Often used to build forts, seesaw’s, planks, and even bridges over water, we’ve all seen and used them – logs, that is. Logs are such a part of the shoreline scenery that it’s hard to imagine some of our beach communities without them. While many of us don’t think twice about the sometimes large piles of logs on our beaches, DNR is tasked with the responsibility of removing them.
Why remove these logs? Because not all the log pilings you see on the beach are from natural erosion and beach processes; a lot of them come from old logging mills, or float to shore after degrading and breaking away from old docking and marine structures. These logs take roost onto our beaches and eventually start leaching a toxic chemical known as creosote.
Creosote, widely used as a wood preservative in the U.S., contains as many as 10,000 chemicals. Aquatic species such as, birds, fish, amphibians and mammals have been known to make homes from these large log pilings, but that is dangerous for their health, causing embryo mutation, malformation and cancer.
This can’t be good for the marine environment, not to mention us. The DNR aquatic restoration and clean-up program began in 2003 and is responsible for removing toxic pilings from our beaches and waters of state-owned aquatic lands. Since the program’s inception, more than 1,700 tons of creosote pilings have been removed from the coasts of Puget Sound.
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