[1] Puget Sound Cleanup May Cost Billions More Than Expected
The Washington Legislature has used part of its latest tax windfall to fund the beginnings of an ambitious program to clean up Puget Sound by 2020.
The program is one of Gov. Chris Gregoire's pet policy initiatives, designed to fold future salmon recovery efforts into a broader policy including major improvements to sewer plants, stormwater treatment and cleanup of toxic sediments.
But it won't come cheap. A report released in December that developed major priorities for the ecosystem overhaul says it will take a lot more money than the $700 million now spent by local, state and federal agencies every year to improve fish, habitat and water quality in the Puget Sound region--maybe three times as much money.
By 2020 that could add up to $27 billion, far surpassing estimated costs of other huge ecosystem restorations like Chesapeake Bay ($15 billion) or the Great Lakes ($20.5 billion).
The report, authored by Puget Sound Partnership, has pegged current annual state funding at $286 million, and more than half of that is for sewage treatment. About 10 percent goes toward cleaning up contaminated sediments, 9 percent to control stormwater runoff, and another 9 percent to restore habitat.
The federal government spends about $116 million on the Sound, according to the report, with about $63 million for recovering ESA-listed fish.
Spending among local governments that helped the Sound varied widely: King County spent $143 million in 2006; Snohomish County paid $23 million; Seattle's expenditure was $42 million for stormwater management; and Olympia accounted $1.6 million for its storm water budget.
However, the new state legislation doesn't focus on costs. Rather, it maps out the framework for a whole new process.
It starts by abolishing the governor-appointed Puget Sound Action Team, which until now has been the nucleus of efforts to improve Puget Sound water quality and habitat.
Its powers will be transferred to a new governance entity called the Puget Sound Partnership, which, in turn, will be led by a seven-member Leadership Council and executive director appointed by the governor.
The council's charge is the adoption and implementation of a plan that will restore the Sound by 2020, using advice from a nine-member science panel and other groups developing Sound-wide and regional plans. The final product is expected to include goals, measurable outcomes and benchmarks for measuring progress.
Beginning in 2008, the new council will serve as the organization responsible for Puget Sound salmon-recovery efforts, and fish should become major beneficiaries of the new initiative. But they could end up being some of the priciest fish in the world.
PSP's report estimated that current spending by local, county, state and federal agencies, and some private spending, would add up to nearly $9 billion by 2020. However, "based on current unmet needs," the report said "achieving a healthy Puget Sound will require a doubling or tripling of current spending."
Those unmet needs are a source of significant concern to regional scientists who reviewed the report, and whose remarks were included in an appendix.
This group, led by NOAA Fisheries scientist Mary Ruckelshaus--daughter of famous father Bill, who has spearheaded the salmon-recovery effort in Puget Sound for years--said the new restoration effort needs a lot more beef to overcome the ill effects of more people and a warmer climate.
The review said that while the strategies described in the report would likely improve the local ecosystem, "thus moving it towards the recovered state envisioned by the governor. However, based on our collective scientific judgment and input from many other scientists, the strategies listed are not likely to be sufficient to achieve ecosystem goals, given the increasing intensity from such factors as increasing human population pressure, global climate change, and a freer exchange of global biota [read invasive species]."
One of the group's key recommendations is to ensure protection of the remaining high-quality habitat, along with significant reduction of pollution from toxics and human and animal wastes, and better management of stormwater runoff.
They said the benefits of cleaning up known toxic sites are uncertain, since it's not known how much they add to the environment and food webs. But they still recommended cleaning up the highest-priority sites first, then analyzing levels from other inputs to build priorities for further cleanup.
Even though they don't understand all the ways toxins like PCBs get into local salmon and killer whales (which are both listed for protection under the ESA), the scientists said strategies designed to improve water and sediment quality are top priorities for meeting other ecosystem goals like healthy food webs for all species, including humans.
Puget Sound salmon have been found to carry toxic loads higher than any other wild salmon on the West Coast.
A recent report by the state's Department of Public Health found that PCB levels in Puget Sound chinook are high enough so that they should be eaten only once a week, while resident chinook (blackmouth) should only be consumed twice a month. Flat fish from heavily contaminated areas like the Duwamish waterway should not be eaten at all. Yelloweye rockfish should not be eaten because of high levels of mercury, while other species of rockfish could be eaten once a week or so.
To add insult to injury, salmon may be transporting toxins from urban areas to more rural parts of the Sound when they spawn. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife scientist Sandie O'Neill told NW Fishletter it would take decades for PCB levels in local fish to diminish by much. Though levels in urban areas would slowly go down, various biological transport mechanisms would raise levels in more pristine areas of the coast.
Chinook likely picked up the chemicals from foraging on herring already contaminated with PCBs from other prey lower in the food chain. Herring themselves ingest PCBs from zooplankton; the populations with the highest levels were found in central and south Puget Sound.
Other salmon species such as sockeye, chum and pinks feed at lower trophic levels than chinook and coho, and therefore take in fewer PCBs and other toxics.
Another group of researchers from Battelle Northwest's marine research lab at Sequim, Wash., announced last week that the serious fish kills in Hood Canal in recent years may be part of a natural cycle, rather than the result of human causes--nitrogen overloads from runoff and failing septic systems.
Studying sediment cores that go back several hundred years, the scientists said extremely low oxygen levels that have proved lethal to fish in some years were even worse before white settlers appeared. Oxygen levels in Hood Canal seem to rise and fall in cycles related to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that governs fish productivity in nearby ocean waters.
Gregoire and other local politicians have used the fish kills in Hood Canal as a sign of how sick the Sound is, to gain support for the cleanup initiative. Also, Bill Ruckelshaus has been an important part of the push to get the Legislature to act.
As co-chair of the PSP, Ruckelshaus' remarks are included in the recent report. In the funding section, a sidebar contains this remark of his:
"As we humans have built the physical infrastructure such as roads, buildings and sewers to support us, we have consumed our natural capital--air, land, and water. As we continue to build and repair roads, bridges, and other structures to support us in the future, we need to begin to restore our natural capital. This will add some costs, but the benefits will be huge."
But no one has publicly countered media reports from last week that said this restoration effort would only cost $8 billion or so.-Bill Rudolph
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