Allow public to help Sound, report urges

Puget Sound has been pummeled by overdevelopment, pollution and a host of other environmental insults -- but people still have time to stop its tailspin, said a report delivered to Gov. Christine Gregoire on Monday.

Saving the Sound is going to mean showing the public how its actions -- using fertilizer and pesticides, driving cars, buying houses and so on -- affect the Sound's health, and showing citizens what they can do about it, said authors of the report by the Puget Sound Partnership. Gregoire appointed the group of business, tribal, environmental and government leaders earlier this year.

The partnership's final report, due in November, is bound to call for significant infusions of cash to a Save-the-Sound campaign that has stumbled along without enough coordination or accountability, members of the group said.

"Although the Puget Sound ecosystem appears to be resilient and productive, many of the essential natural processes that support life have been disrupted or damaged," the report says. "There is considerable evidence that important ecological indicators are in decline."

A co-chairman of the group, Billy Frank Jr. of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, was more blunt:

"Puget Sound is poisoned. Let's get rid of the poison."

Gregoire appointed the group early this year, tapping movers and shakers such as Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash.; University of Washington President Mark Emmert; and Sam Anderson, executive officer of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.

The idea is that they will help forge a plan that will start a sustained and coordinated program to improve the health of the Sound. Such an effort got under way after disclosures about the Sound's flagging health in the early 1980s. But that campaign sputtered, in part because of resistance from business.

Gregoire hopes to avoid a repeat by involving representatives of business, agriculture and other economically important interests in the partnership.

"We have to gain community support and community buy-in on the problem. There are people who are keenly involved in the problems, but the majority of the population doesn't see or understand the problem or what their role in the problem might be," said Mike Shelby, executive director of the Western Washington Agricultural Association. "On a sunny day, you look out at the blue water and the sailing boats and the ferries, and you think: Life is good."

But that's not true for the health of the Sound. Scientists have documented plummeting populations of fish and other sea creatures, extensive wipeouts of fish nurseries along the shore by development and pollution of shellfish by the foul mixture that washes off the region's concrete and asphalt in any good-size rain.

A big factor missing in existing efforts to help the Sound has been a lack of clear goals and measurable ways to see if the goals are being met, said Bill Ruckelshaus, co-chairman of the partnership and a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Earlier ecosystem restoration efforts such as the Everglades and Chesapeake Bay have stumbled on exactly those points, auditors from the Government Accountability Office told the partnership in the spring.

The report calls for a "widely recognized and supported unifying body" to pull together the current disparate efforts -- and says that body should also be held responsible if the Sound continues to decline.

"Our actions must be linked to measurable outcomes and scientific information," the report says. "We must be accountable for results."

It's clear that more money will be needed, the group said. Less than half the budget needed to recover a key Sound species, salmon, currently is available, the group said. Shortfalls also are hampering progress on cleaning up storm-water runoff and building water reuse and efficiency projects, the report says.

Kathy Fletcher, executive director of the environmental group People for Puget Sound, is the only full-time environmentalist on the panel of 19. She said Monday's report marks a turning point.

"It's a really good statement of the problem," Fletcher said. "Now the work begins."