By Greg Ferguson and Jane O’Dell
December 6, 2025
Link to My Edmonds News article
On Oct. 16, a group of Edmonds-Woodway High School students with the Students Saving Salmon Club were performing routine water quality testing in Shellabarger Creek when they saw something disturbing: a young coho smolt swimming weakly on its side. On the shore nearby was another dead coho smolt.
Testing the water may provide some information about the cause of fish death but the timing is suggestive. Edmonds-Woodway biology teacher and Students Saving Salmon faculty advisor David Millette noted that the dead and struggling juvenile coho were found immediately after the second atmospheric river (storm) of the season. Large storms produce heavy runoff from nearby streets, which reaches the streams without any filters or treatment. “We don’t know whether the salmon were killed by the chemical 6PPDQ, a component of tires that’s left as particles on our roads, but we know it is very toxic to salmon,” Millette said. “Large amounts of tire rubber particles were probably still on the road after our very dry summer. The Edmonds Marsh sits at the bottom of Willow and Shellabarger Creeks and absorbs the road runoff from most of the South Edmonds Bowl, he said.
The students of Students Saving Salmon are working to restore salmon in local creeks, gathering data and helping with local projects. They understand that we need to consider both short- and long-term initiatives to create an environment where they, and the salmon, can succeed. There is an initiative to bring “salmon safe” tires to the market, but meanwhile we can think about stormwater.
In a six-part article published by My Edmonds News last year, retired stormwater manager and Pilchuck Audubon Society President Bill Derry discussed stormwater solutions. “We can sweep streets more frequently, especially starting early in the fall, to reduce accumulated build-up; bioretention of stormwater in the upper watershed is very effective, too. Think rain gardens,” he advises. “For the longer term we need to install stormwater filters in our catch basins or build separate stormwater filters so that pollution does not flow into streams.”
The Washington State Department of Ecology recently installed a 6PPDQ sensor in a nearby Edmonds stream, Shell Creek, which currently supports Edmonds’ only recurring salmon runs. To get more information about this installation and about the deadly tire chemical 6PPDQ, visit the new YouTube channel, Edmonds, Naturally.