The Port of Seattle says that people who fish or collect
shellfish from the Lower Duwamish Waterway may be invited to take part in a
voluntary survey over the next year to tell researchers about their fishing
habits.
The port, in conjunction with King County, the City of
Seattle and the Boeing Co., are conducting the survey at the direction of the
US Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Department of
Ecology in order to learn how to better protect people who collect and eat
seafood from the Duwamish Waterway.
Through the fall of 2015, staff from ECOSS, a south Seattle
nonprofit, will approach fishermen along the waterway to ask questions about
catching and eating fish and shellfish. The survey will take about 10-15
minutes to complete. Surveyors won’t ask for fishing license information, and information
gathered from fishermen will remain anonymous.
Researchers say they hope the survey results will support
better communication with communities and guide outreach to help fishers make
healthy choices about catching and eating seafood in the years leading up to,
during and following a Superfund cleanup. The Environmental Protection Agency
listed a five-mile segment of the river as a federal Superfund site in 2001
because of contaminants in the waterway sediments.
Early cleanup efforts by King County, City of Seattle, Port
of Seattle and Boeing began in 2004 and are expected to reduce contaminant
levels in waterway sediments by 50 percent even before Superfund cleanup begins
several years from now. These “early action” cleanups will be completed in
2015.
Additional information about the survey and cleanup is
available at http://yosemite.epa.gov/r10/cleanup.nsf/sites/lduwamish
