PORT ANGELES — Clallam County Streamkeepers have won their battle of the bugs with the state Department of Ecology over which creeks in the region should be called “impaired,” and eligible for cleanup funds.
Streamkeepers — volunteers who monitor watercourses for their ability to sustain salmon — secured the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s support for using tiny aquatic creatures as indicators of water quality.
That means that 30 more stretches of streams in Clallam County may be eligible for cleanup funds under the federal Clean Water Act.
Moreover, it confirms that the bug analysis — formally called the benthic index of biological integrity, or BIBI — is a credible measure of a creek’s health.
The EPA will require Ecology to do follow-up monitoring on the segments Streamkeepers insist are impaired. If the state cannot prove otherwise, BIBI evidence will prove that the segments should be cleaned up.
They include parts of Bagley, Barnes, Bear, Bell and Cassalery creeks, the Dungeness River, and Ennis, Jimmycomelately, Johnson, Lake, Lees, Morse, Peabody, Salt, Siebert and Valley creeks.
