By Kirk Kirkland
Raising the groundwater high enough to return the summer flow of Clover Creek was the focus of three meetings with members of the County Council in May and June.
Few people are available who would drive from Olympia to Tacoma and sit through a 2-hour County Council meeting to only speak for 3 minutes, but this is how major changes can happen.
Al Schmauder has been doing this kind of advocacy since he began working with Public Works to remove the Chambers Bay Dam. After over 20 years, Public Works finally received federal funding for dam removal. Making change takes that kind of persistence.
Al has worked hard for over three decades to keep the water flowing in Clover Creek. He worked on a fish release program in the Clover Creek Reserve, and he’s been an advocate to replace storm drains. The goal here is to filter the water that flows into the creek enough so that it can be used to recharge the local aquifer in Spanaway and Parkland area.
Clover Creek, which flows from Canyon Road in Frederickson to Lake Steilacoom in Lakewood, has been running dry in recent years. The creek is declining due to lack of rainfall and increased impervious surfaces, which have disallowed the restoration of groundwater in the aquifer.
A solution for increasing aquifer recharge would involve recycling wastewater to a high standard and then injecting it into our wells that have gone dry. In a 2007, a Health Department Survey of 133 wells indicated that 34 had declined. In addition, polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have contaminated water in 12 wells in the Lakewood Water District.
Passing a major reform like this requires persistence and timing. Earlier this year, Schmauder wrote a report about Drinking Water, and then shared it with Pierce County Council members and others in Public Works. It resulted in passage of a budget provision to fund a survey of the county’s wells and created a plan for consolidating existing water systems.
The budget funding called for a study of countywide inventory of known water resources, and included a 20-year projection of water availability and usage.
The proviso also adds funding to establish reclaimed water services, which could examine purifying sewage in Spanaway and using it for aquifer recharge, rather than discharging the water into Puget Sound from the Chambers Bay facility.
In June, Al Schmauder and I met with Pierce County Council members at a committee meeting to check on the County Health Department’s long-term groundwater monitoring program.
They learned that a few more meetings will be needed before the Wastewater Utility Manager has time to consider any long-term plans. The Utility’s immediate focus is on making county funding available to ailing water companies that have older equipment, or ones that are unable to meet demand for more homes.
The next opportunity to implement a long-term solution to our water shortage in creeks is to attend another set of public hearings about Comprehensive Plan amendments. One of the amendment to the Comp Plan is called for “Support of a water efficiency plan” that would “explore the use of reclaimed water to reduce environmental impacts.”
Making significant changes to county goals and fundamental changes in sewer infrastructure is no easy task, even with the financial support of County Council members.
Future success will require waiting for the County Council to hold hearings on the Comprehensive Plan regulations to implement the Amendment, or to attend the next hearing where County Water Utility staff present new legislation later this year.
Few people have the patience to play the long game, and fewer have the vision to see the water shortage approaching on such a large scale. it’s going to take some patience to develop a solution to this problem and implement it over time.
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