PUGET SOUND PARTNERSHIP

Puget Sound Partnership seeks input on Action Agenda to save Puget Sound

New report on amount of toxic chemicals polluting the Sound underscores effort's urgency

posted 11/07/2008
The Puget Sound Partnership today released a landmark draft Action Agenda, a roadmap for protecting, restoring and cleaning up Puget Sound.

For the first time, the draft Action Agenda provides critical data and a strategy for tackling the threats to the waters in and around Puget Sound by addressing four key questions:

1. What is a healthy Puget Sound?

2. What is the current status of Puget Sound and what are the biggest threats to it?

3. What actions must be taken to move from where we are today to a healthy Puget Sound by 2020?

4. Where do we start?

Health of the Sound: Sick and Dying

New analysis supporting the Action Agenda identifies some alarming facts and trends related to the health of Puget Sound.

Each year, 52 million pounds of toxic chemicals – or nearly 150,000 pounds per day – inundate Puget Sound with contaminated runoff. This amounts to a toxic spill the size of Exxon Valdez every two years. The toxic chemicals include oil and petroleum products, lead, and phthalates – and 1 million pounds of toxic metals such as zinc and copper. These metals, despite being released in lower concentrations than oil and petroleum, can cause harm to threatened salmon species.

"These disturbing numbers are putting more than 40 species in Puget Sound at risk, including the Sound's orca population, where we just saw a decline of nearly 10 percent in the past several months," said the Partnership's Executive Director David Dicks.

The two pollution reports, "Pollutant Loadings for Surface Runoff and Roadways" and "Improved Estimates of Loadings from Dischargers of Municipal and Industrial Wastewater," confirm the state's previous findings that surface runoff is the main pathway of the toxic chemicals getting into the Sound. The primary sources of toxics to Puget Sound are the day-to-day activities of people, as the population grows and land gets more and more developed. The estimates are based on current knowledge about toxic pollutants from surface runoff, air deposition, wastewater from discharge pipes, direct spills into the water and combined sewer/stormwater overflows only. The reports, and a summary document, can be found online at www.ecy.wa.gov/.

The Strategic Initiatives

The four cornerstones of the draft Action Agenda are designed to address the threats endangering Puget Sound. Each strategic initiative is driven by the latest available science and is results-oriented.

Protect. By protecting the last remaining intact places, problems can be prevented before they occur, which is the best and most cost-effective approach to restoring ecosystem health.

• Focus growth away from ecologically important and sensitive areas by encouraging dense, compact cities and vital rural communities.
  
  
• Permanently protect the significant intact areas of the Puget Sound ecosystem that still function well.
  
  
• Protect and conserve stream flows for natural system and human uses.
  
  
• Protect working resources lands.
  
  
• Prevent and rapidly respond to the introduction of new invasive species.

Restore. Human activities have vastly altered the ecosystem during the past 150 years. Restoration efforts need to bring large portions of river, wetland and marine systems back to life.

• Implement and maintain priority ecosystem restoration projects for marine, nearshore, estuary, freshwater riparian and uplands.
  
  
• Revitalize waterfront communities while enhancing marine and freshwater shoreline environments.
  
  
• Support and implement stewardship incentive programs to increase private landowners' ability to undertake restoration projects.

Stop. Water pollution must be reduced and stopped by curtailing its sources.

• Prevent pollutants from being introduced into Puget Sound ecosystems.
  
  
• Use a comprehensive and integrated approach to managing urban stormwater and rural surface water runoff.
  
  
• Manage and prioritize upgrades to wastewater treatment plants.
  
  
• Establish and maintain locally coordinated, effective on-site sewage system management to reduce pollutant loading to vulnerable surface waters.
  
  
• Prioritize and implement projects to clean up toxic contamination in water and upland areas.
  
  
• Continue monitoring programs that reduce human exposure to health hazards in marine, nearshore and estuarine environments.

Coordinate. The current fragmented approach to cleanup isn't beneficial to the environment. A more strategic, better-coordinated effort is critical.

• Conduct planning, implementation and decision-making in an integrated way and from an ecosystem perspective consistent with the Action Agenda.
  
  
• Support, develop, and integrate climate change programs and adaptation strategies in the Action Agenda to improve implementation effectiveness and regional and local readiness for anticipated changes.
  
  
• Build and sustain long-term capacity of partners to effectively and efficiently implement the Action Agenda.
  
  
• Reform the environmental regulatory system to protect habitat at an ecosystem scale.
  
  
• Improve compliance with rules and regulations to increase the likelihood of achieving ecosystem outcomes.

Funding the Actions to Protect and Restore Puget Sound

Implementation of the Action Agenda will require finding ways to spend existing dollars more effectively as well as raising new sources of funding. Funding will need to be a shared responsibility between state, federal and local governments.

Recognizing the tough economic times and the need to learn from our restoration efforts, the draft Action Agenda recommends starting with expenditures at a modest scale, testing solutions carefully before ramping them up. The Partnership is proposing an incremental enhancement of $200 million to $300 million for the 2009-11 biennium, the majority coming from the capital budget.

Next Steps: Finalizing the Action Agenda

The draft Action Agenda is a work in progress in what continues to be a collaborative process. Today marks the beginning of a 14-day public comment period. For convenience, an online “open house” has been added to the Partnership's Web site for collecting comments: www.psp.wa.gov.

In addition, two public meetings, both beginning at 9 a.m., will be held this month to solicit feedback:

• Nov. 11: Embassy Suites Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Triple Crown Ballroom, 15920 W. Valley Highway, Seattle
  
  
• Nov. 21: Edmonds Conference Center

"The Action Agenda is the best chance we have to repair the damage to Puget Sound and ensure we leave a legacy of a clean and healthy Puget Sound for our children and grandchildren," Dicks said. "Success truly depends on all of us coming together and being a part of the solution."

The adoption of the Action Agenda is being evaluated in accordance with the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). The Partnership, in its role as SEPA lead agency, has prepared a programmatic checklist evaluating the full range of potential impacts and has determined that the proposal does not have a probable significant adverse impact on the environment. The SEPA checklist and the determination of non-significance (DNS) are being circulated for review along with the draft Action Agenda, and are available on the Partnership's Web site, or by mail if requested. Comments regarding the DNS are due by 5 p.m. Nov. 20, 2008.

The Partnership's Leadership Council will adopt the final Action Agenda on Dec. 1 at a Sound-wide celebration event in Seattle.

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