Island County to discuss polluted South Whidbey watersheds

Island County officials discussed polluted South Whidbey watersheds with Holmes Harbor and Freeland still at the center of the problem, a problem visible from Freeland Park where a resident was photographed heading out on the water. The county’s attention fell on a place people boat, fish and harvest shellfish, but also on a shoreline where water quality has been tied to closures, cleanup work and long-running public concern.

The county’s Surface Water Quality Monitoring Program says its job is to protect public health and the environment through baseline monitoring and source identification. In the county’s water-year update covering October 2024 through September 2025, staff monitored more than 25 watersheds and tracked another 12, showing how much of Island County is now under routine watch.

Holmes Harbor has been on that pollution map for years. Shellfish harvesting there had been banned since 2007, and in 2008 county officials said they had narrowed the likely source of the pollution to four areas within Freeland. That same period brought health scrutiny from the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which issued consultations in 2006 and again in 2008 over concerns that industrial activities might have contaminated Holmes Harbor’s surface water and sediment.

The county did not stop at investigation. By 2009, officials were using a plant-based stormwater treatment system to filter runoff entering Holmes Harbor. Five years later, local reporting said pollution levels at the south end of the harbor had improved dramatically and were easing, though the harbor remained part of a larger contamination story that never fully disappeared from South Whidbey.

The county’s current Pollution Identification and Correction Program shows how that work has evolved into an accountability issue. Island County says the PIC effort has identified three areas closed to recreation and shellfishing because of high levels of fecal coliform and E. coli bacteria, and that the program is intended to correct septic issues and reopen three shellfish growing areas for recreation and harvesting. The county also says it owns and maintains more than 4,000 culverts and nearly 2,000 catch basins, mostly tied to county roads, which makes stormwater and drainage another part of the cleanup equation.

State shellfish records show Holmes Harbor is still under management scrutiny. The Washington State Department of Health’s 2025 annual review classified the harbor as Approved and Conditionally Approved, while Island County Public Health has said surface water quality on Whidbey Island continued to decline in 2025. For Freeland, that means the next county decisions on monitoring, septic fixes, runoff controls and shellfish reopening will shape not just the harbor’s water, but how the shoreline is used and valued in the years ahead.