From the Seattle PI:
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.”
Also in the Seattle Times today.
