♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Pam Halstead: We're here at the Arcata Marsh, here to explore the wildlife and the habitats.

I'm Palm Halstead, and this is "Field Trip."

♪♪♪ male: Taste like a pickle?

Pam: No, it tastes like salty.

male: But they are quackers.

Are you saying ducks are cannibals?

David Couch: I try to emphasize is you shouldn't flush trash down the toilet.

David: And the marshes just physically remove the algae from the water.

Rachael Garcia: Sometimes they can be tricky to see out here in the light, but we do have this awesome graphic over here if you want to take a look.

Pam: I'd love to see it.

Pam: George!

George Ziminsky: Pam!

How are you doing?

Pam: Good, thanks.

Perfect timing.

George: All right, well, we're out at the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary, which is 310 acres or so, right between the north end of Humboldt Bay and the town of Arcata, and it serves as a final stage of the wastewater treatment plant and then in addition to all the different habitats, there's trails all over the place here so folks can come out and exercise and just within minutes of leaving town find themselves in the midst of a great area with birds singing all around.

Pam: Excellent.

Let's explore.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ George: Yeah, let's go take a look over at Allen Marsh.

Over here in this corner is a good spot for birds.

We can see two snowy egrets, or great egrets, I guess they are.

They're white.

Pam: Yeah, I think they're great egrets.

George: White spots but-- Pam: Oh, they're so cool.

George: Well, the one on the--yeah, they're-- Pam: Oh my gosh, they're preening, George.

George: Yeah.

Pam: Wait a minute, is that a snowy, maybe?

Look at his feathers on the top of his head.

George: Oh yeah, and he's got yellow feet, so it is.

Pam: Okay, that's great.

George: Yeah, there we go, so.

Pam: Neat.

George: They're both snowy egrets which is the smaller of the white egrets that we have out here.

The bigger ones are the great egrets, and the biggest ones are the great blue herons, the bluish gray ones, that they're-- so, hopefully, we'll see one of those today too.

Pam: Oh yeah, that'd be awesome.

George: Ooh.

Pam: There's a fight.

There's a fight.

George: Uh-oh.

Pam: Oh, territory, territory.

George: Ooh, it's fisticuffs.

Guess they showed him.

All right.

Pam: "You stay away from here."

George: Yeah.

Pam: So what is it that they eat?

George: The egrets will eat fish, bugs, frogs.

Pam: I've seen them in the fields.

George: Yeah, yeah, they go after insects and I don't think--and snowy egrets go after fish, actually.

Sometimes you'll see them wading in the water and it's really cool.

They'll put their foot in front and shake it and then they'll try and, like, get the fish to come out and then they'll nab 'em, so that's really cool when you can see that.

Pam: That's a cool maneuver.

George: And then the great egrets are a little bit bigger.

I've seen them actually take rodents.

Yeah, they'll catch voles and frogs and stuff like that.

They're big enough to go after things like that.

George: Yup, yup, yup.

Yeah, it's getting ready to take over, so.

Yeah, invasive plants are--they're basically the bullies out here, you know, they can grow faster, bigger, and they make more seeds and-- don't try this at home, kids.

Hemlock can give some people rashes and stuff, but we just had a lot of rain so this stuff will actually, hopefully--see.

There we go.

It's got a big tap root.

Pam: That's so cool.

George: So this allows it to just suck up a lot of water and grow a lot faster than the other stuff.

The green and purple stems are what you wanna look out for, and the sap can kind of give you a rash.

And you definitely don't wanna eat the root, 'cause this is the most concentrated poisonous part, and they say Socrates was poisoned by hemlock root.

male announcer: And now, wise words of wisdom from knowledgeable wise men.

Socrates: Wait, I drank what?

George: These things would get this tall and you'd be walking down the trail here and not see it at all.

And this whole corner was really bad, but the last year we've worked with the volunteer trail stewards and had volunteer workdays for invasive plant removal, and we pulled all this and so where we were just standing with all the yellow blooming mustard there, there would have been a solid wall of hemlock and from the trail you couldn't see Allen Marsh and the birds or the view up towards campus and Fickle Hill, so.

So it's been really nice with a lot of community volunteer effort to make this a better trail experience for everybody.

Pam: Well, George, you've been telling us about this poison hemlock.

I was just wondering what is it that makes this--you were calling it an invasive or non-native species.

What makes it so successful?

George: Well, it grows really fast, and then as the plant grows up, it'll end up having lots and lots of seeds.

So if it was allowed to just grow up and then produce thousands of seeds and then just drop down, then it'll come back even thicker next year.

It's invasive.

It just takes over the space.

What do you have to say in your defense, hemlock?

hemlock: I'm just a sweet little plant.

Why don't you like me?

George: Because you're an invasive plant, and the native plants need all the help that they can get.

hemlock: I'm just doing everything I can to make it.

I'm trying to survive here.

George: On behalf of native plants, we're gonna evict you.

♪ In the arms of the angel.

Pam: It's wonderful to bring your dogs here to the marsh but one thing you should know is that you should have them on a leash because that's respectful for other people, and then the other thing is you should bring a bag so in case you need to clean their waste up, because leaving that around is just not cool.

Pam: Hey, that cool sound, George.

What is that bird?

George: Oh, all the marsh wrens?

Pam: Yes.

George: Yeah, they're all singing to kind of defend their territory and then also attract a mate.

We just saw one grabbing some cattail fluff.

Got a nest started somewhere.

There's gonna be several nests along this stretch of trail here.

And anywhere you can see cattails, there will be marsh wrens.

They build a couple of different nests.

Their mate decides which one she wants to move into, and then all the other ones are extra but then they work as decoys so that if a predator comes along and wants to have marsh wren chick for breakfast or eggs, it might put a lot of effort into an empty nest and then be like, "Agh, marsh wrens are off the menu.

Not worth the hassle."

Pam: Wow, that's amazing.

And very smart for the bird.

George: Yeah, yeah, it's cool how they come up with little strategies that enhance their chances of survival.

Pam: It is, it's a great thing.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ George: This is the Humboldt Bay owl's clover which is a threatened plant that has some protection.

You can see, not too far away, here are these big clumps of spartina or Chilean cordgrass, which is an invasive plant and you can see how much it's dominating right here.

It just grows into clumps that grow together and then it completely will crowd out where any of the other plants are, and you can see here, it's almost like a tapestry.

You can see there's pickleweed and other native plants here in a really nice mix and then that--there's more insect diversity here.

And if nothing was done, then this whole area would be spartina clumps.

Pam: So this is a unique area, isn't it?

I mean, if you're a plant, you have to be tolerant of some things, correct?

George: Correct, yeah, 'cause with the tides, this area is occasionally underwater, so everything that lives here has to be tolerant of brackish water.

Pam: What is brackish water?

George: It's water that's partially salty and so the water that comes in here is partially from James Creek which-- Pam: --is fresh water.

George: --comes in from the North, but then Humboldt Bay fills up on the high tides.

And where we're going to, they just took out a section of the levee about 8 or 9 years ago and so now this whole area is a brackish estuary.

Pam: Well, let's go find out.

Let's go check it out.

♪♪♪ George: Oh, here's one of the cool interpretative signs that provides all kinds of information out here, so as you wander around the marsh, you'll run into signs and since we're standing where James Creek meets Humboldt Bay, making this the estuary for James Creek, we have a little sign here that tells us what an estuary is, why it's important, and who uses it.

So this is a major habitat restoration project when they took out the big chunk of the levee and allowed this to be flooded.

Now this is known as the McDaniel Slough Restoration Project.

Pam: Wonderful.

Pam: There's a big group of birds over there, George.

What are they?

George: Those are dowitchers and there's some green-winged teal mixed in with them.

And then there's a gadwall just to the north of the coop.

Pam: That looks like a duck, George.

George: Gadwalls are ducks, and they're all considered waterfowl.

And then that's kind of a cool thing with shorebirds.

There's lots of different kinds and they have different length bills, and then that gives you a little hint as to what they eat.

Like, the godwits and the curlews have really long bills and they go after stuff, they can reach in and get stuff that's a little bit deeper and pull it out.

And off to the south, you can see the wastewater treatment plant, which we will be heading towards in a little while and you'll get a tour from Dave.

♪♪♪ Pam: We're here at the water treatment plant and I'm really interested in finding out about how this place is related to the marshes that we just saw.

David Couch: Well, the marshes are part of our wastewater treatment plant.

Over here, we kind of have what we call a conventional primary treatment plant.

The marshes are the final stage of our wastewater treatment.

This version of the treatment plant was funded by the Clean Water Act and went online in 1986 and we're getting ready to do a new upgrade of the wastewater treatment plant to comply with new state permit requirements.

Pam: Very good.

David: What people call the marsh, we call the enhancement wetlands, and the enhancement wetlands will have a lot more flow going through them in the future.

So we have to kind of redo the pump station, but they're gonna have all the flow going through them in the future instead of just part of the flow.

Pam: That sounds great.

Let's go.

David: All right, let's go.

♪♪♪ Pam: Hey, Dave, you said this is the first step.

This is primary treatment.

What's going on?

David: Well, this is the first stage of primary treatment, and we're standing on what we call the head works, so as we came up, we came up by our Archimedes' screw pumps which lift the water up so that we have enough fall for the water to go through the treatment process.

And then this structure on the head works, mainly we screen the wastewater to take out trash that we can't treat later on, so that's something I try to emphasize is you shouldn't flush trash down the toilet.

Pam: Do sinks--do sinks come here too, or the water from sinks as well?

David: Everything comes here from a household.

And then after this step of the process, the water flows over to what we call our primary clarifier behind us which is this big circular tank.

The solids settle at the bottom of the tank, so any feces, toilet paper, anything that'll settle out, goes to the bottom of that tank and we call that our primary sludge and we pump it over to the big tanks behind us that are anaerobic digesters.

Pam: You said "anaerobic."

What does that mean?

David: Well, inside the digesters, there's no oxygen.

They have a big lid on top of them, so as the solids break down, there's different bacteria that live in that anaerobic environment, and there's a lot of carbon in waste, so the carbon chains start getting cut up and we end up producing methane from the carbon chains and then the methane, we can either use it to heat the digester or we can just flare right off as a gas.

Pam: That's very cool, so it can be recycled then?

It can be actually used?

David: Yeah, some plants, like in Los Angeles where they have a row of 20 digesters and a lot of gas, then they run it through generators and produce electricity and they can produce most of the electricity that the plants need by recovering energy from the waste.

Pam: That's a money-saving thing, for sure, wow.

That's really cool.

So when it goes to those oxidation ponds, as you said, there is oxygen involved at that point.

David: Yeah, yeah, so they're just big open ponds that are 4 to 6 feet deep.

This is our oxidation ponds in what we call our treatment marshes.

So, behind us are our oxidation ponds.

So the water from our primary clarifier, which has received primary treatment, comes out to the oxidation ponds and then we have a lot of sun hitting the ponds and we have a lot of nutrients from the wastewater, so algae grow in the ponds and the algae produces oxygen, and the oxygen they produce treats the wastewater.

But then, because the algae are in there, that still counts as a pollutant if we discharge it, so behind this are what we call our treatment marshes which are another constructed wetlands we have down here, and they differ a little bit from the marsh in that the marsh we have lots of open water areas for wildlife habitat, but in our treatment marshes, we try to have a 100% canopy of vegetation growing out of them, so that's the difference in between what we call our treatment marshes versus the enhancement wetlands.

So, this is water coming from this side of the treatment plant after it's gone through the treatment marshes.

The marshes just physically remove the algae from the water, and so, you know, that's what we're using them for is as a filtration device to produce higher quality water.

It has a total solids content of about 50 parts per million.

This is water that's gone through the enhancement wetlands or what people call the Arcata Marsh, and it has a parts per million of total suspended solids of about 2, so from here to here, you can do a subtraction and see how much solids we took out of the water.

You can also figure out the per cent reduction that happened.

Pam: That sounds like a job for Number Woman.

♪♪♪ Number Woman: Thank you.

That's a great question.

When water goes through the treatment marshes and then goes through the enhancement wetlands at the Arcata Marsh, that solids content has a per cent decrease and what is that?

So what we're talking about is there are 50 parts per million of solids content in the enhancement marshes after the algae's been stripped out, but then that goes down to 2 parts per million in the enhancement wetlands and then we know that we started with 50 parts per million.

So then, what we're finding out is per cent decrease.

It's going down.

So, per cent decrease is what we always want, is the change that's happening over the original, so the change that's happening is the 48 parts per million because 50 minus 2 is 48, over the original 50 parts per million and then what's nice is the parts per million cancels.

Anything divided by itself is 1, that's the multiplicative identity, and then we get 48 over 50.

And when we have 48 over 50, which I said, is for per cent increase, is the change over the original, and you can do that for any per cent increase or decrease.

Then we need to turn it into per cent which is hundredths because there's 100 pennies in a dollar.

So per cent, how I can change that, is I can multiply 48 times 2, and 50 times 2, because 40 times 2 is 80, and 8 times 2 is 16, so 96 over 50 times 2 is 100.

Now it's in hundredths which we can write it in per cent.

So what we have is 96% decrease in solids content in terms of parts per million.

So that clear water is 96% decrease in that solids content.

That's amazing.

Anyway, back to you, Pam.

♪♪♪ David: So this is our disinfection facility where we disinfect the wastewater.

We inject chlorine gas into it and then it has this detention time as it goes through this raceway for the chlorine to react and basically kill off any bacteria or pathogens that might be in the wastewater.

And then, at the end of the basin, we use another gas called sulfur dioxide and that removes the chlorine from the water.

So, then the water goes out into Humboldt Bay from here.

And we're getting to a point where next September, we'll start to do a construction project where we're gonna switch, and instead of using chlorine gas, we're gonna go to using ultraviolet light as a disinfection process, and so that will eliminate the hazards we have with chlorine as well as sometimes when you chlorinate water to disinfect it, you make chlorine byproducts.

So we'll get away from all that and have kind of a new, state-of-the-art disinfection facility when we go to the UV disinfection.

Pam: Wow, that sounds really important.

David: Yeah.

Pam: So the algae, if left in the water, can actually cause problems, can't it?

David: Well, the algae in the water, when we--part of our discharge requirement is we run the water through a filter and then weigh what's left on the filter and that's called total suspended solids.

So the algae counts as total suspended solids.

So we have to reduce that below a certain point to meet our discharge requirements.

Pam: And if you left that in the water, over time the algae dies, bacteria breaks the algae down, and it's something called cultural eutrophication, which means that there's not as much oxygen in the water for other organisms?

David: Right, right.

♪♪♪ Pam: This is an amazing place.

Lots going on here, Dave.

What kind of birds are these and what are they doing?

David: Well, these are cliff swallows and they're building their nests and they'll be here from now till about the middle of July.

And one of the things here at the marsh is we like to use biological techniques to control problems, so with marshes and wetlands, we get lots of mosquitos and when the birds are here nesting, we have no mosquito problems, so we don't have to do any treatment to control mosquitos until the birds finish their nesting and fledge and leave, which is about the middle of July.

But this has just been one of those things that developed 'cause we have this food source so the birds have moved here to take advantage of the nesting opportunity as well as the food source, and the employees all used to hate 'em because they poop on cars and make a mess, but now everybody notices, hey, we don't have any mosquitos while they're here, so.

Pam: It's a win-win.

David: It's a win-win.

Pam: Thanks so much for the tour, Dave.

We really learned a lot.

David: Well, you're welcome.

I always enjoy doing tours.

Pam: Right now, I can't wait to go home and flush with pride.

George: Well, here we are at the Arcata Marsh Interpretive Center.

It's right along Butcher Slough and this wonderful native plant garden is here because of the California Native Plant Society and Friends of the Arcata Marsh that supplied the financing and the volunteers and the plant material.

It is so nice to walk up here and often see a hummingbird around and the pollinators love it, which is one of the good things about native plants, is that they've been here for a long time and everybody's used to interacting with them or counting on them for food or whatever.

That's why it's so much nicer to have native plants in your garden than exotic stuff from who knows where.

Native plants work well for everybody.

Go on inside the Interpretive Center and say Hello to Rachael.

I'm sure she'll be glad to answer any questions you have.

Pam: Thanks so much, George.

You've been really great.

♪♪♪ Pam: Hi.

Rachael Garcia: Hello, welcome to the Arcata Marsh Interpretive Center.

My name's Rachael.

How can I help you?

Pam: Tell me about this place, please.

It looks wonderful.

Rachael: Well, welcome.

This is a wonderful place where you can learn about local ecology and native plants and animals in our area.

This is our bookstore where we have a wide variety of different resources for learning.

We have activities for children, lots of different merchandise to check out if you wanna have a souvenir.

And then, right down here, is our main gallery area where we have exhibits on display about the wildlife, ecology, and the wastewater treatment plant as well.

Pam: Awesome.

Are there actually things we can do?

Rachael: Yeah, let's go take a look.

Pam: Nice.

Rachael: So, here's a great exhibit about the water cycle.

This was done by a local artist, Gary Bloomfield.

Pam: Wow, can I do something here?

Rachael: Yeah, this actually turns and rotates, and it shows you the cycle motion.

Pam: So I hold this handle and then I go, "Here's the wintertime.

Here's the winter--or here's the summer."

Oh, there.

It shows off summer.

"Is a hard time to live in creeks."

Oh, this is fantastic.

How neat.

Rachael: Yeah, the kids really enjoy that one.

Pam: I'll bet they do.

Rachael: And then this, over here, gives a great demonstration of how the wastewater treatment center works, so it's got this whole display here showing each different process and what the wastewater goes through during different phases of treatment.

Pam: Neat, and I see there's buttons involved.

Rachael: Yeah, you can push those buttons and it, basically, starts out with some dirty water over at headworks, yep.

Pam: --so, press it, ooh, there it goes, there it goes.

Hey, he told us--Dave told us this green color is actually from algae.

All right, so that--we take it to the clarifier, and the clarifier skims off solids and then we press it again to get to the oxidation ponds that then go into the treatment marshes.

Rachael: Yep, and then you see the water getting cleaner.

Pam: Yes, and then there's chlorine, and chlorine will help to sanitize?

Rachael: Yep.

Pam: Yes, very good.

So it takes out the bacteria?

Rachael: Yup, along with the marshes too.

Pam: The marshes, as well, do the same thing.

Wow, and there's all the marshes including this.

That's fantastic.

I like it.

Pam: Rachael, what is this?

Rachael: So this is what we call a slice of pond life.

This is an actual sample that was taken from the log pond out here.

So it's basically its own self-sustained ecosystem and within it there's a variety of different pond life micro-organisms.

So, sometimes it's hard to see the micro-organisms in the container, but if you wanna take a look over here at this graphic, you can get a good view of them.

They're mostly different kinds of micro-organisms.

Pam: You know what, Rachael, I thought--think we might have seen something like that, only that's much bigger, but-- Rachael: Yeah, so this one is actually an arthropod.

Sometimes, they're curled up but usually they're kind of stretched out in the container.

This is a copepod, or a daphnia, and then, within the soil sediment, you'll find tubifex worms-- all these little creatures that are just under the water's surface that most people aren't aware of.

Pam: Right, and it's very essential to the entire system.

Rachael: Correct.

Pam: Yeah, it's--provides food, breaks down waste.

Rachael: Absolutely, yeah.

It's an important part of our wastewater treatment, for sure.

Pam: Rachael, what is this really cool piece of art?

Rachael: This is a really unique piece of art that represents the different kinds of pollution we find in our local waterways and it's a river otter that's made out of cigarette butts that were collected from around here.

Pam: And what a powerful statement that makes.

I mean, I just think, "Oh, they're so small; it doesn't matter," but it does.

Rachael: Yeah, yeah, every little bit makes a difference.

Pam: Yeah, toss it on the ground, it ends up in the water.

Pam: Thanks so much for the tour.

I learned so much.

Rachael: Of course, we're happy to have visitors come by anytime.

Pam: Thank you.

Rachael: Bye.

Pam: Bye.

male: Did we tell you to stop waving?

Rachael: No.

Rachael: Of course.

Thank you for coming by.

We are always happy to have visitors.

Pam: Yay, thank you.

Rachael: Bye.

Pam: Bye.

male: I still didn't say to stop waving.

Rachael: It feels so unnatural.

Pam: It was great.

Thank you.

Rachael: Bye.

Pam: Bye.

Rachael: She stopped waving.

Pam: Why did you stop waving?

♪♪♪