Fishing for trouble: Reporting on the human health risks of toxic waters

For years, I have wondered about the often overlooked economy of fishing in city waters. You can find people dropping fishing lines, nets, crab pots and crayfish traps into almost any urban waterway, anywhere in the country. When I lived in Washington, D.C., I noticed that groups of fishermen would cast lines into the Potomac River any time there was fair enough weather. According to one report, 17,000 people eat fish from the contaminated Anacostia River every year.

When I moved to the Puget Sound, I began to spot a regular gathering of fisherman in summer and fall near the Port of Seattle — often men from immigrant Asian and Latino communities — just in front of a Superfund site. And beyond them, in the open water, were the nets of tribal fishermen, part of one of the oldest fishing economies in North America. I thought about the legacies of pollution hidden in those waters, and I felt concerned about the people who, by choice or necessity, spend hours there trying to catch dinner. 

A fish in city waters swims in the residues of urban waste. Eat a fish, and you may get a dose of toxins — heavy metals, industrial chemicals and old pollutants like PCBs, which were banned decades ago but linger in the environment. States are supposed to set water pollution standards to protect the health of their most vulnerable residents — including those who eat local fish. In Washington state, that includes tribal people, who eat as much as 14 pounds of fish and shellfish a month. But the state’s water pollution standards have for decades reflected minimal, unrealistic calculations about fish-eating. This year, Washington decided to revisit its water quality standards, under heavy pressure from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The governor is adjusting the numbers, which could lead to minor reductions in industrial pollution. He has also pledged to try to phase out some types of industrial chemicals that end up in Washington waters. 

But there’s a larger and more complex problem that will be even more challenging to fix. In the Seattle metropolitan region, as in every urbanized part of the country, we face widespread pollution problems from not just industry but from accumulations of dirt and toxins all over the landscape — herbicides from golf courses and lawns, paint thinners, detergents, grease and engine oil dripped onto city streets. These types of pollution wash into the Puget Sound every time it rains. Stormwater pollution is now the worst source of toxins in the region’s waters, and fixing the problem will require big changes to the ways we build houses, design streets and do business.

Because I was writing for a national audience, I wanted to tell this larger story — about the ways that toxic urban runoff threatens Puget Sound and nearly every urban waterway — and why regulators have failed to keep up with the problem. I also wanted to humanize the people whose cultural and physical health faced the greatest risks from toxins in the water. I wanted to make the commercial and subsistence fishing economy real to readers who have rarely or never had to catch their own dinner. Tribes fish year-round in the heart of the city and in remote regions of Puget Sound, but they are barely visible to Seattle residents, unless they spend time on the water. Few people get out onto the water to take in the view from the middle of the Ballard Ship Canal or the Duwamish River — where tribal fishermen dangle nets not far from sewer outfall pipes, automobile junkyards and massive cargo ships.

As with any story that relies more on shoe-leather than desk reporting, this one required long hours and patience. I spent several hours on multiple days lingering at a dock, waiting for salmon fishermen to return from working their nets. The fishermen were busy — time spent talking to me could mean less fish, so I had to work around their schedules, which involved tides, weather and unpredictable wildlife encounters. I had to reschedule one interview because the fishermen were struggling to keep a sea lion from gobbling their catch for the day. Finally, one of the fishermen let me onto his boat on an early Sunday morning as he cleared debris from his nets and checked for fish.

I also wanted to capture a scene that involved the whole community. I traveled across the water, in the company of a Suquamish tribal member and commercial diver, and spent time at a clam dig, literally walking through muck to talk to elders and their family members and friends. You could see from this dig how tightly knit the community was, and how diet, economics and cultural and physical health were closely intertwined. 

Finally, I paddled a kayak onto the Duwamish River with a local environmental cleanup group led by a member of the Duwamish tribe. From there, I could witness the fishermen in action and an ecosystem struggling to thrive while surrounded by big industries. 

When The Nation magazine offered some additional budget to produce a small film, the filmmakers who joined the project (Riley Morton and veteran public television producer John de Graaf) and I continued the approach of seeking scenes that could illuminate human drama and tribal culture and make the story visible. Riley, John and I stepped aboard another boat on the Duwamish River, this time piloted by the environmental watchdog group, Puget Soundkeeper, which has had an important role in enforcing and strengthening stormwater regulations in this region. I also helped the video team set up a scene on a geoduck diving boat and connect with tribal biologists.

Stormwater is one of those problems that can make an audience’s eyes glaze over. Few people understand how dire it is and what risks it poses for beaches, lakes, rivers and water supplies. My goal here was to make the stakes clearer, by exposing the risks for one of the most vulnerable populations — and to show that solutions are possible. The print story concludes with a scene from the clam-dig that describes how the tribe, a nearby city government, regulators and environmentalists successfully cleaned up that beach. The film ends with a call to action from tribal shellfish policy advisor Paul Williams: “I think we’ve got a window of maybe 20 years before we’ve got to make some very significant changes.”

My story was also part of a special community engagement pilot program launched this year by NHJF. As the story wrapped up, Nation Action, an audience engagement and outreach arm of The Nation magazine, offered my sources the opportunity to share their ideas for a short piece called “10 Ways to Help Keep Fish Healthy and Water Clean.”

Stormwater is a collective problem that requires that we rethink how we use the landscape. As I describe in the story, the EPA has recently dropped its plans to create stronger standards for such pollution and says there needs to be a broad “nationwide constituency for better stormwater pollution control” before there are more regulations. Environmentalists are currently suing the EPA over this issue. The intent of the story was to reveal how all of us have a stake in cleaning up urban waters and explore what can be done.