Salmon have long been an iconic feature of the Pacific Northwest. The survival of these species is important and can be a very emotional issue for some residents of the PNW.
I saw these emotions firsthand when I signed up to give testimony at last year’s Snake River Dams listening sessions, hosted by the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality. Most of the comments were from urban residents who wanted to preserve salmon runs to feed and save the Puget Sound orcas. Some people were very passionate, one person cried, and a first for me … I witnessed a couple who wrote a song about taking out the dams and performed it with musical accompaniment as their testimony.
I was dumbfounded. I jokingly thought about whipping out my kazoo and humming a few bars as part of my testimony.
Something was killing the fish in several salmon-bearing streams in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. Whenever there was a big rain event, fish died. It was mostly adult Coho salmon on their way to spawn. Many voices suspected pesticide runoff from the small farms and yards that dot the Puget Sound. But the Washington State Department of Agriculture has been conducting pesticide monitoring of streams since 2003 and the test results were never alarming.
There were some positive detections of pesticides but at very low levels. Some then suspected that it was a combination of different pesticides at low doses that may be causing the problem. Turns out, that wasn’t it either.
After some incredible chemical forensics performed by researchers at Washington State University and the University of Washington, they found the culprit. It took two years to narrow the list of potential killers from several thousand chemicals they found in their water samples down to 50 unknown compounds.
Then they narrowed it down to one. The culprit is 6PPD-quinone. It comes from a chemical that is used as a rubber tire preservative. We all know that tires wear down over time and produce tire dust that remains on our roads -- at least until it rains. Then that tire dust runs into ditches and streams where the chemical is carried directly to the vulnerable salmon.
I wonder how many of those urban residents who testified to take out all four of the lower Snake River dams drive electric vehicles. Electric cars have 30 percent more tire wear because they are heavier than gasoline powered cars. This generates even more of the salmon killing chemical being deposited in our streams. Those who are most passionate about saving the environment are also unintentionally doing the most harm to our iconic salmon.
Why has the EPA and the State Department of Ecology not done anything to stop this unnecessary killing of the salmon? There have been no actions taken against tire manufacturers, no mandatory buffers have been set up to prevent this chemical from reaching the streams. Contaminated storm water runoff is not being diverted to treatment plants, drivers are not required to mitigate their pollution, roads are not closed to prevent more contamination, and this chemical has not been banned.
If this pollution was linked to farming, you would see drastic actions taken by government agencies to stop or mitigate this source of pollution. The EPA has recently developed a lengthy work plan and set of strategies that farmers must follow to prevent pesticides from impacting endangered species like the iconic PNW salmon, even though we have data that says salmon aren’t being impaired at the low levels of pesticides detected. The list of hoops a farmer will have to jump through is enormous and yet those driving in the Puget Sound have no hoops to jump through.
We all want to protect the salmon too, but why does it all fall on the backs of farmers when we have 100 percent definitive proof that salmon are dying due to the tire preservative 6PPD-quinone?
I think it’s time for a pragmatic approach to saving salmon. Let’s all do our part to protect species but let’s prioritize the chemicals that are actually killing salmon, chemicals like 6PPD-quinone.