King County wins $1.4 million in science grants to study health of Puget Sound, watershed

Important research work that will aid King County’s longstanding effort to protect and restore the health of Puget Sound can move forward, thanks to $1.4 million in new funding announced today by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“The long-term recovery of Puget Sound depends in part on the kind of research and scientific analysis that these federal grants will enable us to do,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine. “Our scientists are highly regarded for their professional and objective work, which informs our efforts to protect our environment and quality of life.”

The Water and Land Resources Division of King County’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks received funding for two projects:

Enhancing and standardizing benthic macroinvertebrate monitoring and analysis tools
Amount: $699,983

Small animals that live on the bottoms of our streams, such as snails, worms and insects, are an important indicator of stream health across all of the watersheds draining into Puget Sound. Currently, inconsistent methods are used by different agencies to assess the health of these populations, which prevents a comprehensive knowledge across the river basins of Puget Sound. This project will develop standardized and accessible monitoring and data analysis tools to help use macro-invertebrate data as an important ecosystem indicator across all of the Puget Sound.

Modeling PCB/PBDE loadings reduction scenarios for the Lake Washington Watershed
Amount: $698,647

Project description: Certain chemicals, including the industrial chemical polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), have accumulated to such high levels in fishes in Lake Washington and Puget Sound that the Health Department has issued fish consumption advisories. This project will study PCBs and another industrial chemical, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), in Lake Washington. Sources of these chemicals to Lake Washington, such as sewer overflows, stormwater, road runoff, river input and air deposition to the Lake Washington watershed, will be evaluated and prioritized, and loadings to Puget Sound via the Chittenden Locks estimated. The likely effectiveness of possible control strategies resulting in safe chemical levels in fish will be studied using a series of computer models.

The new federal grants have no local match requirements, and are scheduled to be completed by 2014. King County was the only local government to receive EPA grant funding during this cycle, which featured 160 candidates vying for 16 awards.

Earlier this year, King County received $3.6 million in EPA grant funding to:

• Evaluate the costs and effectiveness of various stormwater management scenarios for much of the Green/Duwamish River watershed and portions of the Central Puget Sound watershed;
• Conduct physical, biological and hydrologic monitoring over four years in 50 stream reaches in the Lake Washington/Cedar/Sammamish Watershed; and
• Improve streamside habitat in the Snoqualmie River headwaters by removing invasive weeds and replanting shorelines with native vegetation.

Information on the Water and Land Resources Division is available at http://www.kingcounty.gov/environment/wlr.aspx.

Related information

King County Water and Land Resources