Winter 2002 - Source to Sea: The Nooksack River

'Totally Unacceptable'
by Alison Bickerstaff
Photos by Sarah Galbraith

Dec. 14, 2001, a wet Friday afternoon:
Two men studying Lake Whatcom tributaries discover a new creek on Sudden Valley Golf Course - a creek of raw sewage.

Tim Paxton and Alan Looff made their discovery while documenting tributary sedimentation in Sudden Valley, a community nestled on the southwest shores of Lake Whatcom, east of Bellingham. Looff, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife habitat biologist, was struck by the distinct odor only raw sewage can claim.

"I thought I was going to hurl," Looff said. "I was ill for an hour."

Looff and Paxton watched children walk and ride bikes through the creek as it cascaded over the cart path through the golf course and into Austin Creek, a major Lake Whatcom tributary - the drinking water reservoir for 85,700 people.

Paxton, vice president of a local environmental group called the Clean Water Alliance, and Looff shooed the kids away. The lack of signs or caution tape to warn the public dismayed them, so Looff called the Department of Ecology from the phonebooth across the street. Ecology officials said the situation was under control and people were on it; the sight of kids walking through the sewage creek told Looff otherwise.

Water District 10 Commissioner Deb Kingsley-Lambert said her agency, Sudden Valley's sewer regulator, was aware of the problem the previous evening when the 700,000-gallon detention tank filled after several days of torrential rain and the sewage began to overflow. Although WD 10 has had dozens of sewage spills since the late 1970s, this was the first since the detention tank was constructed in 1999.

"The detention tank was not meant to be a cure-all," said Blair Ford, another WD 10 commissioner. "It has served its purpose for every single possible overflow except this last one."

WD 10 had contracts with three trucking companies to pump sewage out of the tank to prevent overflows and dump it into a manhole near Bloedel-Donovan Park. From there the sewage travels to Bellingham's Post Point Wastewater Treatment Plant.

"There were at least 28 truckloads (of sewage)," Kingsley-Lambert said. "Unfortunately the drivers are only supposed to drive for so many hours before they're past their limit."

Time ran out Friday, Dec. 14, so WD 10 opened an 8-inch valve to discharge sewage, without a permit, onto Sudden Valley Golf Course. The discharge, which formed the new creek Paxton and Looff found, continued throughout that rainy weekend.

The CWA hosted a public meeting shortly after the spill. Gathered on the left side of the meeting room sat health officials, city, county and WD 10 representatives, as well as Washington Board of Health members. Although invited, no Ecology representatives attended; the agency is apparently investigating WD 10's sewage discharge. Concerned citizens were also present, mostly clustered on the right side of the room.

Many citizens wondered how much sewage WD 10 actually discharged.

"There is no meter on that valve," Kingsley-Lambert said at a public meeting hosted by the CWA.

Leaning over, Ford quickly whispered a comment into Kingsley-Lambert's ear.

"There's a meter but it's not functioning," she then added.

Because no one knows how much sewage was discharged, some citizens worry the sewage threatened their health.

"The system failed," Looff said.

Looff said he wonders why Ecology failed to step in immediately. By Monday, kids were still biking through the sewage.

Ecology issued an administrative order Tuesday, Dec. 18 against WD 10 under the Water Pollution Control Act, ordering the district 10 to stop discharging contaminated water and to prepare an updated contingency plan to prevent any further discharges.

In its order Ecology stated a "sample taken Dec. 14, 2001, confirmed fecal coliform bacteria at 50,000 colony-forming units per milliliter of water." A high fecal coliform count indicates that parasites such as cryptosporidium and giardia may be present. Additionally, people could get Hepatitis or E. coli poisoning from the sewage.

Washington state's fecal coliform bacteria standard for lakes and tributaries is 50 cfu's per 100 milliliters. The sewage had 5 million cfu's per 100 milliliters - 100,000 times the state standard.

Allie Cummings, a registered nurse and CWA member, said she was concerned that citizens became ill and, due to poor public notification of the discharge, did not know why. Even local hospitals were not alerted to the danger until six days later.

"There were people that were sick," Cummings said. "It would be really hard to figure out if it was from the sewage. The infection control staff and nurses would not have known what to run tests for."

She said the public notification of this problem was grossly inadequate.

"By not notifying, who have they helped?" Cummings said. "How that incident was handled is totally unacceptable."

Paxton is concerned that the Department of Health and Human Services took WD 10's word that they were monitoring the situation sufficiently.

"(DHHS) wouldn't even drive out there," Paxton said.

The DHHS's lack of involvement concerned others as well and left many wondering if the agency had an obligation to the community to take more initiative.

"We were relying on that information (from WD 10), and we're not going to do that anymore," said Christopher Chesson, DHHS's environmental health supervisor. "We've upgraded our response protocol."

DHHS interim manager Regina Delahunt said future situations will be handled differently.

"In the future I think we will go out there for sure and see from our own perspective," she said. "And we should have.

"As everyone knows, this has happened many times in the past. There have been lots of overflows. Our major concern is for the people that draw water directly out of the lake."

According to DHHS, approximately 250 families draw their water from Lake Whatcom. Supposedly WD 10 notified these families by a prearranged phone-tree system.

"Apparently our communication wasn't really good on (notification) because it was our understanding that it really wasn't in a public contact area," Delahunt said.

Contrary to DHHS's understanding, school children on their way to the bus stop are allowed to use the golf cart paths near busy Lake Whatcom Boulevard because the road lacks sidewalks. Other Sudden Valley residents also use the paths, as do the thousands of golfers who play the course each year.

According to WD 10 officials, circumstances out of their control at nearby Lake Louise exacerbated the sewage overflow problem. A blocked culvert caused the level of the lake, normally managed by the Sudden Valley Golf Course, to rise after several days of rain. WD 10 suspects that infiltration of lake water into the manholes surrounding the lake contributed to the sewage overflow.

Doug Dillenberger, a groundwater and geological consultant of Northwest HydroGeo Consultants, lives on the hill above Lake Louise. He is confident that surface water from Lake Louise did not infiltrate the sewer system last month.

"There's enough elevation difference, that can't happen," he said. "(The culvert) is a separate issue."

While the sewage overflow stirred worry over water quality, public health and interagency accountability, it also raised awareness that cooperation is needed in the future.

WD 10 has lowered the level at which the detention tank alarm sounds to prevent future overflows and Ecology has required WD 10 to secure more trucking contracts to pump sewage from the detention tank.

Five days after Ecology issued WD 10 the ultimatum, nature delivered its first test.

At 6 a.m. on Friday, January 25, WD 10 issued a red alert when heavy rains burdened the tank and threatened to fill it. By 7 a.m. trucks began pumping sewage from the detention tank. Trucks from six different companies took turns pumping sewage and hauling it to the Bloedel-Donovan Park manhole. Kingsley-Lambert said the situation was under control.

"Life is just fine," she said. "They are working away. Nobody's stopping and there is no overflow."

Sewage pumping continued throughout the night as snow blanketed Whatcom County. Trucks stopped pumping Saturday; WD 10 had avoided a potential overflow.

Pumping equipment and several new 21,000-gallon portable tanks are now stationed near the detention tank in Sudden Valley.

December's creek of sewage has run its course but community residents - and their children - hope to never cross one like it again.

Junior Alison Bickerstaff studies environmental science at Huxley College and is also a Fairhaven College student. This is her first published piece.

Current | Introduction | The Nooksack: Winding through History | Stewardship | Slopes and Boats | Wretched Water | The Primary Compound | 'Totally Unacceptable' | Assessing Value | Brink of Extinction | From the Ashes | Everybody's Problem | An Overdue Solution

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