer zone necessary between farmland and river springs, a potentially disastrous measure for the Pantanal. As such, activist groups have been pushing for a Pantanal-specific law.
“The constitution says that the Pantanal is national heritage and therefore a specific law should be created for it. We are trying to push for this at the moment,” says Girard.
The law would encompass all of the Pantanal and the Planalto highlands, and override the forest code. The original version of the law was submitted to the senate in 2011 by Blairo Maggi, the controversial former governor of Mato Grosso state and the current Brazilian minister of agriculture. He is popularly known as the Soybean King, in reference to the fact that between the 1990s and early 2000s, he was one of the world’s biggest producers of the commodity.
Since then, activist groups have been lobbying for the pending legislation to include better protection of the Pantanal and its people.
“It’s a law about restriction of use – things you can and can’t do, using the concept of micro habitats. For example: ‘In this place you can do this, but in this place you can’t do that’,” says Girard. “You have to have rule of law.”
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Our water is full of drugs and we don't know their effects.
Water reuse means we are all consuming a cocktail of other people's leftover medicines. In other words, pick up a glass, fill it from the tap and take a sip. You have just had a tiny dose of the pill your neighbour took days before. But measuring impacts is almost impossible.
By Anthony King
PICK up a glass, fill it from the tap and take a sip. You have just had a tiny dose of the pill your neighbour took days before.
Excreted and flushed through our sewage works and waterways, drug molecules are all around us. A recent analysis of streams in the US detected an entire pharmacy: diabetic meds, muscle relaxants, opioids, antibiotics, antidepressants and more. Drugs have even been found in crops irrigated by treated waste water.
The amounts that end up in your glass are minuscule, and won’t lay you low tomorrow. However, someone prescribed multiple drugs is more likely to experience side effects, and risks rise exponentially with each drug taken by a person over 65. So could tiny doses of dozens of drugs have an impact on your health?
“We don’t know what it means if you have a lifelong uptake of drugs at very low concentrations,” says Klaus Kümmerer at the University of Lüneburg, Germany.
“These drugs have been individually approved, but we haven’t studied what it means when they’re together in the same soup,” says Mae Wu at the National Resources Defense Council, a US advocacy group.
Learn from history
Thirty years ago, no one paid attention to endocrine disruptors, artificial chemicals found in a variety of materials. These environmental contaminants are now linked to breast cancer and abnormal development in children. The cocktail in our water involves many more compounds, so this time we can’t afford to wait for negative effects to emerge.
The issue of drugs in our water came to a head earlier this year when researchers were taken aback by the discovery of some drug residues in crops irrigated with treated waste water in Israel (Environmental Science & Technology, doi.org/bqdd).
To see if these residues passed into the body, Benny Chefetz at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his colleagues focused on an epilepsy drug called carbamazepine, which they detected in cucumbers, lettuce and other produce. Volunteers who consumed an irrigated crop had a dramatic spike in the drug’s levels in their urine, which took over a week to clear. Those who ate crops irrigated by fresh water saw no effect. “This was a big surprise,” says Chefetz, who plans to study at-risk groups such as pregnant women and children.
We shouldn’t worry about an instant effect in healthy adults, says Chefetz, as the levels were 10,000 times lower than from a 400 milligram pill. “But we don’t know what will happen with small children exposed to low levels of pharmaceuticals for a generation,” he says, and it’s not practical or ethical to run a clinical trial. “There’s no data about that.”
Half of all irrigation water in Israel comes from recycled waste water, a process more countries are looking to use as water scarcities become more widespread. California plans to increase its use for crops in response to drought, for example. This suggests drug residues in our drinking water are set to rise. But fresh water isn’t immune either.
Paul Bradley of the US Geological Survey and his team checked streams in the eastern US for 108 chemicals, a drop in the bucket of the 3000 drug compounds in use. One river alone had 45. And even though two-thirds of the streams weren’t fed by treated waste water, 95 per cent of them had the anti-diabetic drug metformin, probably from street run-off or leaky sewage pipes (Environmental Science & Technology, doi.org/bqdb).
“The number of chemicals we are exposed to is very, very large, and we don’t understand those impacts,” says Bradley.
That’s perhaps unsurprising, given the level of drug use in the US (see “We know what you took last summer“). Recent stats show one in five Americans had used three or more prescription drugs in the past 30 days.
Unknown cocktail
The big unknown is how these low-dose drug cocktails affect people. Usually, researchers assess risk by varying doses of one drug. They ask what dose causes a specific result, like mortality in a lab animal or signs of cancer. But you cannot assess multiple drugs in small doses over a long time period, says Kümmerer.
“Industry says we need sound science, but what does that mean?” he says. “If it’s a clear dose-effect relation, then we cannot establish this.”
“We’ve got hundreds of chemicals circulating in our blood that our grandparents did not have,” says John Sumpter at Brunel University London. “We can test each of these chemicals in turn and not see any adverse effect, but I’m not sure the whole mixture doesn’t do anything.”
Something in the water
Some say the industry could do more. “Once drugs are on the market, they claim they have no responsibility,” says Chefetz. Bodies like the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations disagree. A spokesperson points to efforts like a collaboration within the Innovative Medicines Initiative to generate reliable ways of judging potential risk for pharmaceuticals.
Maybe we should accept we don’t know what is going on and take action to minimise the risks: a precautionary approach. There are two possible solutions.
One is to upgrade water treatment facilities. It’s an option Switzerland has gone for, but it isn’t cheap – it will cost the country over $1 billion. In England, it is estimated that just removing the hormone estradiol from sewage plants would cost billions of pounds.
“The public needs to decide if reducing these compounds is important enough to pay for,” says Bradley.
“We don’t know what it means if you have a lifelong uptake of drugs at very low concentrations“
Another issue is that treatment doesn’t remove all unwanted compounds and can transform some into new and unknown chemicals, says Kümmerer. He argued against the approach last week at the Risk Assessment of Pharmaceuticals in the Environment conference in Paris.
Instead, he is calling for greener pharmaceuticals that degrade readily in the environment.
Traditionally, pharma firms have focused on the stability of drugs, ensuring their products have a long shelf life. Kümmerer believes it’s time for a rethink. Existing drugs can be made to react and break down under conditions not found in the body, such as light or a specific pH. He has shown it’s possible to redesign drugs for heart disease so that they degrade faster in the environment (RSC Advances, doi.org/bqdg), though these molecules require testing before clinical use.
But if the companies won’t play ball, perhaps we need to hit them where it hurts – the bottom line. Drugs are assessed for their environmental impact but results cannot prevent them being sold. Doing so could shift thinking, but it is a big stick. Would blocking a cancer drug on environmental grounds really be acceptable?
Still, a ban could encourage firms to produce greener drugs. “This could create revenue for innovative companies,” says Kümmerer. It’s thought some are already active in this area, but keeping the research under their hats, says John Warner of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry in Wilmington, Massachusetts.
“Drugs in the environment is a serious issue, but current regulations work against solving the problem by looking for stable drugs,” he says. “The fact you don’t hear about all these great things pharma is doing in this space doesn’t mean they are not doing it.”
However we decide to deal with the drugs in our water, the lessons of the endocrine disruptors suggest we should start soon, even in the face of uncertainty about their effects.
“This hasn’t been getting enough attention,” says Wu. “The problem hasn’t been getting better because we are just ignoring it.”
We know what you took last summer
Drugs in the water are so prevalent that you can actually tell who’s in town by analysing their waste.
Patrick Phillips at the US Geological Survey and his team wanted to find out if drug residues are caused by people flushing away unwanted pills.
His team decided to test the waste water before and after University of Vermont students, who make up at least 25 per cent of the town of Burlington, left for summer.
In a survey, students reported having leftover antibiotics, and birth control and pain medicines. The team collected samples at the town’s waste water treatment plant every 15 minutes to sniff out these and over 100 other compounds.
They found no evidence of pill dumping, but they did see a sharp increase in drug concentrations after the students vacated the town.
Clean living
The increased drugs were largely antidepressants, along with diabetes and ulcer meds. The college kids, it turned out, had been diluting the far druggier waste water of the older generation (Science of the Total Environment, doi.org/bqfm).
What’s more, concentrations of caffeine and cotinine (a metabolite of nicotine) had dropped off a cliff. “Some things never change,” says Phillips. “College is still coffee and cigarettes.” Sally Adee
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