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Restoring Life in Running Waters

Better Biological Monitoring

ISLAND PRESS

Premise 1

Water resources are losing their living components

Despite strong legal mandates and massive expenditures, signs of continuing degradation in biological systems are pervasive—in individual rivers (Karr et al. 1985b), U.S. states (Moyle and Williams 1990; Jenkins and Burkhead 1994), North America (Williams et al. 1989; Frissell 1993; Wilcove and Bean 1994), and around the globe (Hughes and Noss 1992; Moyle and Leidy 1992; Williams and Neves 1992; Allan and Flecker 1993; Zakaria-Ismail 1994; McAllister et al. 1997). Aquatic systems have been impaired, and they continue to deteriorate as a result of human society's actions (Table 1).

Devastation is obvious, even to the untrained eye. River channels have been destroyed by straightening, dredging, damming, and water withdrawal for irrigation and industrial and domestic uses. Degradation of living systems inevitably follows. Biological diversity in aquatic habitats is threatened; aquatic biotas have become homogenized through local extinction, the introduction of alien species, and declining genetic diversity (Moyle and Williams 1990; Whittier et al., 1997a). As recently as a century ago, a commercial freshwater fishery second only to the one in the Columbia River flourished in the Illinois River, Illinois. Now it is gone, and the one in the Columbia is nearly gone. Since the turn of the twentieth century, commercial fish harvests in U.S. rivers have fallen by more than 95%.

Even where commercial and sport catches of fish and shellfish are permitted, one can no longer assume that those harvests are safe to eat (U.S. EPA 1996a). In 1996, fish consumption advisories were imposed on 5% of the river kilometers in the United States (www.epa.gov/OST/fishadvice/index.html"). The number of fish advisories is rising. The 2193 advisories reported for U.S. water bodies in 1996 represent an increase of 26% over 1995 and a 72% increase over 1993. For millennia, humans have depended on the harvest from terrestrial (including agricultural), marine, and freshwater systems for food. But the supply of freshwater foods has collapsed. How would society respond if agricultural productivity declined by more than 80% or if eating "farm-fresh" products threatened our health? Why then do we continue to ignore such changes in "wild-caught" aquatic resources?

Current programs are not protecting rivers or their biological resources because the Clean Water Act has been implemented as if crystal-clear distilled water running down concrete conduits were the ultimate goal (Karr 1995b). For example, at least $473 billion was spent to build, operate, and administer water-pollution control facilities between 1970 and 1989 (Water Quality 2000 1991). Yet the decline continues, and money is wasted on inadequate or inappropriate treatment facilities (Karr et al. 1985a; Box 1).

In many respects, society has been lulled into believing that our individual and collective interests in water resources are protected by national, state, and local laws and regulations. We have had faith in the outdated "prior appropriation doctrine" of American frontier water law, the implementation of the Clean Water Act, or "wild and scenic river" designation when, in fact, our habits as a society and the way we have implemented our laws have progressively compromised our fresh waters.

Premise 2

"Clean water" is not enough

Society relies on freshwater systems for drinking water, food, commerce, and recreation as well as waste removal, decomposition, and aesthetics. Yet in the Pacific Northwest alone, recent declines in salmon runs and closures of sport and commercial fisheries have led to economic losses of nearly $1 billion and 60,000 jobs per year (Pacific Rivers Council 1995). Retaining the biological elements of freshwater systems (populations, species, genes), as well as the processes sustaining them (mutation, selection, fish migration, biogeochemical cycles), is crucial to retaining the goods and services fresh waters provide (Table 2).

Waters and fish travel over vast distances in space and time. The integrity of water resources thus depends on processes spanning many spatial and temporal scales: from cellular mechanisms producing local and regional adaptations to a massive transfer of energy and materials as fish migrate between the open ocean and mountain streams. Protecting the elements and processes society values therefore demands a broad, all- encompassing view—one not yet encouraged by conventional management strategies and terminology.

In particular, the word pollution must take on broader connotations. In conventional usage and agency jargon, pollution refers to chemical contamination. A more appropriate, yet little-used, definition that more accurately represents what is at stake as water resources decline is the definition given by the 1987 reauthorization of the Clean Water Act: pollution is any "man-made or man-induced alteration of the physical, chemical, biological, or radiological integrity of water." Under this definition, humans degrade or "pollute" by many actions, from irrigation withdrawals to overharvesting, not merely by releasing chemical contaminants.

Premise 3

Biological monitoring is essential to protect biological resources

Despite their faith in and reliance on technology, humans are part of the biological world. Human life depends on biological systems for food, air, water, climate control, waste assimilation, and many other essential goods and services (Costanza et al. 1997; Daily 1997; Pimentel et al. 1997). It is therefore vital for us to assess resources in terms of their biological condition. The criteria and standards by which we judge whether an activity has an impact—the endpoints that we monitor—must be explicitly biological.

Degradation of water resources begins in upland areas of a watershed, or catchment, as human activity alters plant cover. These changes, combined with alteration of stream corridors, in turn modify the quality of water flowing in the stream channel as well as the structure and dynamics of the channel and its adjacent riparian environments. Biological evaluations focus on living systems, not on chemical criteria, as integrators of such riverine change. In contrast, exclusive reliance on chemical criteria assumes that water resource declines have been caused by chemical contamination alone. Yet in many waters, physical habitat loss and fragmentation, invasion by alien species, excessive water withdrawals, and overharvest by sport and commercial fishers harm as much if not more than chemicals.

Even measured according to chemical criteria, water resources throughout the United States are significantly degraded (U.S. EPA 1992a, 1995; see Table 1). In 1990 the states reported that 998 water bodies had fish advisories in effect, and 50 water bodies had fishing bans imposed. More than one-third of river miles assessed by chemical criteria did not fully support the "designated uses" defined under the Clean Water Act. More than half of assessed lakes, 98% of assessed Great Lakes shore miles, and 44% of assessed estuary area did not fully support designated uses (U.S. EPA 1992a).

By September 1994, the number of fish consumption advisories had grown to 1531 (U.S. EPA 1995). Seven states (Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, and Florida) issued advisories against eating fish from state waters in 1994. Fish consumption advisories increased again in 1995, by 12%; the advisories covered 46 chemical pollutants (including mercury, PCBs, chlordane, dioxin, and DDT) and multiple fish species. Forty-seven states had advisories, representing 15% of the nation's total lake acres and 4% of total river miles. All the Great Lakes were under advisories. For the first time, EPA reported that 10 million Americans were at risk of exposure to microbial contaminants such as Cryptosporidium because their drinking water was not adequately filtered (U.S. EPA 1996c). For the same year, the Washington State Department of Ecology reported that "80 percent of the hundreds of river and stream segments and half of the lakes tested by the state don't measure up to water quality standards" (Seattle Times 1996). Outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida, the "cell from hell," have killed millions of fish and were also implicated in human illnesses from Maryland to North Carolina in 1997 (Hager and Reibstein 1997).

Alarming as they are, these assessments still underestimate the magnitude of real damage to our waters because they generally do not incorporate biological criteria or indicators. When compared with strictly chemical assessments, those using biological criteria typically double the proportion of stream miles that violate state or federal water quality standards or designated uses (Yoder 1991b; Yoder and Rankin 1995a). The reasons for this result are simple. Although humans degrade aquatic systems in numerous ways, chemical measures focus on only one way. Some states rely on chemical surrogates to infer whether a water body supports the "designated use" of aquatic life; others measure biological condition directly (Davis et al. 1996). Only 25% of 392,353 evaluated river miles were judged impaired according to chemical standards intended to assess aquatic life. But when biological condition was assessed directly, 50% of the 64,790 miles evaluated in the United States showed impairment. In the Piedmont region of Delaware, for example, the physical habitat and biological quality of 90% of nontidal streams is impaired (Maxted 1997). Human-made dead-end canals in residential developments along coastal bays in Delaware and Maryland support only one-seventh to one-twentieth of the species richness, abundance, and biomass of natural coastal bays (Maxted et al. 1997).

Perhaps more important, these numbers suggest that we know more about the condition of water resources than we actually do. Sadly, despite massive expenditures and numerous efforts to report water resource trends, "Congress and the current administration are short on information about the true state of the nation's water quality and the factors affecting it" (Knopman and Smith 1993). Because assessments emphasize chemical contamination rather than biological endpoints, state and federal administrators are not well equipped to communicate to the public either the status of or the trends in resource condition. Further, because few miles of rivers are actually assessed, and because those that are assessed are often sampled inappropriately (e.g., without probability-based surveys; Larsen 1995, 1997; Olsen et al., in press), percentages of impaired river miles are extremely rough at best.

In short, despite explicit mandates to collect data to evaluate the condition of the nation's water resources, and the existence of a program intended to provide an inventory under section 305(b) of the Clean Water Act, no program has yet been designed or carried out to accomplish that goal (Karr 1991; Knopman and Smith 1993). Rather, for years most state agencies operated as if more chemical monitoring were better. They continued to amass extensive data files and voluminous but indigestible reports—despite evidence that their data had little effect on water resource programs (McCarron and Frydenborg 1997). Granting permits for specific water uses, judging compliance, enforcing regulations, and managing watersheds all depend on the availability of accurate information about water resource condition. Yet agencies persisted in "studying the system to death" (McCarron and Frydenborg 1997). In many cases, by the time proof came that aquatic system health had declined, it was too late for effective prevention efforts, and restoration was too costly.

Such problems are clearly an important force driving recent state actions; 42 states now use multimetric assessments of biological condition, and 6 states are developing them. Only 3 states were using multimetric biological approaches in 1989 (Davis et al. 1996), and none had them in 1981 when the first multimetric IBI article was published. Indeed, hardly any effective biological monitoring programs were in place before 1981. Most states still have a long way to go toward collecting and using biological data to improve the management of their waters.

Because they focus on living organisms—whose very existence represents the integration of conditions around them—biological evaluations can diagnose chemical, physical, and biological impacts as well as their cumulative effects. They can serve many kinds of environmental and regulatory programs when coupled with single-chemical toxicity testing in the laboratory. Furthermore, they are cost-effective. Chemical evaluations, in contrast, often underestimate overall degradation, and overreliance on chemical criteria can misdirect cleanup efforts, wasting both money and natural resources (see Box 1). Because they focus on what is at risk—biological systems—biological monitoring and assessment are less likely to underpro-tect aquatic systems or to waste resources.

Biological evaluations and criteria can redirect management programs toward restoring and maintaining "the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters." Assessments of species richness, species composition, relative abundances of species or groups of species, and feeding relationships among resident organisms are the most direct measure of whether a water body meets the Clean Water Act's biological standards for aquatic life (Karr 1993). To protect water resources, we should track the biological condition of water bodies the way we track local and national economies, personal health, and the chemical quality of drinking water.

Premise 4

"Health" and "integrity" are meaningful for environmental management

Webster's dictionaries define health as a flourishing condition, well-being, vitality, or prosperity. A healthy person is free from physical disease or pain; a healthy person is sound in mind, body, and spirit. An organism is healthy when it performs all its vital functions normally and properly, when it is able to recover from normal stresses, when it requires minimal outside care. A country is healthy when a robust economy provides for the well-being of its citizens. An environment is healthy when the supply of goods and services required by both human and nonhuman residents is sustained. To be healthy is to be in good condition.

Despite—or perhaps because of—the simplicity and breadth of this concept, the intellectual literature is rife with arguments on whether it is appropriate to use health in an ecological context. Is it appropriate to speak of "ecological health" or "river health"?

The arguments mounted against health as an ecologically useful concept go something like the following. Suter (1993) insists that health is an inappropriate metaphor because it is not an observable ecological property. According to Suter, health is a property of organisms, a position that acknowledges only the first, and narrowest, of the dictionary's definitions. Scrimgeour and Wicklum (1996) believe that no objective ecosystem state can be defined that is preferable to alternative states. Calow (1992) asserts that the idea of health in organisms involves different principles from the concept "as applied to ecosystems." He distinguishes between applying the concept in a weak form to signal normality (an expected condition) and in a strong form to signal the existence of an active homeostatic process that returns disturbed systems to normality. The strong form, he suggests, requires a system-level control that does not exist in ecosystems. Neither does such a homeostatic control exist in any dictionary definition of health. Why, then, must this notion be central to health in an ecological context?

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Excerpted from Restoring Life in Running Waters by James R. Karr, Ellen W. Chu. Copyright © 1999 Island Press. Excerpted by permission of ISLAND PRESS.
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