Metals - Pipers Creek Natural Drainage System monitoring for Seattle Public Utilities

Relatively little scientific research or monitoring has occurred in the Pacific

Northwest or elsewhere on the biological effectiveness of restoration efforts in heavily

urbanized watersheds. With the overarching goal of improving ecological health of its

urban creeks, the City of Seattle is testing innovative approaches to stormwater

management. We report here on four years of pre-project monitoring data collected over

2006-2009 for one such technique: Natural Drainage Systems (NDS).

This low-impact development approach is designed to modify the quantity,

quality, and timing of stormwater delivery to creeks and other water bodies. Seattle

Public Utilities has proposed a large-scale NDS within the Pipers Creek basin of North

Seattle that will treat approximately 60% of the Venema Creek sub-basin. The focus of

NOAAs research effort has been to develop appropriate monitoring parameters and

collect baseline data to evaluate the effectiveness of this major restoration action. Our

selection of study parameters was guided by specific project goals and includes measures

of physical habitat, contaminant loading, and in-stream biota.

We found that the biological health of Pipers Creek is poor compared to forested

streams in the Puget Sound region, but comparable to other urban streams in the City of

Seattle. The fish community is dominated by cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki; scores

for the benthic index of biological integrity (B-IBI) range from very poor to poor; and

diatom assemblages are composed of a relatively high proportion of species tolerant of

high nutrient levels, organic enrichment, and sedimentation.

Despite poor stream health, densities of cutthroat trout in three of our five study

reaches were higher than many urban streams and approaching densities of cutthroat

found in natural streams. This may be due to the migratory nature of cutthroat trout, as

about half these fish were detected migrating from our study area to lower Piper Creek or

Puget Sound.

Results from heavy metal sampling were inconsistent. Zinc concentrations in

soil, black fly larvae, and mayfly nymphs collected from Pipers Creek study reaches were

significantly higher than for forested streams. We did not detect any differences in

copper concentrations between urban and non-urban streams.

We hypothesize that in-stream biological health will improve relative to current

baseline conditions following Venema NDS implementation, with treated reaches

beginning to more closely resemble forested conditions. Based on statistical power

analyses, we recommend that post-project monitoring focus on rate and taxonomic

composition metrics rather than simple density measurements. Given the City of

Seattles considerable investment of restoration funds towards NDSs, it is critical that

post-project data be collected so as to explicitly test these hypotheses.

Metal concentrations in soil, periphyton, and benthic invertebrate taxa.

Raw/field data, Laboratory data

Loaded by FGDC Metadata Uploader, batch 4692, 09-05-2013 16:23

These data are available to the public

Report: City of Seattle Natural Drainage Systems Pre-Project Monitoring on Pipers Creek - Final Report (Final project report to funding agency)

At this time, contact the Data Manager for information on obtaining access to this data set. In the near future, the NWFSC will strive to provide all non-sensitive data resources as a web service in order to meet the NOAA Data Access Policy Directive (https://nosc.noaa.gov/EDMC/PD.DA.php).

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Spreadsheet

Medium

Laboratory QC procedures applied by outside vendor. These data were collected and processed in accordance with established protocols and best practices under the direction of the projects Principal Investigator. Contact the dataset Data Manager for full QA/QC methodology.

No Delay

The Northwest Fisheries Science Center facilitates backup and recovery of all data and IT components which are managed by IT Operations through the capture of static (point-in-time) backup data to physical media. Once data is captured to physical media (every 1-3 days), a duplicate is made and routinely (weekly) transported to an offsite archive facility where it is maintained throughout the data's applicable life-cycle.

Chemical analyses were conducted by an outside lab using acid digestion EPA method 3050B.