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[ Music ] >> You know, I know that the big picture out there, of course, is bringing our salmon home to here in the state, to our rivers, to our streams, of course, the Puget Sound.

But for us it's about our way of life.

You know, it's come to the point now for our Nisqually people, sustaining our culture and being able to provide and protect this beautiful river for the next generation.

For us, we're past the breaking point.

I think it's about being able to sustain our way of life as Nisqually people and as native people here in the Puget Sound.

You know, speaking with folks when I talk about the importance of this, it's not coming from just me as a tribal leader.

It's coming from me as a Washingtonian also.

And it's about being able to set that standard and get folks to understand that we're all in this together.

[ Music ] >> We are all in this together, responsible for making the connections between human activity and the degradation of Puget Sound, and following the science to make the connections between melting glaciers and the declines of habitat and water quality and the welfare of the many iconic species slowly blanking out.

The good news is that making the connections between the problems and solutions is no mystery.

We know what to do.

And successful examples are everywhere.

Down this little travelled road and behind a small collection of homes that was supposed to be just Phase 1 of a new development sits some preserved forests and a new 120-acre section of a restored Nisqually River marshland and shoreline habitat.

All the Nisqually tribe's land acquisitions along the river combined with the federal Billy Frank Jr. Wildlife Refuge now add up to 1,400 acres.

Nisqually Tribe Natural Resources Director, David Troutt, says, "Thanks to decades of work and more than a dozen funding and planning partners it is the largest estuary restoration project on Puget Sound."

>> Together we can restore an ecosystem and that's what we're working on together.

It's been a really amazing relationship over the years and the work has been incredible.

We've restored 90% of the estuary.

We have 80% of the Nisqually protected.

It's in better shape now than it was a hundred years ago and there are very few rivers outside the [inaudible] that you could probably say that about.

>> But the restored estuary must make the connection with the upper Nisqually River and that's where I-5 becomes a problem.

As climate change raises water levels in the Sound, the estuary should naturally broaden and expand upstream.

But it's blocked by the massive earthen berms under the roadway.

The result is less of the brackish habitat so crucial to juvenile Chinook salmon, the endangered overwinter food source for orca.

>> So what's actually critical for our fish in the Nisqually is that they have a slow period of transition from becoming a fresh -- from a freshwater animal to a saltwater animal.

And so they need the gradual change in the water chemistry from freshwater to saltwater.

And the habitat that we've restored here gives them that opportunity to slowly over a month's time adapt to becoming an animal that'll eventually go to the ocean.

Sea level rise is increasing the depths of these habitats and it's increasing the salinity of these habitats.

And so their opportunity to adjust is getting smaller and smaller.

And the habitats are getting smaller and smaller.

And what we found in the Nisqually is that although we've done a bunch of restoration, there's a lot of good habitat out there.

It's basically a capacity and so with sea level rise affecting that, it's reducing the capacity for fish to survive.

And so we need to be able to expand that habitat and allow it to move where it needs to move.

And I-5 is the impingement right now to allowing that to happen.

>> That broken connection between the estuary and the upper river is causing problems upstream as well.

I took a ride with Tribal Game Warden, Trey Birdtail.

And all along the lower river near the I-5 Bridge, the riverbank is rapidly caving in and clogging the waterway with fallen trees.

Now, some wood in a salmon-producing river is a good thing but not in this case where violent oxbowing is messing up the hydrology so badly, the Nisqually sometimes flows upstream under I-5.

>> The river above I-5 has a lot of energy in it and it's acting in a very chaotic way.

It's trying to release that energy but I-5 blocks its movement.

And if you imagine stepping on a rope and with one hand wiggling the rope, you get a lot of s turns in the rope but your foot blocks any movement below that.

I-5 is the foot on the Nisqually River.

And so no energy or very little energy is being released downstream and it's creating this crazy bends in the river above, which is going to cause flood damage and potentially taking out I-5 at some point.

>> In fact, a recent federal study says at the current pace, climate change will put I-5 underwater in just 17 years.

>> Right here if the Nisqually River Bridge gets wiped out we're in trouble.

>> Nisqually Tribal Council Chair, Willie Frank III warns that that 17-year timeline will go right out the window if an event like the flood of 1996 happens sooner.

>> I've seen it.

I can remember the flood of '96 being a 13-year-old kid coming down with my dad.

We came from Puget Marina over by Johnson Point all the way up the Nisqually River here.

And my Aunt Macel's [assumed spelling] house was right here and we went to the second storey of her house, that's where we got off.

And the water was that high.

You know, growing up, we were always taught to teach and respect the river and teach folks about the river, the importance of making sure that you have that respect for the water and make sure that you listen to the river when she's talking.

>> Remember Trey Birdtail?

He listens to the river.

Having to stay constantly aware of new hazards as the river's unnatural hydrology keeps changing and ultimately noticeably reduces the abundance of salmon returning to the Nisqually even in his relatively short experience.

>> I remember when I first got here and I started fishing.

I was 12, 13 years old.

I mean, getting like, eight fish in one drift, that's a lot to me.

But everybody else, I mean, it's getting worse I guess.

And the last time I did a drift and we only catch like one every now and then.

Me, I don't know, it makes me sad thinking that -- hearing all these stories of the elders talking about you can walk across the river on the fish's back and stuff like that.

And now it's like, you know, you throw a net in the river and you get like a handful of fish.

I mean, it's a little depressing to me and I hope maybe, you know, see someday in my lifetime that it returns to that.

>> Trey Birdtail's grandfather and Chairman Frank's father, Billie Frank Jr. wanted to connect the ridge near the Eagle's Pride Golf Course all the way across the Nisqually River Delta to Hawks Prairie with a monumental multibillion dollar suspension bridge.

The state recently authorized $5 million for a design study.

But chances are the fix will be a series of elevated causeways to allow the river and the estuary to flow freely.

Thirty percent of the JBLM workforce commutes across the bridge daily and Chairman Frank says that's part of the reason the state and all the local governments all along the commerce heavy corridor support the project as does Washington's congressional delegation.

>> You know, this will be a project that I will commit my life to seeing this through as my dad did 20 years ago.

And just the vision I have is almost like the one he had.

You know, you lift everything up and I know that sounds crazy.

You're going to have people like, "What the hell are these guys trying to do?"

Well, if you actually listen to the science, and our biologists, and our folks here, they're explaining how this is going to go.

You know, this is the main highway from British Columbia to Mexico.

I-5 is right here.

All the imports are going across this every day.

You see the big semis left and right, going up and down I-5.

I mean, if this or when this gets wiped out, if we don't do anything about it.

And it's a huge project, you know.

It's not something that will happen overnight but I think the collaboration and the teamwork on this project is huge.

This is about sustainability for us also.

It goes back our fishing and it goes back to our way of life.

You know, we all see the changes that are happening and it's up to us to adjust to the times.

But I think, you know, for us it's more of a cultural resource.

>> Governor Inslee's 2020 State of Salmon report connects the work of dozens of agencies indicating Washington's 14 salmon species are in crisis, with five on the brink of extinction including Puget Sound Chinook.

Also note that 138 other species are directly connected to healthy salmon populations.

And so is human commerce as underfunded and unmet recovery goals annually jeopardize $540 million of personal income and 1.5 billion dollars in shell and fin-fishing revenues.

And remember that connection between I-5 and the Nisqually River?

Well, vehicle traffic is up 46% in the past 20 years.

And it turns out there's a direct connection between the cars we all drive and this entire region's contribution to Puget Sound's water quality problems.

After 100 years of development, 50% to 90% of all the riparian areas on Puget Sound's 12 major river systems are no longer fish-friendly.

But even in restored spawning streams in King County, biologists observe that an average of about 60% of all the returning Coho salmon died almost immediately and they just could not explain it.

[ Music ] But one hypothesis explored at WSU's Stormwater Research Center in Puyallup showed early signs of an answer, thanks to the lowly zebra fish.

They started having cardiovascular and blood chemistry problems when exposed to runoff water, which is just what the Coho encountered in spawning creeks.

Dr. Jennifer McIntyre still feeds and keeps her zebra fish test subjects even though now the mystery connecting the death of Coho salmon to increasing vehicle traffic and then to vehicle tires is finally solved.

>> Part of the trick to solving the mystery was that the chemical we identified is not an ingredient in tires.

Instead it is a transformation product of an ingredient in tires.

So we put chemicals in tires to protect them against ozone.

We also put chemicals in tires to protect them against like ultraviolet radiation from, you know, sunlight.

So there's a chemical that we use to protect them against ozone and when ozone attacks that chemical, which is what it's supposed to do instead of attacking the tire, it makes this other chemical.

And that's the one that's toxic to Coho.

>> But McIntyre says the greater risk may well lie in not making the connections between other chemicals and other species.

Identifying the tire dust compound called 6PPD took years.

But early indications are that there are many other constituents like PAHs, fire retardants, and other automotive compounds that make stormwater dangerous to the entire food web, including those of us right at the top.

>> And I've been saying this for years.

It's not just about the tires but all of these chemicals that we're studying with stormwater.

These complicated mixture of chemicals, some of which we know what they do, some of which we don't know what they do.

You know, like this one with the Coho salmon we're like, "Oh, we didn't even know that chemical was there."

Now we know it's killing the fish.

But humans are vulnerable to a lot of the same chemicals as fish are.

They cause a lot of the same problems.

So for example, hydrocarbons that come out of our vehicle exhaust and get into the air and we breathe those chemicals in, they cause the same cardiovascular toxicity that we see in fish as we study stormwater, right?

So I feel like there's a lesson there in terms of creating these chemical soups that we release into our environment, seeing how it affects other animals and hopefully making that link and realizing that we're vulnerable also.

>> So we are both vulnerable and responsible.

Older Seattle neighborhoods were built combining stormwater and sewage into a single pipe.

It seemed like a good modern idea so everything could be treated.

But growth and climate change have resulted in so-called combined sewage overflows.

When stormwater surges combine with daily sewage flows to overwhelm King County's three big primary treatment plants.

So enter King County's 9.5 billion dollar, decade-long Clean Water Healthy Habitat initiative.

It includes several examples of so-called big gray infrastructure like the new stormwater treatment plant in Georgetown.

A massive 260 million dollar facility designed to treat 70 million gallons of combined overflow stormwater with ultraviolet light every day before it hits the Duwamish River.

Abby Hook is project lead on Clean Water Healthy Habitat.

>> We believe that stormwater is the top threat to Puget Sound currently.

It is an invisible threat.

It's around us all the time.

It carries every single thing that we use on the landscape, from heavy metals like zinc and copper to flame retardants like PCBs.

We have evidence that stormwater affects really everything that we do that we enjoy with the Puget Sound whether it's closing swimming beaches, closing shellfish beds to harvest.

We know that it gets into our resident fish so that we're unable to eat the fish safely.

And we do know that it affects Chinook and orcas.

So really, it's a problem that's incredibly powerful because it affects humans and our marine life, and our ecosystem out in the Sound both.

>> But Hook says big engineering solutions won't be enough.

That's because in suburban King County, most of the development occurred before the era of stormwater regulations so it's all just piped into the Sound or nearby lakes and rivers.

And again, that all seemed OK before the increased rain volumes from climate change and before we knew just how toxic the runoff really is.

These days it all adds up to about 118 billion gallons of untreated stormwater pouring into the Sound every year from mostly legacy properties from King County alone.

King County's West Point Treatment Plant is getting 160 million dollar emergency upgrade to at least keep it from spewing raw sewage when the power fails during stormwater-producing weather events like it has in 15 of the past 20 years.

But even with that fixed and a series of new stormwater facilities designed to take the pressure off the primary treatment system, there just isn't an affordable big gray engineering solution big enough to manage the problem at the end of the stormwater cycle.

And that's why the ultimate solution is softening the entire landscape with so-called green infrastructure.

It's the only thing that can scale sufficiently to attack the stormwater problem at the start of the cycle, upslope on land which of course, is the source of animal waste, garden chemicals, and automotive discharges draining right off of mostly paved urban or suburban landscape.

>> Normally when rain falls on the landscape, a good chunk of it actually is able to infiltrate into the ground and very, very little of it will run off into surface waters, all right?

And as it soaks into the ground then it slowly releases water into those streams, right?

But when we have all this impervious area like roads, and sidewalks, and driveways instead the water is rushing quickly into the streams and causing all of these problems, right?

So the idea with green infrastructure is that we are able to mimic that slowing down the water, spreading it out, getting it to soak into the ground, and more slowly released into the waterways.

>> An example of green infrastructure can be found at Equinox Studios in Georgetown, an incubator and maker space with 130 tenants doing everything from arts to candy making.

On this property, stormwater is carefully managed and treated through filtration.

Whether it's coming off the roof and dropping into a mini rain garden called The Grattix Box, or flowing down a rain wall, or even falling directly on the permeable pavements used on the property.

It means Equinox' tenants enjoy reduced local flooding and of course, the green vibe.

>> The main point though is that if we can take 100,000 square feet of stormwater off of the grid, we can help be a proactive part of carrying Puget Sound and all of the wildlife, all of the things.

And we can do better as a community.

Long term, that's going to save us all money.

You're going to pay less taxes to take care of the issues at the bottom of the stream here if we can take care of it at the top of the stream.

>> The Equinox Studios demonstration program was pulled together by the environmental coalition of South Seattle that provided consulting and access to funding partners eager to make grants on projects to feed stormwater into areas vulnerable to combined overflows.

[ Music ] Governments, corporations, and nonprofits all across Puget Sound are involved in upstream projects.

And the Barton Road Project is an example of King County's upstream work.

It's a series of 91 roadside rain gardens across 15 blocks in West Seattle, undergirded by a network of pipes and deep filtration wells.

It's all designed to divert 13 million gallons of annual stormwater away from the combined sewer system and prevent overflows and shellfish kills at the Barton Pump Station in Fauntleroy.

Neighbors typically have concerns about runoff and flooding with these projects but once facilities like these are in, the word is they like them.

>> They see the facilities filling up like they're supposed to, pooling with that water, slowly cascading down from rain garden to rain garden, and then soaking in.

And so it's working the way it's supposed to.

We're really proud of these facilities.

We're really proud of how beautiful they look in the neighborhood.

And it's doing a great job to help with the solutions we're working on to prevent those overflows and protect the Sound.

>> At the current pace, redeveloping the region using green infrastructure will take 100 years.

That's because there's no regulatory framework to mandate retrofits on pre-1990 properties.

So, voluntary effort is essential on existing properties, especially those that feed into facilities vulnerable to combined sewer overflows.

That's where programs like Seattle King County's project RainWise serve as an example of what can be done through a rebate program attempting to shorten that 100-year redevelopment timeline.

The Fauntleroy School is one of about 2,200 RainWise projects where all the stormwater on the property is gathered and filtered right on site.

An extensive testing proves it works.

Onsite filtered stormwater produces no negative effects on the canary in the coal mine, Coho salmon.

And the theory is that it likely holds true for all the other species as well.

With the court-mandated 3.6 billion dollar overhanging liability for fixing culverts to enhance fish passage statewide and billions of dollars needed just to maintain existing treatment infrastructure in an era of declining federal dollars.

Now, it's all about getting the best bang for the clean water buck.

And green infrastructure and additional funding region wide for projects like RainWise are key to what needs to be as successful collective effort among individual property owners.

>> We're stronger with numbers and that's the big message here.

Individual property owners play a part in the larger solution that's region wide.

So, yeah, it might not seem like capturing 500-square feet of your home is that big a deal but you are getting a really pretty installation at your home and you are a part of a large community all fighting for a better and healthier future.

>> Local cities, counties, districts, and planning entities are all doing upstream stormwater work but managing and coordinating it all for maximum impact is still an issue.

That's because local jurisdictions and agencies naturally tend to want to operate in silos but -- >> It doesn't work for an issue like stormwater.

And as we think about how we soften that landscape it can't be done in a block or in a small city.

It really has to be done at the watershed scale and it's going to -- it's most effective when you scale it up as far as possible.

And what we're thinking about now especially in watersheds like the green Duwamish where it's very industrial and very dense at the bottom and we have legacy issues is working across the jurisdictional lines to make sure that we are prioritizing the dirtiest places for cleanup and retrofit first.

And that we're thinking about that green solution as a watershed approach, making sure that all the jurisdictions have shared capacities to put in green stormwater infrastructure so that there are no barriers.

>> And that is crucial in areas with long histories of intense industrial development and toxic contamination where the research underpinning initiatives like the new HEAL Act are clearly making the connections between the neighborhoods traditionally overburdened by the pollution, human health, and racial disparities.

All neighborhoods however, rely on transportation and heating, the largest direct connections to climate change, with the climate impact groups' latest report showing that resulting in less snowpack, smaller glaciers, lower summer stream flows, increasing river temperatures, more toxic stormwater, and from the ocean algal blooms, and an overall warming and acidification of Puget Sound.

It's a lethal combination across the entire range of species with complex lifecycles.

Peter Bortel has been diving in the Sound for 30 years, some of it spent doing some local filmmaking.

He says the general decline of life is readily observable.

>> Fish were plentiful.

I mean, we'd be under the Narrows Bridge, every block of concrete you would see two or three lingcod behind.

The fourth or fifth block you'd see octopus, you'd see wolf eels, you'd see tons and tons of rock cod all different colors.

Making this movie that we made two years ago, 700 feet down and looking at the footage, diving myself, the fish are gone.

I mean, we saw some rock cod and, you know, a couple of crab here and there but really, there's almost nothing to see down there.

>> While all 69 of the Sound's stream-specific Chinook, steelhead, and bull trout populations are endangered, the food chain is so out of whack species like jellyfish and urchins are overpopulating.

And as an example that's resulting in a 70% reduction of the Sound's C02-absorbing kelp forests, which in turn connects directly back to need juvenile salmon have for shelter and food as they slowly transition to the ocean to grow and eventually become food for our declining southern resident orca.

It is a vicious cycle.

Acidification and warming have also played havoc with the region's shellfish industry and natural populations of some of the Sound's most iconic shell-building species especially in the South Sound.

You know, we see it in crab populations.

We're having a die-off of the Dungeness crab population.

And that's completely to blame with higher water temperatures.

From the Narrow's south areas 13 and in, there's no fishing allowed anymore because the Dungeness crab are completely disappearing.

>> While anecdotal observations are one thing, the quantitative data is loud and clear.

[ Music ] Micah Horwith is a coastal scientist with the Department of Ecology who specializes in acidification and the impact on reducing dissolved calcium in Puget Sound.

That's something all shell-building animals rely on and it puts them at risk along with all the other species connected to them as a food source.

He says it's just crucial that people understand how everything connects.

How from the summit of the cascades to the bottom of the Sound, habitat, climate, water quality and human activity all connect to the success or failure of the Sound's interlocking food web.

>> Acidification is only one of many stressful factors facing Puget Sound.

There is already climate change, the warming of our waters that's going to be a challenge for marine life here.

There's shoreline armoring.

There's stormwater runoff and nutrient pollution.

And even for orcas, there's noise pollution from too much vessel traffic and the wrong engines.

So acidification by itself may not be enough to cause an ecosystem collapse but it's drawing down the energy reserves of marine life all across Puget Sound.

Every little bit of energy that they have to put into coping with acidification is energy that they don't have to deal with warmer temperature, with toxics, and with other stressors in Puget Sound.

>> Human activity is at the root of the stormwater issue and all the other interlocking issues troubling Puget Sound.

While there is serious concern about another 2 million people jamming into central Puget Sound for the next 30 years, there's broad consensus that there's also still time to make a difference.

To educate people about the threats to the Sound and the wisdom of making both individual and collective investments needed to save it.

>> I am concerned about the projected increase of population in the region and the amount of development that will probably result from that but we can build smarter when we build.

>> Replacing culverts, or large flood plain restoration, or wastewater treatment, removing creosote, softening shorelines, we know how to do all of that.

Stormwater, we know how to treat it but it's -- and you've said it several times, it's the scale of the issue that makes it a lot more challenging.

>> I mean, you look out, it's beautiful but if you don't know what's underneath it, what's going to stop you from putting chemicals on your lawn when you live next to the water?

You know, washing your car in your driveway?

Not fixing your septic system?

All of these things lead to the erosion of the life in our Puget Sound.

Then if we teach the kids that there's life out there, they're going to grow up thinking, "Lets protect it.

Let's keep it beautiful."

>> It's not rocket science.

It's pretty easy to do.

And collaborating with the local organizations like ECOSS in King County, who King County helped fund this, that's the way that we can get it done.

It doesn't have to be you on your own sitting in the dark, trying to figure out how to solve stormwater issues for the whole county.

We can do it all together.

>> When you make the connections, when you realize that everything we do is related to the health of the Sound and its many species, your first reaction might be to throw your hands up despair.

But the good news is that we know what to do.

The challenge now is to do it at scale in the cities and the river drainages all across Puget Sound.

But bottom line, we can do it because we must.

As always, I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

Until next time, I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.