Hood canal dead ? Oysters ?

[MORTARDUDE]

Read this in USA Today. It says the Hood canal is dead. Where do your oysters come from ? What did you think about this article ? Thanks.

larry

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...et-sound_x.htm

Puget Sound in declining health
By John Ritter, USA TODAY
SEATTLE ? No one's sure exactly when Puget Sound joined the list of the nation's troubled waters. A pretty face hides a lot.
"The amazing thing is you look out and it's beautiful," says Sue Joerger, head of Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, an environmental group that monitors one of the USA's largest estuaries. "There's mountains, trees, sparkling water. Unless you get below the surface, it's hard to know what's going on."

What's going on out of view of whale-watching, island-kayaking, waterfront-strolling tourists is a steady decline due to the pressures of urban development and pollution that's outpacing cleanup efforts, says a recent report card from Puget Sound Action Team, an arm of the governor's office.

The sound's endangered orca whales remain vulnerable to toxins. Deposits of chemical muck on the floor of the sound cause lesions in fish. Pollution has closed lucrative commercial shellfish beds. Salmon runs grow weaker. Shallow waters that provide fish and bird habitat are at risk of becoming oxygen-starved dead zones.

"The jury's out on whether the political will exists to do what it takes to save Puget Sound," action team director Brad Ack says.

Pressures from population growth have taken a 50-year toll on Puget Sound, as they have on other major water systems, including the Everglades, Long Island Sound, Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes.

"They're all facing generally the same sets of issues," says Don Boesch, president of the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science. "We make these efforts to clean up, but we don't contain the basic driving force of population growth and development. So you have to run faster to stay in one place."

'Dead-zone symptoms'

The 12-county Puget Sound region, including Seattle and Tacoma, has quadrupled to 4 million people since the 1950s, and the state predicts 1 million more residents by 2025. (Related item: Seattle city guide)

State money for cleanup programs has doubled since 2001 to $175.3 million. But a bill needed to crack down on residential pollution failed in the Legislature this spring.

Government agencies and environmental groups, wielding the threat of sanctions under the federal Clean Air Act, have curbed much of the pollution dumped from commercial and industrial sources, particularly along the Duwamish River that runs through the heart of Seattle into the sound.

The main offender now is more elusive and, because of growth, more serious every year: storm runoff that delivers pollution from thousands of points around Puget Sound's 2,500-mile shoreline. Runoff, mostly unregulated, includes agricultural chemicals, highway oil and gasoline residue, livestock waste and human waste from old, poorly maintained septic systems.

The problem is acute along Hood Canal, a popular waterway with a booming year-round population on the sound's west side. The canal is "dead" from nitrogen and other nutrients consuming the water's oxygen and no longer supports marine life. Most pollution comes from household septic systems that are overloaded and failing.

Many of them were installed before records were kept and their locations aren't known. A bill to require tougher septic regulation by counties failed in the Legislature this year against heavy lobbying from the building industry and property-rights advocates.

Gov. Christine Gregoire sought $5 million in her budget for identifying failing septic systems and for low-interest loans to fix them.

The Legislature did approve closer public scrutiny of agencies that police oil spills, a chronic problem because of heavy tanker, barge and cargo-ship traffic through the sound.

Last month, the state fined a company $577,000 for a 4,800-gallon oil spill. In October, an aging tanker spilled 1,000 gallons as it left the sound and didn't report it.

"We're seeing dead-zone symptoms in other shallow, warm inlets," says Kathy Fletcher, executive director of People for Puget Sound, an environmental advocacy group. "They're among the most fertile nursery areas for all kinds of critters at the base of the food web."

An estimated three-quarters of the sound's salt-marsh tidal habitat has been lost since the region was settled in the 1800s. Across the sound, 10 wildlife species are listed as threatened or endangered, including three salmon species.

The sound's famous orcas, or killer whales, swim at the top of the food chain and are among the world's most highly toxic marine mammals because their fat stores so much pollution.

The three pods that roam the sound, delighting tourists on excursion boats, have declined to 82 from 97 since the late 1990s. A female orca's first calf usually dies from the poison dose it gets through its mother's milk.

Septic systems one culprit

Joerger of the Soundkeeper Alliance says more than 500 acres of the sound are considered toxic "hot spots" in need of urgent attention. Last year alone, 400 pounds of now-banned PCBs were dredged and hauled away, she says, the legacy of 100 years of industrialization.

Without tougher controls, particularly on septic systems, the state's $40 million-a-year shellfish industry faces decline, says Bill Dewey, spokesman for Taylor Shellfish Farms, the West Coast's largest producer. New technology has kept harvests stable, allowing more oysters, clams and mussels to be grown on fewer beds.

But earlier this month, the state put 25 commercial growing areas on its threatened list, up from 22 a year ago. King County, which includes Seattle, bans recreational shellfish harvesting.

"If we don't redouble our cleanup efforts, the future is not bright for us," Dewey says. "When the private tidelands we farm on are being fouled with sewage running off people's property, our property rights are being affected as well."

[b3196]

Larry
This brings up the same question......... as we were eating oysters and drinking bloody mary's for breakfast : How do oysters have sex?
Bob K

[sn-e3]

More enviomentelist propaganda. Its funny that we still get our oysters from there and they are still alive. the biggest run of salmon are the chums and hoods canal is the best place to find them then you have the shrimp where does everyone go for shrimp answer is Hoods Canal so I call bull shit on this artical but they are right about one thing to many unregulated septic tanks.

[MarineAO]

I'm with Cris on this one 100% I think some one wanted their name in the papers now I'm also not saying that we not keep vigilant on these problems but the #1 problem is the unregulated, unknown and inefficient septic systems. I will also add that I regularly eat seafood and shellfish out of Puget sound and Hood Canal and have no worries about it.

[Packo]

Larry.....still cruisin' the weirdo websites aren't you???? Take it from the guys who live there....it's bullshit. Now, about oysters. I know we get all we can eat here in Beaufort and they are great tastin' and the sex afterward is wonderful. Have you ever eatin' an oyster? How about a hairy clam? And where is this post comin' from? Are you home? Are you comin' to my goin' to the middle east party?

Ali-Haji-Pack

[b3196]

Paco
We'll make sure larry show up.... then we'll introduce him to one of the finest delicacy's in fine dining (oysters and hairy clams) If thats not enough, we'll locate a mexican resturant that serves tuna tacos
Bob K

[MORTARDUDE]

WEIRDO WEBSITES MY ASS ..IF U COULD READ IT WAS IN USA TODAY ON THE FRONT PAGE OR CLOSE TO IT....

LARRY

[darrels joy]

Larry,

It's just part of the propaganda put out by "environmentalists" saying that people are destroying the planet.

In the state of Washington, the legislature has passed laws that say all water that has hit solid land must be cleaned of all "biodegradable oxygen demand" (that's fish food) before it runs off into streams, rivers and lakes.

The theory is that we (people) are killing the fish by putting stuff in the water that decomposes.

This is a direct result of people who found Oregon & Washington moving north because too many people are destroying (living in) California.

Washington State once had a Governor named Dixie Lee Ray who was a scientist. She wrote a book on the environment many years ago. At that time, a chapter in her book was written about how LA is destroying the ocean near the shore by cleaning all the runoff so there is no food left for the plants and animals.

The water released by waste water treatment plants is cleaner (no food) than the water in the lakes and rivers.

[MontanaKid]

Speaking of oysters, that famous festival of our local delicacy, Rocky Mountain Oysters, is coming up this summer at the Rock Creek Lodge about 20 miles SE of Missoula. It's known as the "Testicle Festival," No ecological problems as yet with our oysters. At last report, they're still hangin' in there.

[revwardoc]

MontanaKid,

I heard that the "hardest" thing about the "Testicle Festival" is getting the rams to squat on the grill!