In Our View: Sound Logic

Protecting Southwest Washington’s precious and fragile rivers, forests and mountains is a frequent theme in Columbian editorials, but this concern should in no way be considered provincial. From the Olympic peninsula to the Palouse and from the Pend Oreille to the footprints of Lewis and Clark, Washingtonians know that we’re all in this together.

Puget Sound includes at least 15 watershed areas of greatly varying population and polluting properties. Starting clockwise from the northeast, those watersheds are the Nooksack, Skagit, Stillaguamish, Snohomish, Lake Washington/Cedar/Sammamish, Green/Duwamish, Puyallup/White & Chambers/Clover, Nisqually, Deschutes, Kennedy/Goldborough, West Sound, Hood Canal, North Olympic Peninsula, Island and San Juan.

Though breathtaking in beauty, these watersheds contain homes, factories, farms, vehicles and animals that increasingly endanger water quality in Puget Sound. In 2006, for example, bacterial contamination soared to the point of almost shutting down shellfish harvesting in Oakland Bay.

Fortunately, the Puget Sound Partnership for three years has aggressively taken on the massive challenge of cleaning up Puget Sound, and the efforts are showing significant progress despite the raging economic crisis. About $460 million in federal, state and local funds have been spent on 614 projects in those 15 watersheds. Even if you care nothing about the salmon, orcas and other treasurers of the Northwest environment, you still should care that these efforts have created 15,000 jobs. You should care that cleaning up Puget Sound will protect the $59 million annual impact of the shellfish industry, the $10 million annual impact of fisheries and a vast tourism business.

Saturday’s Columbian included an Associated Press story that featured five projects toured last week by Gov. Chris Gregoire and other officials in Mason, Thurston and Pierce counties. One project was a $40 million wastewater treatment plant under construction in Belfair. Upon completion, the plant will provide treated water for golf courses and other uses aside from drinking. Any homeowner and business within 500 feet of the system will be required to hook up to it and stop using septic tanks, which sometimes fail and pollute groundwater.

According to The Olympian newspaper, the project will not only help the shellfish-growing industry but also will boost habitat-protection efforts in the Nisqually Delta. Again, if your care nothing about the environment, you should care that Oakland Bay is the most productive Manila clam-growing bay in the nation, and an oyster and clam nursery near Shelton is the largest shellfish producer on the West Coast.

Shelton city officials are considering a $75 million water and sewer project. Other projects and programs around the sound include fencing livestock out of streams and repairing and replacing other septic systems in the watersheds. In the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge north of Lacey, a farming dike was removed and tides returned to more than 700 acres of historic estuary habitat.

It took a long time to pump so much oxygen-depleting contaminants into the Puget Sound that it would threaten water quality even in a sound that’s 100 miles long and 200 feet deep. And it’ll take a long time to clean it up. But guided by the environmentally conscious people of the Northwest, that cleanup is well under way. For more information, visit http://www.psp.wa.gov/.