WSU Skagit County Extension presents stormwater research, food‑waste prevention, nutrition and farm stress supports

WSU Skagit County Extension staff and affiliated faculty gave the Skagit County Board of Commissioners an extended briefing on June 17 covering stormwater research, community health and nutrition programs, food‑waste prevention, and farm‑stress mental‑health services.

Ani Jayakaran, WSU faculty at the Puyallup Research and Extension Center, described ongoing stormwater work focused on pollutants including 6PPD‑quinone and on practical, scalable stormwater approaches. Jayakaran discussed “two‑stage ditches” for agricultural drainage, a local estimate of ditch mileage (about 380 miles of farm ditches and roughly 800 miles of roadside ditches in Skagit County), and small‑scale best management practice (BMP) research such as biochar amendments and permeable pavements. Jayakaran presented tree‑water‑use measurements from a multi‑year study (64 trees across four species) showing that trees can manage a large share of rainfall that falls on their canopies —…