Winter 2002 Nooksack - Introduction

Winter 2002 - Source to Sea: The Nooksack River

Introduction
by Levi Pulkinnen, Editor in Chief

Dear Reader,

For most of history, rivers both created and destroyed communities. Some of the oldest civilizations exist today because people formed communities to maintain dikes and prevent flooding. If the dikes failed, so did the community; floods smashed homes and harvests, leaving the people to shiver and starve.

People found life easier near the river where they could farm and fish freely. Long before Europeans began moving into the Pacific Northwest, American Indians had already developed a rich culture along the area's riverbanks and shorelines. The salmon in the Nooksack River and the shellfish in Bellingham Bay sustained them, as they would white settlers during 19th and 20th centuries. The city of Deming grew where the North, Middle and South forks of the Nooksack join, before winding through Everson, Lynden, Ferndale and Bellingham.

Today the Nooksack River runs through almost every major township in Whatcom County. Its water irrigates fields, nurses salmon and, because of a diversion completed in 1962, bathes and satiates more than 85,700 county residents who draw water from Lake Whatcom. The river defines this community more than Mount Baker or Bellingham Bay; yet the community raised on it may be the river's undoing.

In 2000, the Department of Ecology released a study showing high levels of fecal coliform bacteria in the Nooksack. A high fecal coliform count - which can point to the presence of deadly pathogens such as E. coli and Hepatitis - comes from an increased amount of human or animal fecal matter in the water, often because of careless development or farming. A fecal coliform test is a common way hydrologists determine a water body's health; that the Nooksack failed it so completely is cause for alarm.

Two of Whatcom County's other water bodies linked to the river, Bellingham Bay and Lake Whatcom, are also imperiled by growth and agriculture. The bay's floor is covered with one of heavy industry's leftovers - mercury - while Sudden Valley's sewage regulator, Water District 10, dumps untreated sewage into the lake.

Whatcom County's wounded waters, however, can still be healed, and throughout the county people are working to right past environmental wrongs.

Farmers work under a new state mandate to protect the Nooksack's tributaries from excess manure, a necessary step toward a healthy river. Meanwhile, community organizations like the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association are cleaning up the river's banks and replanting them with native species; hopefully, these improvements will bring Chinook salmon back to the area by limiting sedimentation and decreasing the river's temperature.

Perhaps the most heartening progress is being made at Whatcom Creek, which was scorched by a pipeline explosion on June 10, 1999. Today, the mother of one of three boys killed that day aids in the creek's restoration, helping replace what was destroyed while coming to terms with her child's death. On April 22, a suit brought against Olympic Pipeline by two of the bereaved families begins, offering another chance to reconcile a company's mistakes with its moral obligation.

In the Nooksack, the Whatcom County community has an opportunity. It is well within our collective power to leave this river better tomorrow than it is today through restoration and regulation.

Winter 2002 - Source to Sea: The Nooksack River

Introduction by Levi Pulkinnen, Editor in Chief

Introduction
by Levi Pulkinnen, Editor in Chief