He’s got a gun, a college degree in fisheries and he keeps your drinking water safe

Tacoma Public Utilities has over 1,000 employees who, among other things, protect and manage the utility’s clean, fresh, drinkable water.

Five of them carry guns.

Nick Ulacia is one. He’s a watershed inspector, responsible for patrolling the Green River’s 231-square-mile network of trees, roads and river. It supplies 95 percent of Tacoma’s water.

The watershed is not just the source of Tacoma’s — and several other muncipalities’ — water supply. It supports fish, wildlife, forests and grasslands. Almost of all is off limits to the public.

What is a watershed?

Think of a valley or plain where every drop of rain or every bubbling spring eventually drains into a specific stream or lake. The watershed often takes the name of that river, in this case, the Green River.

Its vastness stretches 22 linear miles from TPU’s diversion dam on the river to Stampede Pass. Rain that falls just on the other side of the pass flows into eastern Washington — part of the Columbia River watershed.

Some watersheds are endorheic, meaning that there are no outlets to an ocean. While uncommon, the United States has a 200,000-square-mile example called The Great Basin , centered mostly in Nevada. The waters of Lake Tahoe drain into the desert, not the ocean.

The 65-mile-long Green River, which is entirely in King County, changes its name to the Duwamish River for its last 12 miles before it empties into Puget Sound. Long before it ever gets there, a dam diverts some of that water to Tacoma’s taps.

Water source

“The great thing about the watershed is that it works as a natural filter,” Ulacia told The News Tribune recently.

It’s his mission to make sure that the naturally filtered water arrives at TPU’s filtration plant uncontaminated.

“Our goal is always keeping the water clean and safe to drink before it even gets to the filtration plant,” Ulacia said.

Nature plays a big part in that. As rain falls and snow melts, some of that water drains into rivulets which become streams that empty into the river. Some moisture seeps into the ground and then makes its way into the river from seeps and springs.

The Green River watershed has served as Tacoma’s primary water source since 1913. In the early 1900s, Tacoma began purchasing water rights to the river. Political battles and public votes ensued, one of which approved the construction of a pipeline to the city.

That pipeline, or a modern version of it, still brings water to the city. A second pipeline delivers water to TPU’s other municipal customers.

Water cop

Ulacia, 29, is a University of Washington graduate with a double major in fisheries and aquatic sciences and environmental sciences and terrestrial resource management.

Yes, he carries a firearm, but he’s never had to pull it from its holster — except in training.

Ulacia also has an interest in law enforcement. It would be hard to find a more perfect job fit.

“The ratepayers are investing heavily in this amazing resource that we have, and I really take pride in being able to protect it,” he said.

While the vast majority of the watershed is closed to the public, there are a few areas closer to Stampede Pass that are available for recreation. Most users are supportive of Ulacia’s work and the restrictions on the land, but there have been rumblings among hunting groups to allow more access.

Two weeks per year, hunters who win a lottery can go into the watershed and hunt for deer and elk. One week is for general citizens, and the other is reserved for Muckleshoot tribal members.

“They’re all usually pretty good stewards of the environment,” Ulacia said of the public. “And when they’re not, we try to educate them on that, on the importance of why our basin is protected and why we’re there.”

Roads

There are 60 miles of mainline roads in the watershed. From those, logging roads branch off into active timber operations.

Despite the massive logging trucks traveling the roads, they’re probably some of the safest in Pierce County. Drivers are required to announce their arrival at each mile marker on CB radio and whether they are inbound or outbound. That alerts other nearby drivers that another truck is right around the bend.

Drivers must be have permits to drive the roads and agree to safety conditions.

“If a logging truck goes off into a creek or river and their diesel tank breaks, that’s a lot of contaminants that are going to the river,” Ulacia said.

He’ll pull over a logging truck that doesn’t follow the strict rules.

“Most of the time, they’re new to the watershed, or they’ve been working a long shift and they forgot a mile marker,” he said.

TPU’s property

The land owned by TPU, a fraction of the watershed, is largely adjacent to the river and its significant tributaries.

But it’s Ulacia’s and his co-workers’ jobs to patrol the entire watershed, in agreement with logging companies, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, BNSF and various government agencies. Some landowners are not equipped to deal with the kinds of emergencies that could occur on their land and might be a threat to the water supply. Like plane crashes, which can leak fuel.

“We average one (plane crash) about every 18 months,” Ulacia said.

More mundane and far more common are failing culverts. If one of the 800 culverts and 39 bridges in the watershed should clog, it could send sediment into the system’s filtration plant and wash out a road. Every culvert is inspected at least every five years and more often annually.

A landslide could also take out power lines that cross the watershed or a BNSF railroad line.

In summer, wildfires become a threat.

“There’s a lot a lot of things that could happen, and we try to keep them very low frequency out here by being proactive,” Ulacia said.

Logging

During any given year, between 5 and 20 million board feet of lumber come out of the watershed from Weyerhaeuser - and BTG Pactual -owned timber property, according to TPU watershed manager Jarrod Kaiser.

The logging and associated dangers prompt the question: Why not just purchase the logging property? The answer comes down to, as it usually does, money.

“These are tough decisions for the utility and the city,” Kaiser said. “It’s a lot of money. We are currently trying to purchase some property, but you have to have a lot of things in place.”

The utility is working to buy three parcels that contain creeks and are surrounded by TPU property. If successful, TPU would share the cost with King County, Kaiser said.

“We’re looking for creative ways to fund land acquisition,” he said. “But it’s not always easy for (logging companies) to give up these big holdings because they are valuable.”

Fish and wildlife

On a recent fall day, spawning salmon were laying eggs in the gravelly river bed just below the utility’s diversion dam where water is channeled into the filtration plant before being sent to Enumclaw, Bonney Lake, Kent, Auburn, Federal Way and other cities for use.

If the fish tried to swim upstream, they’d get bonked heads for their trouble. Modifications have been made to the dam, including a fish ladder, but the fish wouldn’t get far without another head butt at the upstream Howard Hanson dam , maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

A plan in the works would capture adult salmon at the diversion dam and then truck them above both dams.

“Then they’ll have all this area to spawn,” Kaiser said, gesturing to the watershed.

While juvenile salmon can survive downstream passage through the TPU diversion dam, they wouldn’t make it though Howard Hanson. A recently funded $921 million project to retrofit the dam is aiming to fix that.

Conservation

On a side road away from the main Green River, Ulacia drives his electric patrol vehicle past elk grazing fields, underneath Bonneville Power Administration and Puget Sound Energy electrical lines and into a deeply forested area along the river’s North Fork.

The shady road runs along a series of wells. They pull water from an aquifer supplied by the North Fork. This time of year, in late September, the river is dry and so are the wells.

Ulacia parks in a stand of mature cedar and spruce. Nearby, bigleaf maples and fir fill in the mix. A brown-and-green frog makes a hasty retreat from his footsteps.

It’s not old growth, but it has reached adulthood. It was recently thinned to make it healthier and more resistant to climate change and fire, Kaiser said. Nearby are the remains of a logging mill.

Kaiser said it’s the last cutting they’ll do in the stand. The forest will now be left alone and one day, become old growth again.