Video shows the ugliness below the beauty of Puget Sound

Denise Whitaker -

It's been a wet January in Seattle, with close to 4 inches of rain so far. After such heavy rain, there's a river that rages under Puget Sound, but it's not all water.

Local scuba diver Laura James took her camera down off Harbor Avenue SW to document the stunning stream of storm sediment now rushing into the Sound.

It looks like a thick black plume of muck.

"People don't even think about it," James said.

James says she takes the underwater video to make people aware of the ugliness below the beauty of Puget Sound. She finds cigarette butts, candy wrappers, chewing gum -- the garbage that people toss.

"It goes somewhere. And I like to show people where it goes," she said. "Right out here in Puget Sound."

And there is the toll from our daily lives: detergents, fertilizers, oil, brake dust -- even the rubber that wears off of our tires as we drive.

"Tire rubber? I mean where does that go?" she wondered. "We have to get our tires replaced pretty regularly; I mean where does that rubber go?"

When it rains, the water runs into storm drains and eventually flows out into our local waterways. As the water runs, it picks up all kinds of things in its path.

The city maintains storm water catch basins, designed to collect larger pollutants. But stuff still makes it into Puget Sound and area lakes.

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