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Partnership hopes to jump-start recovery efforts

John Dodge, The Olympian | • Published January 12, 2007

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For the past 20 years, efforts to clean up and protect Puget Sound have been directed by the state, resulting in a mixed bag filled with as much failure as success.

A new approach is in the works to help Puget Sound water quality and marine life recover from the vagaries of habitat loss, pollution and population growth.

The Puget Sound Partnership, a 17-member, public and private work group appointed by Gov. Chris Gregoire in December 2005 to rejuvenate Puget Sound cleanup efforts, has among its tasks figuring out how to govern the cleanup and hold government agencies, volunteer groups and the private sector accountable for their actions.

"We need accountability - a place where people's heads roll if we don't get action," said Kathy Fletcher, a member of the partnership and executive director of the conservation group People for Puget Sound.

Fletcher is no stranger to the issue. From 1985 to 1990, she chaired the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority, the first government body charged with managing the Puget Sound cleanup.

But as with its successor, the Puget Sound Action Team, another state effort that's been housed in the governor's office since 1996, the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority never had any authority. It and the action team made recommendations without enforcement tools and were limited to dealing with state agencies.

In whatever emerges in the months ahead, Gregoire has made it clear it needs to be more than state agencies driving the Puget Sound cleanup bus.

"The Puget Sound Water Quality Authority and Puget Sound Action Team have no authority over anybody - state or local," the governor said. "And I don't think state government should be directing the cleanup."

If not state government, who should be in charge?

One possibility would be for the governor to appoint an independent group akin to a university board of regents, representing a wide range of Puget Sound interests, including citizens, business, government, tribes and others.

The group would need to be high-powered and insulated from the day-to-day activities of the cleanup, suggested Brad Ack, executive director of the Puget Sound Action Team.