PORT ANGELES — Itty-bitty bugs have become the mayflies in the ointment, so to speak, in a stream-cleanup funding dispute between Clallam County and the state Department of Ecology.
At issue is state money to track and eliminate pollution in segments of upper Bell Creek, upper Cassalery Creek, lower Ennis Creek, and lower Lees Creek.
The bugs are called benthic macroinvertebrates — underwater insects in layman’s language — whose presence or absence in a stream indicates its health.
Clallam County’s volunteer Streamkeepers periodically dig into creek bottoms to collect the bugs and send them to a laboratory where they are counted and sorted. The analysis tells water-quality experts if the creek is polluted.
The hitch is that the bugs themselves don’t always reveal the type of pollution, such as fecal coliform from malfunctioning septic tanks, heavy metals from highway runoff, or overwarmed water resulting from loss of shade on stream banks.
And it’s that hitch that prompted Ecology to list some Clallam County creeks in a category that requires no cleanup.
Bug analysis
Streamkeepers coordinator Ed Chadd and water planner Valerie Streeter told Clallam County commissioners Monday that the bug analysis — formally called the benthic index of biological integrity, or BIBI — is sufficient to prove pollution.
They want the state’s money to track the pollution to its source and eliminate it.