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Lake Whatcom: Prognosis Negative


April 2013

No Net Loss

Lake Whatcom: Prognosis Negative

by Wendy Harris

Wendy Harris is a retired citizen who comments on development, mitigation and environmental impacts.

Fifteen years ago, Lake Whatcom, the source of drinking water for 100,000 Bellingham and Whatcom County residents, was placed on the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) list of impaired water bodies. The lake failed to meet state water quality standards for dissolved oxygen and bacteria necessary to protect human health and sustain aquatic life. This triggered requirements for a water quality improvement plan, but the most significant change since then has been the rate at which water quality continues to decline.

And water quality problems have triggered water quantity problems. Increased algae blooms clog city of Bellingham water treatment filters, threatening the city’s ability to meet water quality demands in the summertime. Asian clams, an invasive species linked to recreational water use and shoreline development, have colonized Lake Whatcom for at least the last five to seven years and no management-and-control actions are yet in place. And while watershed development is the identified source of the problem, Whatcom County and Bellingham continue to allow more watershed growth.

Management of Lake Whatcom has been, in short, a debacle. The blame lies with the Washington State Department of Ecology (DOE), Whatcom County and the city of Bellingham. DOE holds delegated jurisdiction over the Clean Water Act but has failed to use its enforcement power, even while noting the urgency of the problem. Whatcom County remains defiant in the face of the Growth Management Hearings Board’s opinion that it is failing to protect Lake Whatcom, and some elected officials still question well-accepted principles of science. The more sophisticated city of Bellingham enacted “engineered” stormwater standards that create incentive to replace small homes with new residences containing a larger footprint and less vegetation, creating more watershed infill and density.

DOE just released its proposed water quality implementation strategy for Lake Whatcom. It allows 50 years to achieve compliance. It focuses on stormwater standards rather than compliance methods. The restoration of natural watershed ecological processes is treated as equal to expensive, engineered stormwater solutions. Ecosystem restoration is a healthier long-term solution, but engineered solutions justify more watershed growth. Guess which one the city and county are choosing?

Engineering has its limits. Clean water is the by-product of a healthy lake. A water quality improvement plan that restores ecological integrity on a watershed scale has the greatest likelihood of success. When ecosystem processes are functioning, the land has enhanced resiliency and is better able to absorb the harmful impacts of human activity, but this approach to remediation requires respect for the limits of healthy ecosystems to absorb impacts from development. For now, it appears that the city and county will continue to choose profits over public health and safety.

The First TMDL Study

Because the CWA water quality improvement process is not sufficiently confusing to the public, it is referred to as a “TMDL” (Total Maximum Daily Load.) Technically, TMDL refers to the amount of a pollutant a water body can receive and still meet water quality standards, but the term is used generically to refer to the reports, plan and the process of improving water quality.

In November of 2008, a mere 10 years after the lake was first classified as impaired, DOE issued its first TMDL report, the Lake Whatcom Water Quality Study.1 The study confirmed what we already knew: development in the Lake Whatcom watershed is destroying the lake.

Watershed land in a natural state contains forest. The tree canopy, the shrub under-story and the forest floor function synergistically to reduce stormwater run-off through evaporation, absorption and infiltration. Development destroys natural forest cover, increasing stormwater run-off. The results are amplified by impervious surfaces from buildings, parking lots and roads, and the conversion of native vegetation to lawns, resulting in increased use of fertilizers and herbicides.

This deposits excess phosphorus into the lake. Phosphorus fertilizes the water, increasing growth of algae and other aquatic plants. Decaying algae and plants consume dissolved oxygen, depleting the reserve necessary to sustain aquatic life, including genetically-unique kokanee and cutthroat trout. Minimal levels of dissolved oxygen are required to sustain a healthy aquatic environment. Lake Whatcom fails to meet these minimum standards.

Phosphorus entering the lake more directly threatens human health. It can stimulate the growth of certain types of algae (blue-green) that are nerve and liver toxins.2 The bacteria associated with algae decay impact water quality.

Lake Whatcom water still meets standards for drinking water after treatment, but the amount of necessary treatment has increased. Water disinfection is achieved with the use of chlorine. Disinfection byproducts of chlorine, such as trihalomethanes, are carcinogenic, so increased disinfection is a dangerous recourse. And greater amounts of treatment increase water’s costs, while sickening its taste and odor.

Algae also poses a threat to water quantity. Blue green algae have a sticky mucus coating, creating large slimy mats that clog the city’s water treatment filters. Large quantities of water are necessary to flush the filters. This reduces water available for residential use.

Algae clogs are a looming issue. After the city needed to restrict summer water usage in 2009, it hired a consultant to review the problem. A filter-clogging algae mitigation evaluation by CH2MHILL concluded that “Lake Whatcom algae blooms present an on-going seasonal risk to the city with respect to meeting the supply needs of its customers.”3 The recommended approach was to construct a new water treatment facility using updated technology, with an initial capital cost ranging between 10 million and 14 million dollars. That is in addition to the cost of restoring water quality.

There is another contaminant affecting lake water quality. Eleven of the lake’s tributaries exceed water quality standards for fecal coliform from human and animal sources. The level of fecal bacteria, tested in 2003, failed to meet minimum state standards intended to protect the public against waterborne illness.4 Human waste is attributed to leaking sewer pipes and failed septic systems; animal waste is attributed to livestock and pets. Much of the bacteria is delivered to the tributaries through stormwater run-off. The TMDL did not address forested lands within the watershed, so forestry practices were treated as equivalent to the natural forested condition.

The 2008 TMDL Water Quality Study accomplished two goals. First, it established that Lake Whatcom watershed development, which increases stormwater run-off into Lake Whatcom, is the primary cause of low dissolved oxygen levels and high fecal bacteria levels. Whatcom County uniquely struggles with acceptance.

Second, the TMDL study also quantified how much phosphorus and bacteria the lake was able to absorb and still meet water quality standards. Based on its computer modeling data, using watershed development in 2003 as its baseline, DOE determined that to meet dissolved oxygen standards, 85.5 percent of the developed portion of the Lake Whatcom watershed needed to function as if it were still in a natural forested condition. Fecal coliform in the tributaries needed to be reduced up to 92 percent in the dry season and between 37 percent-96 prcent in the wet season. And all of this was calculated with the assumption that no new development would occur.

The first TMDL Study noted that “these numbers paint a dramatic picture of how much work needs to be done to meet phosphorus limits. It will be up to local government leaders to develop strategies and pass laws that improve stormwater management so stormwater is absorbed, filtered and released into the lake more naturally, as if most of the development is not there.” 5 For the last fifteen years, local government has been spectacular in its failure.

The Second TMDL Study

In February, 2013, DOE released a public draft of the second TMDL study, a Water Quality Implementation Strategy.6 Public comment is being solicited until May 26, 2013. Unsurprisingly, the updated study indicates that Lake Whatcom is receiving higher quantities of phosphorus today than it was five years ago. The fecal bacteria levels were not updated from the first TMDL study.

Due to increased watershed growth in both the county and the city, 87 percent of the developed watershed (based on 2010 estimates) now needs to function as a natural forest, a 1.5 percent increase from 2008 TMDL requirements. This provides additional confirmation of the connection between development and water quality impacts to Lake Whatcom.

The second TMDL study contains a water quality implementation strategy that allows a generous 50 years to achieve water quality compliance, assuming everything is done in a timely manner, with successful results. Specific obligations are broken into five year increments. The plan requires retrofits on existing watershed development to achieve 87 percent of natural forest function, and new development is not permitted to generate any phosphorus that exceeds a natural forested condition.

The First Five Years of TMDL Implementation and Beyond

In the first five years, the city and the county must draft an implementation plan. This is rather ironic, because the city and county enacted an implementation plan in 2010. Their plan was so inadequate that, although included as Appendix D of the TMDL report, it is never acknowledged for its intended purpose.

The city and county implementation plan consisted of the Joint Lake Whatcom Reservoir Management Work Plan for 2010-2014. The Joint Lake Whatcom integration team, composed of the city, the county and Lake Whatcom Water and Sewer District (LWWSD), had been drafting unsuccessful lake work plans in five year increments. These work plans were not intended to comply with Clean Water Act requirements, yet the city and the county used the 2010-2014 Work Plan as a proxy for a TMDL plan.

The 2010-2014 Work Plan was nothing more than an unfunded wish-list of potential water improvement projects. As drafted, it had no potential to restore water quality. The centerpiece of the Work Plan, the Silver Beach Creek Pilot Project, a study and restoration strategy, was contingent on state grants and addressed only one sub-basin. The Work Plan failed to commit funding to water quality projects, relying instead on an “opportunistic” approach. It failed to estimate how much it would cost to restore the lake or how long it would take to accomplish. It failed to impose quantifiable obligations or timelines. There was no monitoring plan. In fact, there was no requirement for water quality improvement. In sum, the city and the county attempted to render themselves fully unaccountable.

This was unsatisfactory even by the Department of Ecology’s low standards. The DOE plan requires, by October 2014, that the city and county prepare two preliminary plans, a fixed timeline plan and fixed budget plan. The fixed timeline plan estimates the budget necessary to meet TMDL requirements within 50 years. The fixed budget plan estimates the time needed to comply with the TMDL based on known and reasonably forecast funding. From these two plans, a final plan, with a budget and a timeline, will be developed.

The city and county now have until October 2016 to submit a preferred implementation plan with a budget and timeline. By October 2017, each jurisdiction must establish milestones that will indicate whether the implementation plan is on track over the next ten years. By October 2018, the city and the county must agree on additional studies and information required to meet implementation goals.

During each of the following five year increments, the jurisdictions must demonstrate that implementation goals are being met, make adjustments and recalibrations to remain on track, and complete studies to fill information gaps. The city’s contract with the Institute for Watershed Studies at Western Washington University monitoring lake water quality, and the county’s contract with Brown and Caldwell monitoring stormwater run-off, are cited as essential components of reaching TMDL goals.

TMDL Compliance Based on Stormwater Standards

DOE’s water quality implementation strategy focuses on compliance with stormwater standards, thereby reducing the amount of stormwater pollution discharged into the lake. The stormwater standards are regulated under the NPDES II (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) permit system established under the CWA, which requires a number of “best management practices” (BMP) to reduce pollution discharged into water. The permit requirements are already applicable in the urbanized and UGA (urban growth areas) of the watershed, but will now be expanded to cover undeveloped non-forest county watershed land.

DOE is allowing the city and county to pick and choose the methods used to comply with NPDES II requirements, although it notes that the simplest way to meet phosphorus reductions goals is through on-site infiltration achieved by limiting parcel development to 10 percent and retaining 65 percent of the lot as native vegetation. As the developed area on a parcel increases, so does the need for engineered solutions that mimic natural conditions.

DOE treats all methods of stormwater compliance as equal, ignoring the fact that an engineered approach performs limited ecological function. Engineered solutions reduce erosion, flooding and stormwater run-off.

A natural forest reduces erosion, flooding and stormwater, but it also lowers water temperature, creates healthy soil, moderates climate change, sequesters carbon, produces oxygen and resists encroachment by invasive species. It provides habitat and connectivity, promoting biodiversity. It creates recreational opportunity and tourism, and encourages growth and business relocation. It has cultural and aesthetic value. Which approach do you think fosters an improved aquatic environment and clean drinking water?

Watershed restoration science may be in its infancy, but it is widely accepted that a holistic, ecosystem-based approach to restoration is most likely to be successful. This is confirmed by a recent Lake Whatcom cost/benefit analysis of phosphorus-reducing activities. While the analysis needed greater refinement, it concluded that the most effective and least expensive means of reducing phosphorus loading is to reduce development in the watershed by preventing development of undeveloped land, or by purchasing and restoring natural functions on developed land.7 Expensive engineered design solutions were rated as less effective.

Let’s face it — the county is going to be on the short bus to a remedial science class for quite a while. The inadequacy of the county’s TMDL response demands its own article. But the city needs to start polishing the shining star of its watershed program, the watershed property acquisition program, and it needs to stop promoting expensive stormwater facilities as the primary solution. Restricting watershed redevelopment and expansion of homes, decks, accessory dwelling units and docks does not require public funding, but it does require expensive political capital. So far, the city administration has done little other than pass the cost forward to the public. It is time for public push-back.

Endnotes

1. Lake Whatcom Watershed Total Phosphorus and Bacteria Total Maximum Daily Loads: Volume 1. Water Quality Study Findings, available at https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/publications/summarypages/0803024.html, See generally, http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/tmdl/LkWhatcom/LkWhatcomTMDL.html.

2. City of Bellingham Lake Whatcom Stormwater Management Program: Evaluation of Stormwater Phosphorus and Recommended Management Options; Parametrix, 2007, at http://www.cob.org/documents/pw/storm/lake-whatcom-stormwater-management-program.pdf.

3. Filter-Clogging Algae Mitigation Evaluation, Final Draft Report, CH2MHILL, 2012 at http://www.cob.org/documents/pw/lw/algae-mitigation-evaluation-report-march-2012.pdf page ES-1.

4. State standards are designed to result in seven or fewer illnesses out of every 1000 people swimming or bathing in the water.

5. TMDL Water Quality Study, page 13.

6. Lake Whatcom Watershed Total Phosphorus and Bacteria Total Maximum Daily Loads: Volume 2. Water Quality Improvement Report and Implementation Strategy, available at https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/publications/summarypages/1310012.html.

7. Benefit and Cost of Phosphorus-Reducing Activities in the Lake Whatcom Watershed; CH2MHILL, 2011 at http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/pds/pdf/pln2011-00015-ch2mhillcostbenefitanalysisforlakewhatcom.pdf.


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