I get questions about the benefits of the Stillwaters Fish Passage (aka “the Bridge”) at the mouth of the estuary all the time, which is nice. I’m glad folks are curious and concerned about the estuary.

Most of these questions can be answered by “too soon to tell.” Since environmental changes that are natural mostly happen gradually, over decades, most of the changes are not blatant yet. That’s why staff and volunteers at Stillwaters will be monitoring for at least 10 years after the culvert replacement.

Here are some of those FAQs, with my answer at the moment. It’s an ongoing process:
— What do you do with the data you get? The data is sent to a variety of places — departments of Ecology and Fish & Wildlife, Cornell’s EBird, and the Nature Mapping Website — all of which are pretty obscure to most of us.

Also, Betsy Cooper writes a very interesting monthly article in the Kingston Community News, Water Ways, with some aspect of our data or observations explained. We also have a website of our own (the Carpenter Creek Journal), and finally found a person to work on this project of posting more information. Besides posting on websites he is taking data from all aspects of monitoring and trying to come up with methods to communicate it in understandable, interesting ways.

— Is the water cleaner, dirtier, the same? I don’t believe there is a lot of change in the water quality data, post-bridge. There are other factors that have had influence, such as a sewage line break in the cove which caused a spike in the fecal coliform reading in that area.

— Are there more fish in the creek? We do have salmon coming up Carpenter Creek this fall, and people have seen some really big fish around the bridge. Are there more or less? Tricky to measure.

We did seining and fish counts in the scour holes before construction and found thousands of fish and crabs using the estuary. And then, after bridge construction, we did fish seining in the spot where the scour hole used to be. But since the scour hole was no longer there to trap the fish, the numbers were much lower. This is a good thing, because it means the estuary is functioning like it should be, not trapping fish but allowing them to move around freely to wherever they want to be. The variety of fish species was about the same.

— If the sediment was built up and the flushing action provided by the larger culvert doesn’t clean it all out, what then? Silt that built up is definitely moving around, but not flushing out like gangbusters. There were some gradual changes in the path of the stream, banks that have changed their shapes, etc.

The bulkhead around the adjacent park was also removed as part of the project, and that bank is eroding with the winter high tides. We planted lots of shrubs above it and hope to plant more, to see if we can hold it a little and not lose too much of the park. I doubt there will ever be dredging in the estuary, but at one time, the idea was to see what the tides do for five or 10 years, and then decide.

Like I said, it takes years.

The local resident kingfisher, one that seems to be well-known and is called “Elvis,” is still around and fishing off the bridge railing.

Other bird activity seems about the same to this point. The bird survey crew sees some “cool” new things almost every month, but that’s been true for years. And then there are the months they see almost nothing, because it’s really cold or rainy and the birds are hiding.

— Is the salt marsh healthier with the culvert removed? The upper salt marsh is another story.

We need to get the West Kingston Road culvert out of there to get more salt water in there. We’re working on that. Right now, with Kitsap County and Great Peninsula Conservancy, we are working on a grant for design work for a bridge.

We are measuring the changes in the tidal inundation with a meter that stays in the water just in front of that culvert. So we’ll know if that first culvert replacement is making a difference in the amount of water getting into the estuary.

The culvert that was replaced under South Kingston Road was not “lipped,” so it may not have made a huge difference in the amount of water entering the estuary, as much as the velocity with which it was entering and exiting.

Replacing this second culvert will be different because it is “lipped.” That means it is sitting higher than the low-tide point, so you have to get quite a bit of water built up on the downstream side before it is enough to get through the culvert and move through to the upstream side (salt marsh). Replacing this second culvert should allow more tidal flow into the marsh.

— What are the trends that the monitoring has discovered? We don’t have other information yet, such as insect I.D., because we have to find someone with skills in that area. And the monitors are working twice a week to process all the sediment samples. They have finished the pre-bridge set, and will soon begin the post-bridge set. Fortunately, that is only done every three years.

It’s very tedious, but should be interesting and show some changes.

— Is the culvert doing what it is hoped it would do for the health of the estuary and the salt marsh? That is definitely an ongoing question. So far, it looks good, but stay tuned!

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Stillwaters is starting a new Sustainability Discussion Group. If you are interested, call 360-297-1226.

— Naomi Maasberg is director of Stillwaters Environmental Learning Center. Contact her at  naomi@stillwatersenvironmentalcenter.org.