My husband and I took up kayaking 10 years ago. We loved the access it gave us to the sound, its wildlife and scenery. Kayaking has also made me an avid environmentalist. When you are on (and sometimes in) the water, diesel oil, seabirds entangled in fishing line and floating garbage stand out like obscenities.
Nowadays I also notice what’s happening out of the water along the shorelines. I see more and more people building houses on the beach, and bulkheads to protect them. I wonder if these homeowners know what I’ve come to learn in the last year: bulkheads are bad for fish, especially salmon.
Last spring I began working on behalf of my mother to preserve her home that sits above a very similar beach on the sound northwest of downtown Seattle. Since then I’ve had to learn about beaches and the walls that protect them, hydraulics and tidal habitats, permits and bureaucracies. In short, I have found out what it means to own waterfront property in the Pacific Northwest since the federal government named several runs of Northwest salmon, including Puget Sound Chinook, as threatened or endangered species. Bulkheads which destroy beach habitat and take away the natural hiding places salmon fingerlings use to evade predators–have been targeted as part of the problem.
In 1962, the year of the Seattle World’s Fair, my parents moved from Washington’s dry interior to its coast. My father had long been in love with Seattle. When he found the waterside cottage on a tiny road at the foot of Seattle’s Magnolia Bluff, he felt God had led him there. The cottage had only two bedrooms and 1,200 square feet, but it looked out over a terraced rose garden to Puget Sound’s pulsing waters. There ferries floated like giant birthday cakes; the lights of West Seattle and Bainbridge Island glowed in the distance. Winter sunsets silhouetted the Olympic Mountains in gold, orange and fuchsia. Raccoons came to the porch to beg for food, and herons patrolled the shore. My parents were enchanted. This was their Camelot. They continually exclaimed at their luck at being able to live out their years in such a spot.
But as property values leapt, their income and health declined with retirement and age. The house became their major investment, and one they could barely afford. My father managed through innovation and a tight budget. He hired teenagers instead of contractors to make house repairs. When he could no longer walk the stairs to the beach, he checked the health of the bulkhead by sending others to photograph it with a Polaroid camera. When my father died in 1992, my mother believed she was provided for. “I have my pension and Social Security, and I have the house,” she told me. “I’ll be fine.”
Last winter, however, storms breached the bulkhead that keeps the water from encroaching on my mother’s house. By spring, the double row of wood pilings stood gaptoothed. The pilings were whittled to matchsticks by waves and debris. It was clear the bulkhead would have to be replaced before the bank eroded entirely and my mother’s rose garden lay on the beach.
At the time I thought the hardest thing would be finding the money to make repairs. What I didn’t know was that we might not even be allowed to make them. Since many Northwest salmon have been identified as endangered, construction that disturbs the beach is prohibited between March and June–the time of year when salmon fingerlings find their way seaward. In Washington state, the Department of Ecology has proposed a regulation that would keep new bulkheads of any kind from being built under most circumstances. Even now I have been told that unless my mother’s property can be exempted from federal jurisdiction, we can expect our petition to replace her bulkhead to be refused.
Like the tide, I am tugged in two directions. My mother is depending on me to help preserve her home and her future. At the same time I worry about the salmon that are unable to spawn because of degradation of streams by logging, by dams on the rivers–and bulkheads on the beaches.
It was easier to rally for cleaner water, for protection of wildlife, before it got personal. I believe none of us are exempt from caring for the environment, but how can I sacrifice my mother’s well-being? I hope for a miracle–a solution that provides a safe haven for salmon, a safe home for my mother.
