Five questions about Puget Sound's health, future

The Olympian | • Published August 06, 2006

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4) The issue du jour. We have to make a leap of faith that what we're doing is right, and adjust it down the line -- and stick to it. There has to be a person to person commitment from everyone in the state.

5) I've seen movies of how bad Lake Washington was during the 1950s and 1960s. They'd stick a dinner plate on the end of a pole to measure the water quality.

Jeff Koenings, director of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife

1) Probably not, but it's important to set a goal because the Puget Sound is at the tipping point.

2) I don't know. We have to protect the baseline condition of the Sound -- and make it better. Will it be enough? I don't know.

3) I think so. The Salmon Recovery Act was bipartisan, and that gave us salmon recovery by watersheds, and we can use that as a model.

4) The biggest challenge is that 70 percent of the people in Puget Sound don't think it's a problem. We have to convince people that now is the time to take action -- and give them a sense of urgency.

5) Getting people involved with their local watersheds. Here in South Sound, people are talking about restoring the estuary at Heritage Park.

John Calambokidis, research biologist for Olympia-based Cascadia Research

1) There has been a lot of progress, but there is still lots left to do. Problems will still exist in 2020.

2) It's definitely something that is going to be working against every measure we take. That's why prevention has to take big leaps.

3) A bipartisan effort is needed. This has been a traditional Democratic cause, but Dan Evans and Ralph Munro have been Republican leaders in environmental protection. How much of that legacy survives in the Republican Party is not for me to gauge. I'm optimistic.

4) It's the population. It's already high, and it's growing. Impervious surfaces, shoreline development, septic runoff and clearing of land is part of that. Non-point pollution is a dominant concern rather than single-point industry. It's easy to solve single-point, but non-point is a death by a thousand cuts.

5) Greatest success? The reduction in PCBs are high up there. A lot of research on marine mammals focuses on PCBs. We've seen major recoveries of harbor whales and harbor porpoises.

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