September: A month of water and health care reform.

September 2009: The Piper’s Creek Watershed

To begin this season’s focus on water, we turned to Seattle’s Piper’s Creek Watershed, the border of which lies at the foot of the senior center’s doorstep. Bill Malatinsky, a watershed interpretive specialist for the city, joined the SAGE group on September 8th to talk about the Piper’s Creek watershed and the problems that threaten its vitality. Bill discussed the combined sewage cycle that the GSC is a part of. Runoff will either go directly into the Piper’s Creek streams or into sewage lines and through water treatment plants. Apparently water treatment plants were not built to handle many of the chemicals, that come from cars for example, and the pollutants end up still being ejected directly into the Puget Sound. Bill also discussed how over the past half century the amount of rain that made it to the ground and became surface water has increased from 3% of total rainfall to 25% of total rainfall. This is due to a decrease in trees from logging and an increase in impervious surfaces. All this creates more runoff that drags pollutants and chemicals straight into our streams, rivers, and eventually Puget Sound. Bill told us that another dire consequence of increased runoff is sewage overflows, where, during storms, the sewage drains reach maximum capacity and overflows with sewage water that enters streams and creeks without any sort of treatment. Bill finished his presentation with a clip from the PBS special called “Poisoned Waters,” a film that examines the devastating effects pollution has had on fish, other wildlife, and the potential threat it poses to the health of humans. We then talked about changes that are being made to the city of Seattle, such as SEA streets, that takes in storm water in order to relieve pressure on the sewage drains. We finished with the reminder that we would discuss long-term projects on our “Action Day” with Bill at the end of the month that the GSC could engage in to reduce the amount of runoff and pollution levels within our neighborhood.

On Tuesday, September 22, we were supposed to take a trip to Carkeek Park’s environmental learning center to learn about the center and do some work in the gardens. Unfortunately, we did not have enough people express interest and had to cancel the trip. However, if you are interested in doing something like this, please contact me and we can try to get a group together at a time that works for everyone.

This last Tuesday, September 29, Bill Malatinsky came back to the Greenwood Senior Center for our “onsite action project.” Although only two SAGE participants attended, we had a great conversation with Bill on potential long-term projects that the GSC could do that helps benefit the Seattle watersheds in some way. Here is a list of ideas we came up with:
1) STORMWATER DRAIN FILTER
2) NEIGHBORHOOD TREE PLANTING
3) RAIN GARDEN
4) ACCESSIBLE GARDEN

Please join us at our next committee meeting, October 12th at 1:30pm, to further discuss these long-term project ideas and upcoming SAGE events. I look forward to seeing you there!