Glaciers that moved across Whidbey and Camano islands churned up the earth, creating groundwater geology that is highly complex. Like trampled layer cakes, a mixed strata of aquifers, rock, clay and silt of varying thicknesses and depths lay underfoot.
Tens of thousands of years later, the Board of Island County Commissioners decided they want to gain a better understanding of the state of these aquifers by bringing back a hydrogeologist to the county. It’s just one part of their comprehensive water testing and protection plan that would be funded by fees on land parcels under a proposed clean water utility.
So what is the current state of water in Island County? It’s a question that a lot of people are mulling over these days. The proposed clean water utility comes with a fee, which has helped spark a community debate about numbers, science and the need for such a program. Incoming Republican Commissioner Kelly Emerson and several members of the community, particularly Coupeville resident Jeff Lauderdale, have questioned some alarming statistics used as justification of the new utility.
“I’m not finding credible evidence behind all of this,” said Lauderdale, a retired engineer who’s studied the issue in-depth and even co-created a YouTube video on the topic. “I just don’t see it when I get into the science. I’m continually coming up with mush.”
On the other side, 10 of the 12 members of the Island County Water Resources Advisory Committee have endorsed the clean water utility as “the only current, practical way of maintaining and improving our water resources.” Co-chariman Don Lee said most of the members were appointed by former, Republican-majority boards of commissioners, but they pride themselves on objectivity. He points to the 2005 Island County Water Resources Management Plan, which he said took six years and more than $1 million to create, as a vital document on the issue. It’s science at its best, he said.
“Saltwater intrusion is a bigger problem in the county than most people realize,” he said.
Groundwater
Groundwater is probably the most pressing concern for Island County residents. Aaron Henderson, the environmental health director of the Island County Public Health, pointed out that a home without access to clean water is virtually worthless.
While the city of Oak Harbor and Whidbey Island Naval Air Station receive water piped in from the Skagit River, the other 72 percent of residents on Camano and Whidbey rely on water from wells.
In the ‘80s, the county was federally designated as a sole-source aquifer, which means there’s only one source of water that recharges the many aquifers. There’s no mysterious underground stream feeding the aquifers; it’s all from precipitation.
The major concerns for groundwater on islands such as Whidbey and Camano are seawater intrusion and supply. A 2003 United States Geological Survey estimates that approximately 22 billion gallons of the rainfall reaches county aquifers each year.
An estimated 2.9 billion gallons of that water are pumped out of aquifers each year, according to the Water Resources Management Plan, written by former county hydrogeologist Doug Kelly.
It may seem that the 19.1 billion gallons that remain in the aquifers are more than enough. But Lee explained that enough fresh water needs to remain to create the “head pressure” that keeps out seawater. If too much water is extracted from wells, then seawater could infiltrate. At a certain point, the aquifer could become undrinkable.
Of the 6,000 wells that the health department keeps records for, a third fall within areas of elevated risk for seawater intrusion because the water level is near sea level. A total of 231 wells show active signs of intrusion. They are all near the shore.
When it comes to supply, Henderson said there’s a real concern for the fastest-growing rural counties in the state. Residents on the north end of Camano Island may already be running out of water. Lee said the water table in the area was dropping by feet and residents had to take drastic conservation measures.
“The well was pumping air at one time,” Henderson agreed.
On the other hand, Lauderdale doesn’t have huge doubts about the data, but he argues that a clean water utility and a new hydrogeologist aren’t a necessary part of the solution. He agrees that the studies by the former hydrogeologist are interesting, but he sees that the work is already done. The water management plan is complete.
Plus, community wells undergo strict testing, including tests for salt.
Lauderdale said it’s just commonsense that wells near the marine shore would have issues.
“They probably had seawater intrusion the day they were drilled,” he said, adding that salt isn’t toxic and he doesn’t know of any wells that have become undrinkable. “That’s the risk you take when you have a home on a beach with a great view.”
Also, he said the county’s own reports show that problems in wells in certain areas isn’t actual seawater, but natural hardness from minerals in the ground.
Moreover, he believes that county code deals with the issue adequately right now. Anyone who wants to dig a well in a high-risk area has to hire a private hydrogeologist to study the impact on groundwater. He said the county taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for a hydrogeologist so that rich people can build more homes on beaches.
“I don’t think we should have a new tax for the convenience of developers,” he said.
But Henderson said his department needs a hydrogeologist to review the reports by private firms.
“The implications for not doing it right is just too high,” he said. “An important role of the government is to have checks and balances in place.”
In addition, Henderson said there’s nobody in the county to interpret the mountains of test data and discern where “high risk” areas exist and what problems may be on the horizon. Plus, he pointed out that, in some cases, problems in one aquifer could have effects on neighboring aquifers.
Bob Deering, a member of the Water Resources Advisory Committee, emphasized that it’s a lot easier and cheaper to prevent saltwater intrusion or pollution in the water table than fix it.
“Once you have a water problem, it’s very, very difficult to get back to a normal place,” he said.
Surface water
Though some people have confused the two, Henderson said groundwater and surface water are largely two separate issues when it comes to testing and managing, though “there is a relationship in some situations.” At this point, there’s not much of a concern about dirty stormwater polluting well water, but the focus of surface water testing and management is largely on the impact on Puget Sound and human health.
A total of nine shellfish harvest areas in the county are closed due to fecal coliform pollution. Lauderdale had written in a widely circulated email that the nine closures were just precautionary beach closures near outfalls, not a response to actual pollution. But both Henderson and Island County Public Health Director Keith Higman, as well as a state Department of Health spokesperson, said he’s wrong and that the nine pollution-related closures are in addition to the permanent closures.
In 2007, county commissioners were forced by state law to create the South Holmes Harbor Shellfish Protection District to address elevated levels of fecal coliform bacteria after the state closed the beach to shellfish harvesting, as well as swimming or wading in the water.
At a recent meeting on the clean water utility, Higman announced that the latest results from the county’s surface water testing programs show that tests in 38 of 57 watersheds in the county fell below the state’s acceptable level for fecal coliform. As he explained, fecal coliform in itself isn’t particularly dangerous, but it’s used as an easy-to-test-for marker that indicates presence of fecal matter and the icky pathogens that may come with it.
The testing usually occurs at a point where the water drains into Puget Sound, so a test that’s positive for fecal coliform doesn’t mean that the entire watershed is contaminated. In fact, Henderson admitted that the department hasn’t had a lot of luck identifying the source of contamination, largely because of a lack of resources in the tight-budget era.
In one case on Camano, staff members tested “upstream” and eventually discovered a failed septic system. After it was fixed, the results went down to normal. In another case, testing for caffeine showed that fecal coliform in a duck-infested pond at the Greenbank Farm was from wildlife.
Henderson said there’s been a few other “mixed results” where testing led them to leaky septic tanks, but that fixing the tanks didn’t completely alleviate the problem. They’ve identified some failing septic tanks near Holmes Harbor, for example, but the fecal problem persists.
But again, Lauderdale and many others are skeptical. They argue that wildlife and pets, not septic systems, are the likely cause of the high levels of fecal coliform in the environment. He emphasized that the results are improving over time. Plus, he argues that it’s simply normal and expected that dirty water coming out of ditches would have bacteria growing in it.
“A lot of this is not human contribution. Pound for pound, there is as much wildlife on Whidbey as people,” he said.
Commissioner-elect Emerson asked for DNA testing to determine whether the contamination is from human sources. Higman has said that is certainly possible, but that it would cost money the county doesn’t have. And the results may be a little confusing if they indicate what people have been eating.
Ralph Svrjcek, a water quality specialist for the Department of Ecology, said the testing results are concerning but not surprising.
“I don’t believe the water in Island County is any worse than other areas around Puget Sound, we just didn’t know about it for a long time because nobody was testing,” he said. He added that he’s pleased the county is joining neighboring counties in addressing water issues with the creation of a clean water utility.
Svrjcek opined that the fecal coliform contamination is almost certainly from human sources. When the department tests in wild areas, there’s no contamination.
Yet Lauderdale claims that the county should only be looking at geometric mean results for fecal coliform. Geometric means are a type of average that throws out extremes in data sets. He argues that one test result in a ditch or culvert could come back high for obvious reasons, like if an animal happens to relieve itself nearby. One or two bad results wouldn’t suggest a septic tank problem, he said.
Using the geometric mean, Lauderdale said none of the watersheds in Island County would fall below the state standard.
Yet Henderson said the state Department of Ecology rules say the tests should be evaluated by both the geometric mean and whether a certain percentage of the results fail the state standards. In one way or the other, he said, 38 watersheds failed.
Finally, Lauderdale claimed that the county is spreading treated septage on fields that has fecal coliform far in excess of the state standard, so he questions whether the standard has any meaning. But according to Dave Bonvouloir, the manager of the county’s solid waste division, Lauderdale made a mathematical error when converting grams to milliliters. One liter of water equals one kilogram, but the septage is a biosolid, not water. The stuff the county spreads, he said, has extremely low levels of fecal coliform bacteria.
Critical areas
Island County Commissioner Angie Homola raised another issue to defend the need for ongoing testing and the clean water utility. She points out that the county adopted a critical areas ordinance a few years ago. Under the plan, the county was able to set smaller setbacks from wetland and other areas than would normally be required by creating the program of surface water testing. The idea is that the testing would detect pollution in critical areas, which could then be fixed.
If the county doesn’t do the surface water testing program as required — which she said isn’t happening now — Homola said it would open up the whole critical areas ordinance to challenges before the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board. That could lead to larger setbacks and other restrictions on development.
“We either have to re-write the ordinance to increase buffers or do what we said we would do,” she said.
Water bodies
A total of 16 different “water bodies” in and around Island County, from an unnamed ditch to Saratoga Passage, are officially listed as “polluted” by the state Department of Ecology. A couple of worst offenders on the list include Holmes Harbor and Lone Lake, both on South Whidbey. Penn Cove is on the list because of low levels of oxygen. Some experts think it may a natural phenomenon, but Svrjcek said it will likely stay on the list until a larger study of water circulation in North Puget Sound is completed in coming years.
When it comes to North Whidbey, the only bodies of water listed are Crescent Harbor Creek and an unnamed tributary of Crescent Harbor, both of which failed standards for fecal coliform, dissolved oxygen and pH.
In addition, other “polluted” bodies listed include Useless Bay, a ditch near Holmes Harbor, seven creeks, as well as sites in Possession Sound and Saratoga Passage.
Again, Svrjcek said the the reasons for the failed tests won’t be known without more study.
“Water systems, especially marine systems, are very complicated,” he said.
