It’s peak tourism season in downtown Seattle. Residents and visitors have been celebrating the $800 million dollar makeover of the waterfront. Is the same true for residents and visitors under the surface of Elliott Bay? To consider that question, KUOW’s Kim Malcolm reached out this week to environment reporter Lynda Mapes. The two took a shallow dive into Mapes’ most recent piece for the Seattle Times, “The vibrant world under Seattle’s new waterfront.”
Kim Malcolm: Lynda Mapes started our conversation by telling me about her actual dives into Elliott Bay.
Lynda Mapes: “I went in the water with Jason Toft from the University of Washington. We got in dry suits, we put on snorkels and masks. I was skeptical. I thought, you know, in such an urbanized area, how good could it really be? Did it really do any good? And I’ll tell you something, Kim, it is a shock to pop your head under the water just feet from the bike path. You can hear people standing there talking on their cell phones, and you want to put your head up and say, ‘Puget Sound is alive!’ It’s stunning. It really was stunning.”
As part of the waterfront improvements, Seattle spent over $300 million dollars to recreate its seawall. Mapes told me about three important aspects of the reconstruction. One, they added skylights, to bring sunlight to the water below. Two, the wall has nooks and crannies built in, to provide places for animals and plants to grow, live, hide, and feed. And third, they included what Mapes calls a “habitat mattress” below.
“And so you put these three things together, a little bit more light, some places to hide, to be, to feed, to rest, and suddenly you have not a dark, scary, blank place as it was before, but a place that, while certainly nothing like it was and will never be again like it was, incorporates some friendlier features for fish, for animals, for plants into this necessary human infrastructure. I wouldn’t really call it restoration. That’s not what we’ve got here. That’s not really possible in so altered a place. But I would call this a bit of an ecological assist in a highly altered environment.”
Lynda Mapes has reported on the environment in our region for decades, but she seems genuinely surprised by the changes she saw when she explored Seattle’s new underwater front.
“And honestly, you wouldn’t believe the number of different species that are utilizing this area, and they’ve published several scientific peer reviewed publications at this point that show that even in a highly altered environment, if you provide just a little bit for animals and plants to make it more livable, they will use it.”
Humans have done tremendous damage to Elliott Bay over the last hundred years. Yes, Mapes confirms, efforts to mitigate that damage are being attempted, but she says they’ll take time, and lots of money.
“What they’re finding is the truth, which is you can’t abuse a waterway for more than 100 years and dump anything you want into it and just walk away from that and think it’s all going to be fine as soon as you stop. I mean, what is so sad about this is we’re living with our past mistakes, and this is true in so many ways and at so many levels. No one should be surprised that it’s also true in the environment.”
Mapes is well aware of the damage we humans do, in our everyday way of life, as we drive our cars, and spread pollution. But she seems to see a way forward.
“The way to think about this is it’s a circle, and it’s all connected, both in time and in space. And the only way to interrupt this cycle of pollutants is, number one, to stop putting them in the water with source control. Number two, clean up our mess and stop making more. Simple, 1-2-3. Expensive? Yes, but some of the tribal leaders I’ve worked with over the years in these stories make what to me is a very good point. The scale of the cleanup has got to match the scale of the disruption and the destruction. And as long as you’re just cleaning up around the edges and you’re still continuing to destroy the environment and pollute it, we’re not going to get where we need to be.
Now, in Washington state and in the Seattle area and in Puget Sound, we’re very fortunate. There are many, many committed nonprofits, citizen and community groups. The state, as I mentioned, has very strong standards, the tribes and their presence and their treaty rights and the Endangered Species Act, protection for salmon, all of these things mean that our water quality, it must be made better. It isn’t just a want thing. It’s a must thing. It’s the law, both at the federal and state level, and we have a treaty right obligation that these must be living waters and not just blank, pretty places that we see from afar. They have to be fishable, they have to be diggable, and they should be swimmable waters.”
All that is a lot to take in and take responsibility for. Regular KUOW listeners may be used to me asking for hopeful notes from the people I interview. I didn’t have to ask Lynda Mapes. She went there on her own.
“Here’s a hopeful fact for you. When I was talking with scientists about the situation with regard to these cleanups, the record shows us, their peer reviewed science shows us, that in places where we have done very aggressive cleanups, such as in Sinclair Inlet, over there at Bremerton, it has made a difference, they do see a reduction of PCBs. So, it’s a keep after it thing, it’s a do more thing, it’s a pay for it thing. We made a lot of money wrecking these places now we need to reinvest our wealth into cleaning them up.”
Lynda Mapes ended her reporting for her recent article on the banks of the Duwamish River, a major source of the pollution for Elliott Bay.
“You know, to stand there Kim and hear the C-130s rumbling overhead, and to watch the stacking of the shipping containers right across from you, and to watch the fuel truck delivery to Vigor itself, and yet, here’s this goose that’s sitting there on her eggs. And here’s a seal in the water. Here, when they pull up the net, are all these flipping, jumping, leaping salmon. And you know what? They were wild coho.
Here’s what I say about that. Respect these animals. Respect this incredible capacity for resilience and persistence, not unlike the native people themselves. This is a native ecology that if given the chance, if given the place, if given the opportunity, it will thrive and it will live and it will persist. And so, every single thing we do, everything, counts. You can trust nature. This is a place where life finds a way. And so, you ask me, am I hopeful? My answer to that is yes, because I’ve seen it with my own eyes, whether it’s Elwha Dam removal, or putting in these new sea walls, or these pocket beaches, or cleaning up the water, everything we do, everywhere we do, it makes a difference.”
Would Lynda Mapes go snorkeling in Elliott Bay again? That seems like a hard yes, and she’s lobbying for us to do the same.
“I thought the snorkeling experience was transformative and fantastic. It’s not a big deal to go snorkeling. You can go someplace and rent yourself a dry suit and a mask, and you can snorkel at Jack Block Park. You can snorkel at a lot of these local parks. Just dip yourself in the water and go look around. Go to Golden Gardens. You can actually go snorkeling off the pocket beach down there at the waterfront. And you shouldn’t do it alone. You should go with a partner, have a spotter and all that, and be careful and be sensible, but just dip your head under the water and be shocked. I was! It’s really important to understand that the water isn’t just scenery. It’s a living place.”
The work behind cleaning up Elliott Bay and other polluted areas starts with science. Lynda Mapes knows that better than many of us, and she’s concerned about where support for that starting point is headed.
“One of the most important things we have to do is fund science. You can’t fix these problems, any problems, if you don’t know what they are, and you can’t tell if the things you’re doing are working if you don’t monitor the work that you’ve done. And so, here in the Pacific Northwest, we are blessed with some of the most incredible scientists that you’ll find anywhere, biologists, conservation biologists, fisheries biologists, restoration biologists, hydrologists, geomorphologists. You ask me about an ologist, and I can give you a name. Someone who’s been working in that field for decades, who literally leads the world in our understanding of these complex environments. None of this is going to get easier, and none of it’s going to get simpler. With more people, climate change, all the rest that’s coming, the single most important thing we need to point a beacon at, where we need to go to preserve these precious places that we love, is science to be our guide.
In preparing to talk to Lynda Mapes, I learned she retired from the Seattle Times last week. Selfishly, I was sorry to hear that. But there’s a bright side. She’s planning to keep writing, articles and books, in her unique way, about environments she cares deeply about.