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| Geoduck farming (Protect Our Shoreline News) |
"The shellfish industry would it both ways: removing pollutants & providing seafood. It's incredible that shellfish are being grown in Puget Sound estuaries with high levels of pollutants from failed septic tanks. The Big Bend at the southern end of Hood Canal is a major example. Maps of shellfish rearing areas in Puget Sound are available (here).
“Shellfish culture has many downsides including production of pseudofeces from rafts, polluting bottom sediments, hybridization between non-native Mytilus galloprovincialis and native Mytilus edulis, and smothering intertidal acreage with oyster bags and geoduck tubes."
Meanwhile, today’s news clip posting at Salish Sea News and Weather of Chris Dunagan’s story about the Puget Sound Partnership’s draft Action Agenda brought the following comments:
"Regarding Chris Dunagan column on the new draft of the Puget Sound Partnership Action Agenda: I tried to read it to provide comments. OMG! Dense, foggy, huge long detailed tables, 41-page executive summary full of gobbeldy gook, almost impossible to actually find any "action" items/plans. Woe is us .... " --Rabbits’ Guy
"The Puget Sound Partnership talks about “restoring” decimated species. But they say nothing about preventing the final destruction of Puget Sound. Puget Sound’s death will be collateral damage to the final wave of development in the Basin.
"As we have discovered in Chesapeake Bay, restoration is probably not politically possible. It requires scraping off most of the development in the watershed and replacing it with forest and LID. (That is not going to happen any time soon). Why is PSP focusing on “restoration” when we have an eternity to restore, but only months left to prevent driving the final nails in the coffin?
"The Carnegie Letter to the governor spells out the bare-bottom minimum action that PSP must insist upon if their mission is not to be a total failure. (NPDES permits must insist on the 65/10/0 development standard.) PSP has shown no indication that they will endorse the Carnegie action plan. Is it because PSP’s boss, the governor, has dismissed the CG action plan?" -- Tom Holz
Thanks. It sure is interesting to read your comments.
--Mike Sato
Mike, thanks for the great post on the screwy situation with poop and polluted waterways and the sad prospects of having a one-day-beyond-help Puget Sound.
ReplyDeleteI'm convinced the folks at Puget Sound Partnership must be feasting on some kind of "mushroom" dish at lunchtime, or else they live in another dimension (along with some memebers of the State Health Department). They could have done so much. They had so many resources at their disposal and the governor's backing -- the current one, not Dixy.
If he's smart, Gerry O'Keefe will update his resume and bail out before the fecal hits the fan in the Samish Watershed come spring. I understand Jay Manning (although a much smarter guy) got a lucrative job in some Seattle firm.
But then our State EPA folks got $50 Million from the Feds which they've essentially squandered on meaningless projects just to be able to say "See, we spent it all; send us more!"
We at Skagit Leeks have a couple of ideas that we're going to present early in the Year of the Dragon, with the hope of encouraging residents to turn off Fox News and take the time to figure out how they can make a difference.
It just feels good down here to know that there are folks like you, Mike, and Fearless Lee First, who care and write and do -- all the while making an amazing difference.
We're going to have fresh Dungeness Crab for Christmas, but no shellfish for us this year.