NEWS RELEASE -- Released jointly by the City of Olympia, Port of Olympia, Thurston County, LOTT Alliance, and Washington State University Thurston County Extension:

Olympia, WA. By mid-April, five agencies are expected to formalize an agreement to work as partners to develop an action plan for Budd Inlet restoration. The agencies are: the City of Olympia, Port of Olympia, Thurston County, LOTT Alliance, and Washington State University Thurston County Extension. The consortium grew from a joint meeting held in 2007 between the Olympia City Council and the Port of Olympia Commission.

“To our knowledge, we are the first consortium of Puget Sound local communities and agencies to step forward with an agreement to work together on action planning and implementation,” says Olympia City Manager Steve Hall. “We are in close contact with the Puget Sound Partnership appointed by Governor Gregoire and the State Department of Ecology.”

Christmas morning, at 7:29 A.M. will be the highest tide of the year: 17.1 feet in Olympia

Please join a few of us fools at the Kissing Couple statue that morning (4th and Water Street) to see how much freeboard Olympia has left. With 3 feet of sea level rise predicted this century, our town will have some challenges.

The highest recorded tide in Olympia was December 15, 1977, at 17.94 feet. That flooded much of downtown. It depends on two things: the height of the tide, and the amount of rain filling the Deschutes. The extended forecast for Christmas week calls for showers, which will probably not be enough to cause flooding. BUT, it will be an impressive tide, nonetheless.

Strub guessed that about 10-15%, or 100,000 to 150,000 gallons per hour, of that was actual human waste, adding, "that's really impossible to know right now, and is based on normal calculations."

This is not a normal scenario.

"This is the first time in 16 years we've seen anything like this." Strub stated. The treatment plant is designed to handle no more than 30 million gallons of untreated water per day, and the initial deluge was near 79 million gallons, completely overwhelming the system. Letting the water flow into Bud Inlet is the only real option, as the only other scenario forces the under-treated water into downtown Olympia, which would cause a health and comfort disaster.

Keep an eye on this post for a follow-up tomorrow.