[5] Puget Sound Action Agenda Unveiled
In the face of the worst state budget crunch in the past 30 years, the latest effort to restore the waters of Puget Sound got a rousing sendoff earlier this week when the Puget Sound Leadership Council voted to approve its Action Agenda. Led by ex-Puget Sound salmon czar Bill Ruckelshaus, the group presented a relentlessly upbeat message to clean up the Sound by 2020 at a public meeting on Dec. 1.
The message focused on protecting the best remaining habitat, and finding places like the Nisqually River Delta to improve fish habitat--where the most bang for the restoration buck could be achieved.
Another major effort will be directed at reducing stormwater runoff. A recent study found that 150,000 pounds of toxic pollutants poured into the Sound every day from non-point sources.
The plan has grown out of the earlier effort called the Shared Strategy, that provided an umbrella group for Sound-based stakeholders to develop a recovery strategy for ESA-listed Puget Sound chinook and chum stocks. The salmon recovery effort has been folded into the larger Sound-wide effort. It has been a pet project of Gov. Chris Gregoire, who made sure plenty of state money was available to get it rolling.
But Gregoire herself wasn't on the dais with other regional politicians at last Monday's celebration. She was in Philadelphia, meeting with other governors and President-elect Obama to discuss a huge stimulus package for the US economy that will be focused on rebuilding infrastructure and creating jobs. It was Gregoire's job to make sure Obama's people are aware that plenty of restoration projects to help Puget Sound are ready to go, with the proverbial ripple effect in secondary spending from job creation.
With the economic downturn, even Puget Sound Partnership executive director David Dicks has shifted gears and pushed the economic benefits of the restored Sound in a recent op-ed piece in the Seattle P.I.
But long-term funding is still a long way from certain. PSP officials had discussed developing dedicated sources of funding, but decided now wasn't the time to go for it. But the reasons for the delay weren't all economic. PSP officials acknowledged it would be a tough sell because of the "lack of broad public understanding of the needs for restoring Puget Sound," but they are still suggesting the Legislature create a Sound-wide improvement district next year.
The Dec. 1 session didn't mention the huge cost figures developed a couple of years ago, when the estimated costs for restoring the Sound by 2020 ranged from $9 billion to $27 billion.
In fact, the Action Agenda doesn't include any cost estimates beyond the next few years. The group expects current state spending on the Sound to remain the same for the next two years, about $400 million.
Another $171 million in annual spending comes from the feds. Around $43 million of that is for salmon recovery grants, ESA and watershed recovery. The federal government also spends $43 million on wastewater treatment and $242 million on mitigation activities for highway, military and Sound Transit capital projects.
Nisqually Delta
Courtesy WA Dept. of Ecology
Counties and cities in the Puget Sound region spend about $246 million for protection and restoration activities through storm drainage utilities and natural resource departments, while local governments spend another $611 million managing and treating wastewater.
The funding crunch at the state level has the PSP leadership calling for current funding to line up with priorities in the Action Agenda. "What is now proposed is an inversion of the existing process by driving state, local and federal dollars to actions and projects identified in the Action Agenda," says the final document.
The PSP leadership had originally hoped to pick up another $200 million in the upcoming budget session, in addition to the $400 million already planned for the next biennium, but now it hopes to fill much of that gap with help from the feds, including $50 million from the federal stimulus package and another $50 million from state general obligation bonds.
But the looming $5-billion deficit is likely to grow to $6 billion by the time the legislature meets in January. PSP supporters may have to become even more creative to keep restoration efforts on track when many state agencies are facing potential cuts of 10 to 20 percent.
One bit of good news is that the final plan has received a tentative nod of approval from a dogged group of 14 regional scientists and engineers who judged that previous incarnations of the Action Agenda fell far short of what it would take to get the job accomplished.
Tom Lorz, an Olympia-based engineer whose primary work focuses on low-impact development, said it seems that the final version of the plan will raise the bar for some future benchmarks, like how much impervious surfaces around the Sound will be allowed in the future. But the PSP is still developing those benchmarks (the draft document would have allowed 20 percent by 2020, up from the current 7.3 percent).
And it's still trying to determine how much forest cover should be maintained. "Though it was stated in the plan that watersheds in good condition should be preserved, I wish that they had listed at least the high-priority watersheds that needed to be protected from more disturbance," Lorz said by e-mail. "I fear that the watersheds will disappear while the plan is fleshed out." He hoped his group would be called upon to help with details.
The PSP will still have to convince Sound dwellers that it will all be worth it. But so far, the "crisis" language in its public relations effort has not seemed to strike much of a chord with the 4 million people who live in the region, even with the recent stories about orcas "starving" in the San Juans and dead zones in Hood Canal, echoed by PSP supporters in the popular media.
The reality of the region is more complicated than simple sound bites, as recent reports have spotlighted. The supposedly "starving" orcas evidently rely a lot more on chinook from BC's Fraser River for sustenance than the Puget Sound chinook, and the oxygen-depleted regimes in Hood Canal have been part of long-term climate cycles that affected marine populations long before the white man appeared, logged, farmed and built septic systems, as a fresh report from Battelle researchers has revealed. -B. R.
The following links were mentioned in this story:
Puget Sound Leadership Council Action Agenda
NW Fishletter 230 Summary information on 2008 Southern Resident Killer Whale births and deaths, October 28, 2008
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