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Washington says: Preserve Puget Sound!
10,000 call for strong action to protect Puget
Throughout the summer, Environment Washington campaign staff and volunteers went across the state to help generate support for preserving the Puget Sound, talking to more than 80,000 Washingtonians. Our goal was to convince the Puget Sound Partnership, charged by Gov. Chris Gregoire to address threats to the Sound, to take strong action to protect it.
As part of this effort, several Environment Washington campaign staff showed up to the July 23 partnership meeting in Mt. Vernon. They delivered more than 10,000 postcards from citizens from Bellingham to Olympia, Hood Canal to Issaquah, to urge the partnership to adopt a meaningful cleanup plan, including elements to:
• Stop industries from dumping pollutants into the Sound;
• Prevent new sources of urban run-off through better development practices;
• Protect marine areas around the San Juans and Protection Island; and
• Preserve critical near-shore habitat on the mainland.
We are working to make sure the partnership’s plan will lead to a cleaned up Sound by 2020. The partnership has until Dec. 1 to deliver its plan to the governor and Legislature.
Fighting for a healthy Puget Sound
Marine life is quickly disappearing. Dead zones are forming in the Sound. Salmon are at 10 percent of their historic population. The orca population has dropped 20 percent since 1995, and it has recently been listed as an endangered species. In 2007, Gov. Gregoire and the Legislature created the Puget Sound Partnership to address these threats by developing and managing a plan to clean up the Sound by 2020.
The threats to the Sound come from a variety of sources. Rapid development of sensitive areas on shorelines allows stormwater to run off into the Sound, and is the biggest threat. Developers are building in a way that increases the flow of chemicals and toxins into the Sound. Waterfront industries are polluting the Sound, in many cases with permits in hand. Harmful chemicals from common household products are also making their way into the Sound.
