"The amount of stormwater that enters the water at the Ship Canal is ginormous"
Featuring Eric Autry, Sr. Environmental Compliance Inspector, Seattle Public Utilities’ Spill Response Program
74,948 feet of pipe
Saltwater Soundwalk SHORT
Eric Autry (Seattle Public Utilities)y: Yeah, I’m looking at a map of all the pipes that are underground, and then I can see where things kind of end up entering the water at the end of Stone Way. So that’s what I’m looking at.
My name’s Eric Autry. I’m a senior environmental compliance inspector, and I’m the lead of Seattle Public Utilities’ Spill Response Program. Our motto is, “Only rain down the drain.” You know, my whole job is to make sure that pollution isn’t getting into the water through the storm water system. There’s a really big, what we call a drainage basin. So the amount of stormwater that enters the water at the Ship Canal is ginormous. Like it goes on and on, all the way up to Greenlake. In fact, while I’m talking to you I’ll try and figure out the northern end of this basin, there’s a little button I can push…right here.
[click]
[Sighs] Alright. I am tracing Seattle Public Utilities pipes, King County pipes, University of Washington pipes, and private pipes; streams, ditches, culverts, and mainlines that end up discharging out of that pipe at the end of Stone Way. And let’s see what—let’s see what it does. It’s taking some computing here.
Alright yeah. So, it’s 74,948 feet of pipe. [Laughs] I’d tell you how many miles that is, but that’s math.
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