Thursday, August 20, 2009
Pollution Report from Volunteer Neal Chism

Today was another busy day under the West Seattle Bridges.

While clearing brush between the two bridges, another member of the
Jim Clark Marina and long time resident of Seattle arrived. He and I were chatting about the areas of the beaches under the bridges, and he pointed to a place in the water by the northern most beach and said: "What's that?" We both looked and saw a large upwelling in the west channel water about five feet off shore of brown nasty water. It was pretty obvious what the fluid was.

My friend said you better call somebody, so I called Puget Soundkeeper Alliance around 11:00 a.m. and by 1:00 p.m. the Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) crews were arriving in force to diagnose the problem we were all looking at. I counted no less than eleven trucks in the area.

It seems that there was a break in one of the main sewer/rainwater feed lines that connect Harbor Island to West Seattle.

The speed and precision of the SPU response to this event was, in all ways, remarkable.  As far as I can tell the beaches have been closed as a precaution for health reason, and the SPU crews were still attending to the issue as I left the area at 8:00 p.m. tonight.

I say congratulations to my friend for the keen eye in picking out something so abnormal.

I say congratulations to the SPU rapid spill response team, and I would say we are seeing here unexpected side benefits of the "Adopt a Street" program at work. SPU keep up the good work.