Nearly every time heavy rain falls in north Puget Sound in Washington state, high levels of fecal bacteria flow into Samish Bay, disrupting work at Taylor Shellfish Farms, the largest shellfish producer in the United States.
The bay has been choked by many sources, including animal and human waste, broken septic tanks and farmland runoff. It’s been so bad the past two years that health officials have closed the bay to shellfish harvesting for more than 100 days.
Now state officials have responded with an ambitious cleanup campaign for Puget Sound, the nation’s second-largest estuary, just behind Chesapeake Bay — which also is struggling with an unhealthy diet of urban wastewater and agricultural runoff.
In Washington state, they’ve stepped up inspections, in some cases going door-to-door to track down who is contributing to the pollution. Antipollution workers are using DNA testing to pinpoint whether waste is coming from humans or animals.
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