Stormwater Awareness Week continues, and today’s post might be the most important of all! Today we’re talking about specific actions YOU can take at home to make sure water quality stays healthy to help protect all the life we share our creeks with! Yesterday we talked about how we measure water quality in our local creeks. Start there if you missed it!

Take action for YOUR creek

Each creek has its own struggles that are influenced by what people are doing at home. Figuring out what’s going on in your neighborhood creek is a great starting point to figuring out what healthy habitat habits you should tackle first!

Let’s say you check out your local creek on our Water Quality Dashboard, and most of the water quality parameters looked good, but one or two looked really bad, like in the case of Everest Creek, which had a very poor nitrogen scores last year:

While we can’t say exactly why this nitrogen score is so bad, we do know that it is EXTRA important not to add any more nitrogen to this creek. Therefore, if you were going to do only ONE thing to help this creek, you could think about if any of your current habits might be contributing to this problem, and what we could do to reduce that.

We encourage you to go check out the dashboard and find your closest creek, if you haven’t yet. Take a look, and see if there are any aspects of water quality that need to be improved. Then, come back here for some easy, actionable steps to help be part of the pollution solution!

Nitrogen , Phosphorus or Dissolved Oxygen problems? Try this.

Quick refresh: too much nitrogen or phosphorus can cause algae blooms, which crowd out other species and take oxygen out of the water when they die and decompose.

Nitrogen and phosphorus are both naturally occurring elements that help plants grow, but you can definitely have TOO MUCH of a good thing. Extra nitrogen and phosphorus mostly get into our creeks through landscaping that uses chemical fertilizers, and un-scooped pet waste. Here’s what you can do:

Practice Natural Yard Care:

BEST: Reconsider your lawn and replace with native plants, compost and mulch, which won’t require fertilization and will help water infiltrate better into the soil. Double bonus! Our Yard Smart program can help you consider your options.

GOOD ALTERNATIVE: Ditch “Weed & Feed” and chemical fertilizers on your lawn and opt for natural lawn care instead. These lawncare fertilizer bombs run off into creeks when it rains or the lawn is irrigated, leading to algae blooms and unhealthy creeks. Also – they actually weaken the health of your lawn, causing lawn roots to dig less deeply into the soil, which makes it less drought tolerant. Lose/lose. We love this guide to natural lawn care from SPU which helps you make the switch to natural lawn care!

 

Pet Waste:

BEST: Scoop every poop, every time, right away. You probably already do this on dog walks because you don’t want the stink-eye from neighbors who are always watching. If you don’t please start! The best way is to make sure you always have bags handy – we have them stashed in many jacket pockets, in the car, on the holder on the leash, just in case.

GOOD ALTERNATIVE: It’s harder to scoop every poop every time if your dog is a backyard pooper, but letting that poop pile up – especially during the rainy season – creates a nitrogen hotspot that does make it’s way down to the creek. Please pick up early and often! Every day would be ideal, but we’re all about progress – try setting a goal to pick it up a little more often this month, and a little more often the next month, and so on. You can do it!

 

Temperature, pH, or Dissolved Oxygen Problems? Try this:

Quick refresh: cool water is necessary to keep fish eggs developing properly, and cold water holds more dissolved oxygen so everything can live.

A lot of the things that influence temperature in the creek are outside of our immediate control – the weather, how built up the entire city around the creek is, etc. However, if temperature or dissolved oxygen are a concern in your creek, here are some things you can do to help keep temps cool, which helps the water stay oxygenated. The car washing tips also help keep pH in balance!

Wash your car the right way:

We wash our cars more in the summer time, and when that water washes down our driveway and over the pavement, it can heat up a LOT, carrying not just soap and car gunk to the streams, but also hot water which can cause temperature spikes. Here are some stream-safe ways to keep your car looking fresh:

BEST: Wash your car in a commercial car wash. Commercial car washes recycle water and connect to the sewer system to clean dirty water. This is the most eco-friendly way to wash a car.

GOOD ALTERNATIVE: Wash your car on a lawn or gravel area, where the dirty wash water will soak into the soil. Use chlorine and phosphate-free, biodegradable soap to wash your car. Even these soaps are harmful to aquatic life and water quality, so please use minimal soap.

GOOD ALTERNATIVE: Can’t wash on the lawn but still want to wash at home? Use rolled up towels or sand bags to divert your wash water to your lawn to landscaping.

Plant Trees:

Have property near a stream? Leave the trees and shrubs – or plant more! Trees and shrubs overhanging a creek is the best way to protect cool water. Streamside properties are considered critical areas in the Kirkland Code. This resource can help you understand what is and isn’t allowed in critical areas, and how to take a more active role in stewarding them.

Don’t have a property near a stream? Plant trees and shrubs anyway! Trees and shrubs provide multiple ecosystem benefits such as providing habitat and food for wildlife. Trees can help keep your home cool, and cities with more trees stay cooler overall. Check out our tree rebate program!

Know about other pollution? Try this:

Fix vehicle leaks as soon as possible. Place a drip pan or cardboard under your vehicle until you can get the leak repaired.

Herbicides and insecticides aren’t measured by our usual water quality parameters, but we know they are present in our creeks, and they affect plants and animals they were never intended to target. Adopting natural yard care makes weeds and pests less of a problem, and provides alternatives to spraying.

 

Notice anything that isn’t rain going down a storm drain? Call our pollution hotline:

425-587-3900

Put this number somewhere you can remember it, like on your fridge, so it’s ready when you need it! What happens when you call this number? Our awesome spill response crew will go out and clean up the spill, and prevent it from entering the storm drain. If a person responsible for the spill can be identified, we provide education on how to prevent/contain spills in the future. People who continue to pollute despite education efforts may be fined.

A note about changing habits

Changing habits is hard, and changing many habits all at once is even harder. In a perfect world, everyone would do all of the things we recommend to protect water quality all the time – but people are busy, and messy, and overwhelmed. We get it!

Luckily, most of the things that help water quality are about NOT doing something, rather than doing something new. Some suggestions do require a bit of new habit-forming, or a change in the way you approach things. We suggest making a commitment to one new habit this month, and seeing how it goes for you! Set a calendar reminder to check in with yourself about it in a month or so. How did it go? Remember that building better habits, for yourself or for the earth, is about progress, not perfection – and we’re always here to help answer questions and be your clean water coaches if you need us!