Push on to make bay clean again

ANACORTES – Under the surface of Fidalgo Bay, a garden of aquatic life blooms like flowers on a trellis, clinging to creosote pilings that support the Tommy Thompson Parkway.

Video images of the sea anemones, goose barnacles, piles of empty clam shells and the occasional Dungeness crab were transmitted to a monitor inside a trailer that Nisqually Aquatic Technologies employees parked on the trail.

The crowds of anemones and other sea life, such as schools of fish scooting away from the diver who wore a camera bolted to his helmet, are all good signs, say scientists with the Samish Indian Nation and officials with the state Department of Ecology, who all want to improve Fidalgo Bay’s health.

The site also reassured those scientists and divers, who worked last month to survey the parkway’s causeway over the bay, that toxins from creosote pilings didn’t appear to be causing trouble.

“I was delighted to see all the marine life on the pilings,” said Sandra Caldwell, an environmental specialist with Ecology’s Toxics Cleanup Program.

The Samish want to replace the concrete and creosote causeway, which runs four-tenths of a mile across the bay as part of the 3.3-mile-long Thompson trail, with more environmentally friendly materials, said Christine Woodward, the tribe’s director of natural resources. Woodward and Caldwell are the project leaders for a study looking at the feasibility of replacing the causeway. As part of Gov. Chris Gregoire’s Puget Sound Initiative, Ecology gave the Samish a $160,000 grant to pay for the study. Results will be available by summer or early next fall.

The initiative is about cleaning up the Sound by removing pollutants and restoring its health by 2020. Ecology has identified 647 sites within a half a mile of the shores that need to be cleaned up to prevent damage to the marine environment by industrial toxins, such as the byproducts of wood mills, paper manufacturing and boat building that has occurred in Anacortes for almost 120 years.

Gregoire plans to spend $8 billion over the next 13 years to clean up the Sound, including toxic sites that affect both Fidalgo and Padilla bays, which are considered critical environments for the survival of salmon, Dungeness crab and great blue herons.

The causeway is built on top of a 116-year-old railroad trestle. On the east side, the creosote pilings are visible. On the west side, it’s thought that chucks of concrete, rock and old pavement were piled on top of old pilings. Creosote was used to waterproof wood and is now all but banned in the Sound because of links to health problems with fish.

The divers worked last month with scientists and engineers from RIDOLFI Inc., who were taking samples of silt, soil and water. The samples will be tested for metals, pesticides and petroleum hydrocarbons released by the creosote, said Colin Wagoner, RIDOLFI’s chief executive officer. Test results will determine the cost and the method used to dispose of the causeway if it is replaced.

Ecology officials worry about toxins released from creosote pilings and timber and marine industries in Anacortes before clean water laws required safer disposal methods. As part of an Ecology program, separate from the Samish study, Fidalgo and Padilla bays are among seven bodies of water the state has targeted as priorities for cleanup. Those priorities meshed nicely with the tribe’s goal of restoring the bay, Caldwell said.

Part of the Samish’s feasibility study will include modeling what the flow of the water will be like in the bay if the causeway’s structure was changed, Woodward said.

Study results will help both the tribe and Ecology lay the groundwork of what the bay could be like once it is restored, Caldwell said. “It’s possible this could be a monument to the Puget Sound Initiative, bringing everyone together to protect and restore,”

The study is only the beginning of their plans. Rebuilding the causeway will cost money. Woodward said she isn’t worried. She said she expects the tribe will be able to find grants, donors and form partnerships with public agencies.

Prompted by the tribe’s request to clean up dump sites along the shoreline, city officials are talking about holding a community cleanup day. .

During Tuesday’s work, images and air flowed through tubes and cables connecting the Nisqually Aquatic Technologies trailer to its divers. Along with the lifeline of air, the cables also carried audio so that diver Brion Douglas could talk with Dennis Lucia, president of Nisqually Aquatic Technologies.

As Lucia monitored divers and the video images, he was as excited as Woodward and Caldwell, pointing out anemones and barnacles on the flat screen.

“All of this habitat seems very healthy,” Lucia said. “It shows the pilings are not especially toxic.”

Nisqually Aquatic Technologies is a tribally owned corporation that provides underwater surveys, as well as diver training. The company also surveys inside water tanks, and its divers have years of experience at harvesting geoducks and other shellfish. Tuesday’s divers were from the Nisqually, Puyallup and Squaxin tribes.

The survey of the pilings will determine how stable they are, which will affect how they are removed, Lucia said. The pilings would either be pulled out of the water or chopped off at the ocean floor.

“For as old as they are, they are in great shape,” said Douglas, after surfacing.

Douglas described the undersea world of the bay as cloudy and gray.

Half buried in the silt, Douglas found a reminder of the causeway’s original purpose: two metal railcar wheels that were coated with debris.

The Seattle Mountain Railway built the trestle in 1891 for trains to travel to Anacortes.