Pierce County calls for hydropower project to close after turf released in Puyallup River
Pierce County is prohibiting a project to upgrade a hydropower facility on the Puyallup River to continue after loose artificial turf was released into the water at the work site last month.
In a Monday press release, the county said the “inexcusable environmental harm” means the current stop-work order at the Electron Hydro project will remain in place. The order was issued Aug. 5 after the turf and crumb-rubber pellets slid into the river at the Electron Hydro site near Orting.
“Electron Hydro deliberately placed artificial turf full of crumb rubber into the river, and that’s simply unacceptable,” County Executive Bruce Dammeier said in a statement. “The damage to future salmon runs is impossible to measure.”
Dammeier told The News Tribune the Electron Hydro facility should be removed to allow the Puyallup River to flow naturally. He plans to work with the Puyallup Tribe of Indians and environmental agencies to “consider all possible legal actions.”
The Puyallup Tribal Council, which works to increase fish populations in the Puyallup River, applauded the county’s action and said it was outraged when it learned of the turf being released into the river.
“We are proud to have a partner who will fight for our salmon. We will not celebrate, however, until the fish-killing nightmare called Electron Dam is a distant memory,” the statement said.
Electron Hydro chief operations officer Thom Fischer sent a formal apology letter last week to the Puyallup Tribe, environmental agencies and Pierce County after plastic lining and four to six cubic yards of crumb rubber polluted the river.
While the stop-work order remains in effect, Electron Hydro will be permitted to stabilize the work site for winter.
Pierce County outlined 14 mitigation steps, including stabilizing the original footprint of the Puyallup River where it is being diverted for the improvement project; temporarily securing a wooden diversion structure; and removing all the turf and liners in a temporary bypass.
Pierce County, which issued permits for the project, could take legal action against Electron Hydro if the mitigation requirements are not met.
“My primary concern is to do everything we can to protect the river from any further damage,” Dammeier said.
Fischer agreed with the mitigation steps outlined by the county.
“We’ve been asking to do this for the last six weeks,” Fischer said. “We don’t have any issue with doing what we need to do to make things right.”
The COO said he was shocked to hear that the county wants to ultimately remove the dam, and he wants to work with agencies and the tribe to correct the environmental mistake.
The Puyallup River has been almost entirely cleared of loose artificial turf, Fischer told The News Tribune on Monday.
What happened?
Electron Hydro does not operate like a usual dam, according to the company.
“Water is diverted from the river along a 10.2 mile wooden flume (topped with a railroad) to a forebay, then plunges 875 feet downhill through steel penstocks to the 26 megawatt Powerhouse,” according to the company website. “Electron is a run-of-river project, there is no water storage from a large dam and reservoir like the big hydropower projects on the Columbia and Snake rivers.”
The project powers more than 20,000 homes in the Puyallup Valley.
The company has been working to upgrade the diversion system, and the turf was between linings in a river bypass created by Electron Hydro crews.
Fischer said the bypass was necessary so the river could continue to flow downstream while they worked to install a “rubber bladder” to replace the spillway on a 116-year-old wooden diversion structure. This diversion structure parts the water between what feeds into the dam and what continues to flow downstream.
The bladder project would improve the spillway, which allows for sand and gravel to remain in the river rather than build up in the diversion channel. Fischer said the plan included adding “fish exclusion screens” to keep fish in the Puyallup River.
Starting July 15, crews needed to shift a portion of the river to a bypass while they worked on the original riverbed.
They added plastic linings and artificial turf to seal the river into the bypass and prevent water from leaking into the work area, Fischer said.
The artificial turf was added last minute to prevent the plastic liner from puncturing on sharp rocks in the bypass.
“It was expected that this turf would never make contact with the water of the river,” Fischer said in his letter to agencies.
While crews continued to work in the original riverbed and tore down 80-feet of the wooden diversion structure, the liner in the temporary bypass began to slide and tear. A plastic lining and portions of the artificial turf, made of vehicle tires, were carried away by the current in August.
Electron Hydro did work outside that which was permitted, Dammeier said. Fischer said they followed the approved plans apart from the use of artificial turf.
“I am responsible, and my highest priority now is to clean, restore, correct and compensate for the harmful effects this may have caused,” Fischer said in his letter.
The stop-work order prevents Electron Hydro from taking any steps in the river. Most of the artificial turf is still between plastic linings in the bypass as the Puyallup River continues to flow through.
Environmental concerns
The Washington Department of Ecology is concerned about the long-term consequences of the turf.
“The turf material and its crumb rubber backing released pieces that range in size down to mico-particles,” spokesperson Larry Altose said in an email.
“Fish and other organisms are likely to ingest this material. Components can include toxic compounds and some of these can accumulate in fatty tissues, a process that continues up the food chain.”
Altose said the turf release violates the state clean water act.
The Department of Ecology has issued three violations to Electron Hydro over this incident: failure to implement best management practices, failure to implement water quality monitoring, and failure to set up spill containment around fueling stations.
The environmental attorney for the Puyallup Tribe, Lisa Anderson, told The News Tribune it’s not possible to remove all the turf pellets.
“Our priority is to get that turf out from the river and all the pellets out of the river, but that will not happen,” Anderson said. “These are teeny-tiny pellets that could be in Commencement Bay by now.”
Anderson said any water engineer should know better.
“Who does that? It’s not normal,” she said. “I can’t even imagine any of our guys even thinking that was possible.”
Pierce County and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued stop-work orders in early August.
Neither agency has lifted their order. Fischer is eager to get the site cleaned up and the project completed.
The project is part of a larger plan to increase fish populations of chinook salmon, steelhead trout and bull trout in the Puyallup River. Electron Hydro began a sediment and fish exclusion project in 2018 that would prevent either from entering the wooden flume. The flume directs water downhill to a powerhouse that provides renewable energy.
Electron Hydro was one of the first hydro power plants in the country. Fischer said the dam should be thought of as a piece of Pierce County history.
