Shoreline protection is honorable after all.

Environmental Insight With a Touch of Real Science
by Don Flora (a real scientist and Bainbridge shoreline homeowner)

Six months ago I summarized “science” doctrine about bulkheads, all of which declared bulkheads bad for the environment. I asked, “Where is the research?” and “What are the numbers?”

Lo and behold, I hadn’t noticed a couple batches of existing numbers. They come from shoreline inventories conducted by Bainbridge Island and Kitsap County. The inventories included human-built “stressors” like docks and bulkheads, plus natural habitats including eelgrass beds, forage-fish spawning areas, and the extent of seaweed and kelp.

These things were tallied for each of the hundreds of beach reaches around eastern Kitsap and Bainbridge Island for which data was available. Then a consulting firm combined the data in various ways to develop, for each shoreline reach, an index number intended to summarize habitat welfare in each reach.

Partnership preparing for shoreline moratorium battle.

According to an article in the Kitsap Sun, the Puget Sound Partnership is preparing several requests for the coming legislative session. One of them is a shoreline moratorium that would halt construction of bulkheads and docks in “sensitive areas” until new rules are approved.

Because of the importance of “feeder bluffs,” which create gravel beaches, as well as spawning areas for small forage fish, one proposal would halt shoreline construction in the vicinity of these areas. Degradation could be reduced until new rules and incentives are in place.

State Rep. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island, cited her city’s legal defeat over a shoreline moratorium and recommended against such temporary measures. What may be needed instead, she said, is better enforcement of existing rules through permits issued by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Josh Baldi of the Washington Department of Ecology said his agency has not yet decided whether to support the idea. Existing shoreline rules require “no net loss” of ecological function, he said. If that’s not happening now, is a moratorium the solution?

Harm from nearshore development almost zero.

Environmental Insight With a Touch of Real Science
by Don Flora (a real scientist and Bainbridge shoreline homeowner)

Editor’s note: For the last dozen or so years, shoreline protection and restoration activists have worked feverishly to prove that Puget Sound has been “destroyed” by armoring and other human activities. As Dr. Flora has shown, their own data disproves their hypothesis. Unfortunately, few planners at the state or local level have scientific credentials. They believe what they want to believe and we pay the price.

A well-known Northwest contract-research firm has shown that a broad array of man-caused features along tidewater shores have no meaningful impact on “ecosystem functions”. Despite an obviously vigorous and fairly complex effort, a relationship between human-installed “stressors” and habitat factors was not found.

Statistical analyses of the studies’ data show that little of the variation in ecosystem (habitat) functions can be explained by a large basket of stressors. The correlation of multiple stressors with the welfare of nearshore habitats is not significantly different from zero (Bainbridge Island) or extremely low (East Kitsap County).

“Best available science” and the law.

by Dennis D. Reynolds, Land Use Attorney, Bainbridge Island

At the request of the Common Sense Alliance (“CSA”), I comment on the State of Washington Department of Ecology (“Ecology”) and its best available science (BAS).

Ecology has stated both in writing and orally to San Juan County officials and citizens that its compilation of science for wetland and marine buffers is “the” best available science. According to Ecology officials, its science has been “vindicated” by the Growth Management Hearings Board and by the courts. The agency has also stated that its science is “peer-reviewed”, so beyond reproach.

No proof that bulkheads harm shoreline.

Peter Ruggiero, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University

The shores of Puget Sound are rapidly being hardened and covered with artificial structures. While shoreline armoring often succeeds in protecting upland investments, shoreline armoring activities are hypothesized to represent a significant source of nearshore morphodynamic and marine habitat modification in Puget Sound.

Shoreline armoring is believed to affect physical processes in many ways, primarily by causing beach narrowing, sediment coarsening, and a decrease in the natural sediment supply from eroding bluffs. Shoreline armoring is also thought to affect biological processes through loss of upper intertidal habitat, changes in sediment composition, and decreased organic input.

However, it has not been confirmed in the field or the laboratory whether currents and sediment transport rates will increase or decrease in front of a hardened shoreline, as compared to a non-armored section of beach, and whether the sedimentary environment will be significantly modified.

Does science justify bulkhead rules?

from an email to Puget Sound Shoreline Planners by Hugh Shipman,
Coastal Geologist, WA Department of Ecology (emphasis added)

Shoreline armoring (seawalls, bulkheads, riprap) is one of the more challenging issues we all deal with on Puget Sound. In May, a group of us (Ecology, WDFW, UW, Corps, USGS) organized a three-day workshop intended to pull together the limited amount of science that has been done the effects of armoring. Our focus was the applicability to Puget Sound, but we tapped experts from around the country.

The workshop confirmed 1) the challenges of managing armoring – not just here, but everywhere, 2) the limited scientific research that has been done on the impacts of armoring on either geologic or ecologic processes, and 3) the difficulty of applying the science that has been done elsewhere to Puget Sound given the unique aspects of our system.

It’s getting pretty deep around here.

Longtime shoreline residents tell many interesting stories about their dealings with the COBI planning department and specifically the shoreline stewardship team. An interesting, recurring theme is that the possibility of sea level rise and flooding due to global warming argues against shoreline development.

On March 28, 2009, Christopher Booker of The Sunday Telegraph wrote…

According to Swedish geologist and physicist Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, former chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change, “Despite fluctuations down as well as up, the sea is not rising. It hasn’t risen in 50 years.” If there is any rise this century it will “not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm”.

The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on “going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world”. And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by Al Gore and Co. could not possibly come about.”