By Marianne Lincoln

Small fish, four to eight inches in length are rolling around, disoriented and flopping over on their backs and dying in Spanaway Lake. Reports have been coming in for a month in online social media.

At the recent Chambers Clover Watershed Council meeting, a group of experienced water watchers came together to discuss the problem.

Leading off the discussion was Tom Kantz, Watershed Services Supervisor at Pierce County. He told the group that county staff had been out to the lake to observe the situation and found the dying fish in the shore areas near Coffee Creek where they had been reported. The staff took some water samples for testing, samples from the creek and from the lake. The standard water tests performed did not identify a toxin or a reason for the die-off.

Sandy Williamson, a resident on Lakeside Drive, across the lake from Coffee Creek said he had seen dying fish in other locations around the lake. He identified them as juvenile bass in particular. Williamson is part of the group FOSL (Friends of Spanaway Lake) and had been involved with the Lake Management District that was formed to deal with water quality issues at the lake. He pointed out he had taken samples to a private lab and the samples were unusually high in iron.

Williamson asked Kantz if he had tested for iron. The answer was no. So, he recommended the county follow up on that clue.

Kantz was not convinced that the unpermitted culvert work done by contractors for the tiny home village was the source of the problem. Other local residents argued that before the culvert was changed, there was some pretty gross looking water backed up in the creek on JBLM.

Al Schmauder, a longtime local “creek rat” as he called it, chimed in that the situation was unusual and the county needed to make a serious effort to look into it further. He asked Kantz who was the agency specifically responsible for the fish die-off. Kantz noted that it is a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife issue. WDFW has been notified, but so far no one had heard of them making their way to the lake to investigate.

Kantz further suggested that more recently, Pierce County had been spreading deicing material and salt on the road over the creek. He planned to speak with Public Works about the contents of their road material.

Sean Arent of the Clover Creek Restoration Alliance, explained his observations of dying fish and the silt in the lake where Coffee Creek enters.

Another product that could play a role is 6PPD, a material used on car tires that has been found to be toxic to fish. Kim Underwood commented that the state laboratory at Manchester had developed a way to test for 6PPD. It is a very new process to separate this toxin out for identification in water. Kantz acknowledged this as correct.

A number of people in the group expressed concern that this has never happened before in the lake and how it coincided with the extensive construction work in the uplands of the watershed above the lake.

The situation is baffling the experts. WDFW needs to get out to the lake and do some testing. Pierce County will work on more possibilities and the local lake residents will continue to worry until an answer is found.

To be continued…