Creek Restoration Planned

The city of Bellingham, won’t settle for less than a silver lining to the cloud of smoke that left three youngsters and a fishing stream dead last June.

Gone forever are the youths, one of them a fly fisher, who died after a pipeline ruptured and spilled 277,000 gallons of gasoline that erupted into an inferno on the edge of the city along Whatcom Creek.

From the ashes, however, citizens want to restore the lifeless stream to a living monument to fish.

Before the teeming volunteer effort can be released from the community’s stables, the city and state have been working to make sure they have restitution from the Olympic Pipe Line Co. for a solid 20-year restoration plan.

Emergency responses involved blocking off tributaries to prevent upstream fish from swimming into the toxic waters of the main creek, removing the imbedded toxic products from the spill, replacing large woody debris that was burned out of the system, warding off invasive plant species that might take advantage of the scorched earth, and improving the water quality to accommodate chinook salmon that returned in September.

“By fall, the water quality was not acutely toxic, but we still had some small seeps that could cause problems for the eggs and fry, which are more susceptible to chemicals than adults,” said Mick Cope, Washington Fish and Wildlife Department disaster response expert.

With a formal restoration plan expected to be approved in the next few months, the community soon will be able to roll up its sleeves and become involved with a fishery at an unprecedented level.

“Numerous college and school groups, regional enhancement groups, and businesses have volunteered to be a part of the restoration,” said Claire Fogelsong, Bellingham’s superintendent of environmental resources.

Helpers ranging from Girl Scouts to senior citizens are rolling up their sleeves to replant vegetation.

Scientists are already establishing research on this unique opportunity to study the rejuvenation of a stream and its aquatic life from ground zero.

Plans are being drawn to restore the natural bends to channelized stretches and replace the gravels that will once again attract spawning salmon, steelhead, and resident trout.

“I’m very confident it will be a better stream than we had before,” Fogelsong said. “The people here deserve at least that much because of the horrendous damage to their resource and community psyche.

“It’s pretty devastating to a community of 60,000 to have three of its children and a central facet of its recreation destroyed in one dramatic disaster.”