The weather was wet, windy and cold. The work was dirty, stinky and heavy. No way to spend the holidays.
But the Puget Sound Corps conservation crew, part of the Department of Ecology’s Washington Conservation Corps, just kept working – hauling creosote-laden timbers and logs over Jackson Beach jumbled with driftwood, chain-sawing the bigger logs into four-foot long pieces, and using a small mini-track loader to fill two seven-ton-capacity transfer boxes.
“Not one complaint from the crew, they’re great workers,” said Kevin Anderson, supervising the project for the Department of Natural Resources Beach and Waterways Restoration Program.
Anderson pointed out that the crew had returned recently from New York City, where they helped clean up in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
Back in San Juan County, the six-member crew led by Jerry McMullen spent Monday and Tuesday, Dec. 17 and 18, removing about 20 tons of creosoted debris from the lagoon and estuary at Neck Point on Shaw Island, then the next two days doing the same at Jackson Beach on San Juan. According to the DNR, the cost of the two projects totaled about $30,000, including removal of the detritus from Shaw by a Neptune Marine boat and from San Juan by San Juan Sanitation trucks.
Creosote cleanup is an integral part of the multi-agency efforts to restore and increase salmon populations in the state. Creosoted pilings and timbers are detrimental to pteropods that salmon smolt feed on, and to spawning grounds of forage fish, such as sand lance and surf smelt that juvenile and adult salmon also feed on.
On Monday, Dec. 10, the DNR and the Salmon Recovery Funding Board announced that San Juan County has been awarded a $300,000 matching grant for four salmon recovery projects planned and managed by the County Community Development and Planning Department, local “lead entity” for salmon recovery.
Since 2004, DNR’s Restoration Program has removed more than 15,000 tons of pilings, creosoted debris and other harmful beach detritus from Puget Sound beaches. The San Juan Islands have been a major focus, but more than 20 other Salish Sea locations have also seen clean-up projects.
Hundreds of civilian volunteers have participated in the clean-up projects, as have numerous entities such as county Marine Resource Committees, WSU Beachwatchers, The Nature Conservancy, Friends of the San Juans, and Washington State Parks.
In February 2007, 38 tons of creosoted pilings and driftwood were removed by helicopter from Jackson Beach. That same year, more than seven tons of debris were removed from Deer Harbor, and, in 2011, more than 70 tons were airlifted off Lopez Island beaches by helicopter by a DNR forestry team.
