State hopes park cleanups will set example for public

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, July 23, 2006

UNION – When George Landram and his daughter, Kaytee, pulled into Twanoh State Park for a weekend of camping along bucolic Hood Canal, they got an unhappy surprise.

The campground was closed for the season.

The problem: Its aging sewage system is shot, and its beach has been closed to shellfish harvesting since last fall after inspectors found fecal coliform bacteria along the 3,167 feet of saltwater shoreline.

Help is on the way. Twanoh is one of 24 state parks along Puget Sound and Hood Canal that are slated for $17 million worth of clean-water projects, starting this summer.

Every state park along the canal and the sound with serious problems – 24 of the 34 parks – will be fixed. Visitors use the waterfront parks extensively – 12 million visits per year.

It’s a new twist to state government’s escalating campaign to clean up Puget Sound. The idea is for government to serve as a role model, rather than being part of the problem.

“We don’t want to be in the position of do-as-I-say, not-as-I do,” said Gov. Chris Gregoire, who has appointed a Puget Sound Partnership of government, tribal and citizen groups to ramp up cleanup and protection of the state’s tarnished crown jewel. The former ecology chief is making this a signature issue of her administration.

“It’s the right first step,” said state Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, sponsor of the park plan. “The state ought to get its act together before it asks others to fix up sewer and septic systems next door.”

Project director Larry Fairleigh joked that the plan amounts to burying $17 million underground and that nothing will look different. But he and cleanup leaders hope that it’s a teachable moment as the visitors watch the backhoes and bulldozers at work.

Projects include hooking up parks to municipal sewage systems, new drain fields and wastewater systems, reuse of wastewater, repair of sewage pumping stations and trailer dumping.

State parks director Rex Derr said rangers and interpretive signs and materials will explain what’s happening and why waterfront users and homeowners alike need to change their polluting ways.

“I’d like to see them put up big signs that say ‘We’re cleaning up our act,’ ” said Dunshee, the House construction budget chairman whose previous career was as a designer of septic systems.

The projects were a surprise addition to the budget this year, the result of a creative bit of logrolling in the Legislature. Western Washington legislators were willing to vote for $200 million worth of water storage projects in Eastern Washington, but wanted a little pork of their own.

House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, suggested Hood Canal cleanup. Dunshee and the governor’s office then latched onto the idea of fixing the state parks’ septic and wastewater systems.

Parks, delighted at the sudden attention after years of lobbying for maintenance money, happily produced a list. It was fully covered in the construction budget that took effect July 1.

The park projects, including the one here at Twanoh, will get under way shortly, as soon as permits are in hand. Most are expected to be complete within a year, and most of the parks will continue operations with only minimal disruptions.

At Twanoh, between Union and Belfair on the south side of Hood Canal, the situation was both a nuisance and a teaching point for Ron Nilsen, who runs a four-year environmental program at Bellarmine Prep in Tacoma. He had 80 marine biology students in wet suits and snorkel gear checking out the marine life in the tidelands.

The annual outdoor classroom week usually includes camping at Twanoh, but this time they were but forced to bus in each day from another park. Still, the closure brings home Nilsen’s lessons about humans’ impact on the water.

“What a match. It really shows the kids what we’ve been talking about, this obvious concern about what we’re doing to Puget Sound,” he said.

The problem: Right now, 24 parks along Puget Sound and Hood Canal are part of the pollution problem. Lawmakers have approved money for cleanup costs and the parks system hopes to use this as a “teachable moment” for low-impact use of the waterfront.

The price tag: The projects will cost $17 million. Most of them will be completed this year or next.

The parks: Hood Canal parks on the list include Twanoh, Dosewallips, Belfair, Potlatch, Kitsap Memorial, Scenic Beach, Shine, Pleasant Harbor, and Triton Cove. The Puget Sound parks are Sequim Bay, Fort Flagler, Larabee, Fort Worden, Camano Island, Deception Pass, Possession Point, Illahee, Kopachuck, Penrose Point, Blake Island, Fay Bainbridge, Birch Bay, Fort Casey and Fort Ebey.