10 years ago 1997
A boat. A river. A line dropped over the side. It sounds like your typical fishing expedition, but city public works employees will be fishing for information about pollution. At the recommendation of Earthtech, the consulting firm hired by the city, the Arlington City Council on Sept. 16 agreed to change the way water quality is monitored downstream from the citys wastewater treatment plant. Rather than taking readings of dissolved oxygen concentrations at two stationary spots downriver, Earthtech recommends taking readings from a variety of locations in the river. The new method requires a person and a boat and a lot more time in the lab. The hope is to identify sources of pollution that arent attributable to the sewer plant, such as stormwater runoff from farms or other sources, said Public Works Director Ken Reid. According to the Department of Ecology standards, the level of dissolved oxygen in the river at any given time and at any given place should be at least 8.0 mg/l. The more dissolved oxygen in the river, the better quality the water. The levels vary every day higher in the afternoon and lower in the mornings. Earthtech measured the dissolved oxygen levels in August at two locations downstream from the sewer outfall at a time when the river level was low. The results at one of the test locations showed a lower than acceptable amount of dissolved oxygen. Thats bad news for the city because a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit allowing more discharge probably would not be allowed by the Department of Ecology. Currently, the citys sewer treatment plant processes about 800,000 gallons of raw sewage a day. The new plant, when completed, will have the capacity to handle 2 million gallons a day. Currently, the citys permit allows 1 million gallons a day of discharge. Once the new plant is online, the city could process twice that if they can get a permit that allows more. Securing the permit, however, could depend on how much pollution is already in the river. Were looking down the line to when we need to increase the flow. With the new plant, we will have more capacity, Reid said. The more straightforward or simplistic the water quality testing approach, the more assumptions are being made, Reid said. By using the simpler approach, its easy to make the wrong conclusions on the conservative side. We want to make sure that is not the case. Its worthwhile to broaden our approach. Its also our hope it will enhance our permitting process. Earthtech agrees, noting in a report to the City Council that collecting data at stationary locations limits the usefulness of the information to identify other potential sources of biological oxygen demand. Some of those sources may be coming from upstream. We want to see what the existing levels of contaminants are, Reid said. We want to try to isolate what the relative contributions are. Including those that the city issues into the river. What will be done with the information, however, is not known. The city cannot control pollutants from upstream. That would come at the directive of the Department of Ecology. In order to secure a new permit, however, the city could be required to upgrade the treatment facilities. The new monitoring plan is to identify all sources of pollution that may be affecting the dissolved oxygen concentration in the river. To do that, Earthtech is proposing to do continuous monitoring along the river and take a close look at other factors. Water samples will be collected by city personnel at one-mile intervals and from tributary streams, including the outfall, to be analyzed in the citys wastewater lab. To do that, a Datasonde 3 unit is suspended from a shallow draft boat or raft to continuously monitor water quality parameters while drifting with the current downstream. Early morning and late afternoon measures will be made.
The citys new $5.8 million wastewater treatment plant is about half complete and still scheduled to go online at the end of March, according to Public Works Director Ken Reid. Weve had no trouble with the weather, he said. Most of the critical work was done before the rain hit. The laborers probably wont like it much, though, he said. Concrete slabs and walls must still be poured, but the construction site is in good shape, he said.

25 years ago 1982
The half-dozen people who turned out last Thursday at the Arlington City Hall for the drop-in session on the site selection process for the countys new garbage landfill set a record of sorts. Previous similar informational meetings had generated even less public interest when held elsewhere in the county. At a meeting the week before in Monroe, no one showed up. But just wait a year. Then the angry crowds will turn out. Last weeks meeting was just a first step in the site selection process a public discussion of the criteria to be used in making that selection. A year from now, maybe even sooner, the county will announce their final three or four choices for a landfill site to meet the countys needs into the next century. Then, no doubt, the public will come pouring out to scream that the county is pulling a fast one, trying to sneak a landfill onto their backyards. Federal law requires that the local Bryant dump be closed by the end of 1985. The Cathcart Sanitary Landfill, near Clearview, will be filled to its current capacity by 1987, possibly stretched to 1989. Snohomish County annually generates about 210,000 tons of garbage, enough to fill Seattles Kingdome every four and a half years. The county has learned its public relations lesson from their disastrous experience in the selection process for the Cathcart landfill. Then the site selection ordeal was farmed out to a private consultant that made what was probably a logical choice, but because the process had only minimal public involvement, the public felt the county had conspired to foist the Cathcart site on that community. This time around, the county is going out of their way to make the whole site selection process as open as possible, in hopes of diffusing public anger. The criteria for choosing a new site is the first step, said Richard Owings, the countys Solid Waste Division manager. The County Council is expected to formally approve the criteria in the near future. It would seem the selection criteria, particularly the references to locating the site reasonably near Everett and South County, where most of the garbage comes from, would rule out the chance of the new landfill being placed anywhere in the Arlington area. Not so, said Owings. He noted that each of the criteria is weighted or given a certain value and every potential site will have its total values judged. While proximity to the source is important, so are soil and population characteristics, among others. In other words, Owings said, if there are no suitable sites in South or East County, the landfill might very well end up near here. Local residents will have to wait almost a year to learn the good or bad news.

50 years ago 1957
A 10-year service pin was presented to Paul Van Horn last Thursday by Harry Downs, meteorologist in charge of the U.S. Weather Bureau service at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, for having completed 10 years as a river rainfall observer at Arlington for the weather bureau. Van Horn is a city employee, superintendent of the water department, and each morning checks the precipitation for the previous 24 hours, and also checks the stage of the river flow. He started the program in February 1947. Downs said the data furnished by the various observers is valuable and is used by several government agencies. Downs left at The Times office some information as to the flooding in the Stillaguamish Valley, which shows that the 15 ft. reading on the river gage is the bankfull stage, with the 16 ft. reading regarded as the flooding stage. The chart shows that Dec. 9, 1956, the river reached the 19 ft. stage, also Feb. 10, 1951, it reached 19.1 During this period, according to the record, eight homes were destroyed in the valley, 275 received major damage, while two farm buildings were destroyed and 30 received damage. A total of 450 families were affected by the flood in the valley, according to the record.