Puget Sound's future in peril

John Dodge and Chester Allen, The Olympian | • Published January 12, 2007

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From a distance, Puget Sound shimmers pristine blue in the sunlight, framed by beaches that look clean and inviting.

That's the public's perception, according to a recent survey of Puget Sound residents.

But the facts tell a different story - one of decline and potential disaster:

• Five species of Puget Sound salmon and the orca are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. Overall, 1,000 Puget Sound species are in decline.

"There's no steelhead and no wild coho salmon anymore," lamented Nisqually tribal elder Billy Frank Jr., executive director of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. "And the orca whale - he's starving to death."

• Hood Canal's dead zone of low oxygen levels from pollution is getting worse. Fish kills are a fact of life. Scientists say South Sound could be next in the battle against too many nutrients entering the water, promoting algal blooms and robbing the water of oxygen vital to marine life.

• More than 5,700 acres of aquatic land is polluted beyond safety standards, and 30,000 acres of commercial shellfish beds have been closed to harvest since 1980. The culprits are pollution from industry, failing septic tanks, stormwater runoff and the like.

• Almost 70 percent of Puget Sound's vital river estuaries - where the rivers meet saltwater and provide nurseries for salmon - are encroached upon by housing developments or used by industry.

• And perhaps most ominous, one million additional people are expected to join the 4 million already here by 2025, a growth rate that intensifies every Puget Sound problem and adds complexity to every proposed solution.

What ails Puget Sound - and the consequences of inaction - is so serious that Gov. Chris Gregoire has launched a Puget Sound Initiative, a massive cleanup effort to rejuvenate the Sound by 2020.

"We've gathered the troops together to clean up Puget Sound," Gregoire said of her 17-member public and private work party of regional leaders known as the Puget Sound Partnership. "We need a fresh, new look to get something done, and we better do it now."

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