Wow! “Clean Up Puget Sound— Now”

(PHOTO: Elaine Thompson/Associated Press)

Hadn’t heard that in a while so it got me excited last Friday when I saw the Seattle Times editorial headline, “Stop political inaction, clean up Puget Sound — now”. The problem, according to its editorial board, is — guess what? -- politics.

The solution, according to its editorial board, is — guess what? -- more politics. Specifically passing federal legislation elevating Puget Sound to the status of having “national significance,” which would “align federal efforts and coordinate a united recovery strategy with the state.” And presumably bring more federal dollars to Puget Sound protection and recovery.

Strange to put progress towards cleaning up Puget Sound in hoped-for action from a Congress more skilled in deadlock and now in majority-party disarray. Disheartening to have the loudest editorial voice in the Puget Sound region shift focus to the Never-Never Land of Congressional politics and away from scrutiny of the State’s own efforts— that of the Puget Sound Partnership— and progress towards making Puget Sound “swimmable, fishable and diggable.”

Getting results in governance doesn’t come from having good ideas. It comes from having people, lots of people, supporting an idea. That’s called a constituency, something that causes like gay marriage and legal marijuana and $15 minimum wage have. That’s the kind of constituency cleaning up Puget Sound needs.

In the not-so old days we used to ask, “Who speaks for Puget Sound and who holds accountable all those who are responsible for its protection and restoration?” Does Governor Inslee? Does the Puget Sound Partnership? Does the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance?

A lot of money and social capital has been spent by the state on defining what “swimmable, fishable and diggable” means.  So I’m sure someone can give a report on progress to that end that maybe folks will listen to.  But, as the editorial points out, folks don’t know Puget Sound is ill. And even if they did, how would it make a difference?

An environmental group board member once punctuated a discussion about the need to educate people about Puget Sound by saying, “Is that what you want? A bunch of educated people watching Puget Sound go down the toilet?”

No, what Puget Sound needs is an organized constituency that speaks for the Sound and holds accountable all those responsible for its protection and restoration. It is a constituency that demands action by saying, loudly and clearly, “Clean up Puget Sound— now!”

--Mike Sato

Hey, Puget Sound! It’s A “New Path Forward!”

(MAP: EPA)

That’s what the Puget Sound Partnership says Governor Inslee has done by reconstituting the Partnership’s Leadership Council. And, having named a new executive director, Governor Jay has his new team now to make or break Puget Sound recovery on his watch.

“Gov. Inslee has appointed longtime environmental advocate Stephanie Solien and former Ecology director Jay Manning to the Leadership Council, the Puget Sound Partnership’s seven-member governing body. Diana Gale, a senior lecturer at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs, was reappointed to fill the remainder of David Dicks’ term [who had earlier resigned].”  Gov. Inslee builds new path forward with appointments to PSP's Leadership Counci

Partnership chair Martha Kongsgaard sounded positively ecstatic with the new appointments in her March 11 letter, characterizing executive director Sheida Sahandy as “whip smart, curious, articulate, wise, and arrives firmly acquainted with our mission.” Gracious as ever, the chair praises departing members David Dicks (who started as executive director), Steve Sakuma and Dan O’Neal and warmly welcomes environmental activist Stephanie Solien and former Ecology director Manning. The position vacated by Sakuma still needs to be appointed by the governor. Kongsgaard, former King County executive Ron Sims and Billy Frank, Jr. of Northwest Indian Fisheries are the other members of the Council, with Gale and Frank the only ones from the original board organized when the Partnership was launched.

Well, will this make any difference, this “new path forward”? It’s hard not to feel like the old path built thus far by the Partnership has been into a quagmire, a morass of bureaucracy and squandered moral capital, built by the best and the brightest.

Is Puget Sound recovering or not? Do we know or not?

Asked by reporter Bellamy Pailthorp, the Partnership’s Jeaneatte Dorner, its Director of Local Ecosystem and Salmon Recovery, said it is not possible to give recovery a grade because the grading system isn’t in place:

“And until we actually have that system in place, it’s sort of like we don’t have the test scores to actually give a grade,” she said.

Dorner added, it's more like the agency needs to discuss reasons why it deserves  a no-credit grade of incomplete. Because -- despite millions of dollars spent on restoring habitat --the Puget Sound Partnership doesn't fully understand or know how to measure its progress in protecting endangered fish.

“If you talk to folks and get expert opinion, I think most would say that we are not making the progress that we need to; there’s still more habitat that we’re losing than we are gaining from the restoration work that we’re doing,” she said.

One big problem, says Dorner, is that many philanthropists and environmental organizations or contractors enjoy seeing habitat restoration, so they donate to set aside specific areas. But terminology used in the patchwork of efforts is different, and can’t be easily entered into databases that would help clarify which kinds of conservation measures work best. State Of Our Salmon The Focus Of 2-Day Puget Sound Partnership Meeting

Candor like Dorner’s is refreshing but might lead one to ask what, since 2007 when the Partnership was created by the legislature, has it been doing such that, six years to its original 2020 goal of a Sound fishable, swimmable and diggable, “we are not making the progress that we need to; there’s still more habitat that we’re losing than we are gaining from the restoration work that we’re doing.”

A simple answer would be to suspend, stop, prohibit the loss of any more Puget Sound habitat so that restoration actions effect a net gain. To do that requires leadership, regulatory authority and political backbone. Not more agendas or studies or plans or systems and systems within systems within systems.

If this “new path forward” takes us to stopping the loss of Puget Sound habitat, I cheer Governor Jay and Martha K. If not, it’ll be more of the same so somebody can tell me when it’s ‘game over.’

Where do you think we’re going now?

--Mike Sato

Now, What About Puget Sound?

Vital signs status(2013 SOS, Page 70)

It’s pretty obvious that the Puget Sound Partnership, the state agency charged with coordinating the recovery of Puget Sound, doesn’t want to be held accountable for what it’s supposed to be doing— namely, having a healthy Sound that’s fishable, swimmable and diggable by the year 2020.

The authors of the 2013 State of the Sound report issued last week wrote: “Puget Sound remains in crisis...It is increasingly likely that we will not reach our legislatively established targets by 2020.” (As reported in “New Report: Puget Sound Still In ‘Critical Condition’ But Don’t Unplug Life Support Yet”)

The 2013 report issued last week reads like the 2012 report: things got better in a few areas, things got worse or didn’t get better in other areas, and, due to a lack of data for some things, the Partnership couldn’t tell what’s going on for the better or the worse.

Maybe the best that can be said is that the goal of 2020 was unrealistic and that the things that are getting worse or not getting better (orca population, chinook salmon recovery, eelgrass beds, marine water quality, nearshore habitat) are too hard to do.

The Partnership’s Leadership Council chair Martha Kongsgaard chose to put it this way: “Indicators like acres of restored habitat and reopening shellfish beds respond more quickly to management strategies if they are given the proper resources. In contrast, herring or orca populations are examples of more complicated indicators for which meaningful improvements might not be seen for decades.” (Puget Sound Partnership E-Newsletter, November 5 )

I don’t think the health of the Sound has decades left. I hope I’m wrong but I don’t get any sense of urgency that the health of Puget Sound is a priority any more. If there is no deadline tied to a goal, what’s a goal worth, really?

I received a couple of comments when I posted the news story last week about this year’s State of the Sound report:

One reader wrote: “"Ecology has already issued regulations (NPDES) that will cause the remaining Puget Sound basin to be developed in (effectively) the same way that the first half was developed. PSP has acquiesced. No amount of protest by the 14 scientists or People for Puget Sound (now deceased) has been able to shift Ecology or PSP. I think that we have already unplugged life support."

Another reader made four points in response:

“One: The Puget Sound Partnership and its key, major members should stop doing so much “Good Tidings” publicity and be much more realistic in their bloviating.  What little “Public Relations” they use is way, way off the mark of what the situation is and what needs to happen.  They create no sense of urgency.

“Two:  Probably the 21 Targets are not quite the right way to measure the condition of Puget Sound.  I think the three strategic initiatives of Shellfish, Stormwater and Habitat might, instead, each have a couple of targets that are directly influenced by the various planned actions.  Then we could better assess the benefits of various actions – which we can’t do now.

“Three: The PUBLIC needs some simple, consistent, factual, realistic messages about conditions, causes, and actions needed.  So far those that have been presented are honorable, Pollyanna spits in the proverbial bucket.  I suspect this will need to come from non-profits because the messages will mostly not be very politically palatable.

“Four:  The esteemed, nice, credible, caring Leaders should LEAD.  Pretty much all they do is sit in meetings and mainly nod with the presentations and now and then suggest a change/ask a question.  But they set no goals, they don’t demand changes, they are not out in front championing the effort, they don’t stand for hard things like “Quit approving building permits in flood-ways”, they don’t coach the team members and they are not responsible for anything remotely related to actually improving the Sound.  They just make sure documents get released according to schedule.”

There’s urgency in the campaign to save the Sound right before us— if we choose to see it. For example, the state Fish and Wildlife Department is revising the Hydraulic Code, the permit system that is meant to ensure that no in-water construction (like piers, bulkheads, discharge pipes, marinas, oil and coal and gravel terminals) results in net loss of critical nearshore habitats or destroys or disturbs spawning and rearing fish habitat. There’s urgency to fix the current administration of the permit system and to improve the rules to truly protect nearshore habitat in Puget Sound-- if we choose to see it.

But maybe specifically saving Puget Sound nearshore habitat is too hard politically when private interests are involved; maybe saving Puget Sound in general is too hard. The new urgency today is climate change and ocean acidification, but if you think saving Puget Sound is hard, think about meeting some meaningful targets under real deadlines to reverse climate change and ocean acidification.

How far do you want to take the medical metaphor in applying it to Puget Sound? When the patient is in “critical condition” and in “crisis,” you don’t prescribe vitamins and teach wellness exercises. You do all that’s necessary to maintain vital signs and stability; you triage. For the Sound, that means moratoriums on development, prohibitions to prevent more harm, harvest closures, creating protected areas and reserves-- politically unpalatable and unpopular stuff to gain time to bring the patient back into a state of balance.

You can change the metaphor but not the reality.

What do you think?

--Mike Sato

A Stupid, Ugly Way to Die

(Cindy Russell/Star-Advertiser)

In December 1985, the oil tanker Arco Anchorage went aground near Port Angeles spilling 239,000 gallons of Alaskan crude oil. That and the industry’s record of oil spills in marine waters have made oil spill prevention a top Salish Sea priority. Alas, this past Monday, Matson Navigation spilled an estimated 233,000 gallons of molasses from a broken pipe into Honolulu Harbor, sinking to the bottom and suffocating sea life.

Matson, which regularly loads molasses to be shipped to the mainland, had no spill prevention plan and was not required to have one by the state.

“To my knowledge, nothing of this magnitude on Oahu ever in the past” has occurred, said Gary Gill, the state Department of Health’s deputy director for environmental health, according to the Star-Advertiser.

Over the few days since the spill, thousands of fish have died and the magnitude of the damage isn’t known. Fish die-off is expected to accelerate and a ‘dead zone’ created that may last for months. No recovery of the spilled molasses is underway since, unlike oil, the molasses isn’t floating but has sunk to the harbor bottom.

University of Hawaii oceanography professor David Kari said recovery would come about sooner than from an oil or toxic chemcial spill. A “smorgasbord of bacteria” will feed on the sunken molasses. And, according to Gary Gill in the Star-Advertiser, the spill also threatens a coral colony in the area.

A Matson senior executive said they were “truly sorry” for what happened. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife agency is collecting its evidence. Clean Water Act violations can be assessed up to $25,000 a day.

“Anywhere where you might have a sugar industry which is loading molasses as part of the sugar refining process onto ships, there’s a potential for this kind of spill,” Gill said, according to the Star-Advertiser report.

So, where was the diligence? Here is an operation that a company does regularly over water and, while it isn’t in itself as toxic as oil, molasses turns out to be just as deadly when sunk and coating the harbor bottom with 1,400 tons of sweet death.

What an ugly way to die for people’s stupid negligence.

(Sources: Underwater video uncovers mass kill from Matson molasses spill ; Molasses spill killing fish in Hawaii ; Star-Advertiser coverage may be behind a paywall: Molasses damage predicted to linger )

--Mike Sato

When Good Seafood Goes Bad

(PHOTO: OceanNRG)

Jacques White of Long Live the Kings reminded me about a March 18 article in Ocean Natural Resource Governance (“Gulf Seafood Deformities Alarm Scientists”) detailing the deformities found in fish, crabs and shrimp in the aftermath of the BP Deepwater Horizon mega-spill and use of dispersants in 2010.

His reminder brought to mind how much of the urgency in cleaning up and restoring Puget Sound was prompted in the early 1980s by Dr. Don Malins whose research (and promotion of that research) detailed the liver tumors he found in Elliott Bay and Duwamish River English sole.

(You’ll enjoy listening to Dr. Malins, the former Director of the Environmental Conservation Division of NOAA Fisheries, in a recent interview about his work discovering the tumors. Go to Puget Sound Voices: Don Malins interview.)

In the Gulf, Dr. Jim Cowan of the Louisiana State University’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Science has found cancerous lesions on red snapper. Fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have found mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, and eyeless crabs and shrimp.

Dr. Cowan believes that the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the spilled oil are likely to blame for what he is finding. Dr. Riki Ott, a Prince William Sound toxicologist, points to the dispersants containing solvents as a cause of seafood deformities.

These are the immediate effects. The longer-term effects on the spill and the dispersants aren’t known but may prove more devastating. Dr. Andrew Whitehead at Louisiana State University has shown an adverse effect of spilled oil on the reproductive capabilities of a major marsh prey species, killifish.

Almost a decade after Dr. Malins and researchers established a link between the liver tumors in English sole and the toxic sediments they lived on, research by Dr. Usha Varanasi’s NOAA team pointed to how juvenile salmon passing through the water column above sediment contaminated by PAHs could suffer genetic damage, weakened immune systems and slower growth. (“Troubled Waters? -- Puget Sound's Pollution Seems To Be Damaging Young Chinook”  and “Fish Study Finds Dna Damage From Pollution”)

Fast forward 20 more years and we’re facing not only declining native salmon runs but also an onslaught of increased import of crude oil into the region’s refineries and an export of finished products. Meanwhile, the state can’t update its fish consumption standards to reflect the true amount of fish eaten out of the Sound because, well, it would require tightening up a whole bunch of discharge standards affecting businesses and industry. And, thankfully the incidence of liver tumors in bottom dwelling fish in Elliott Bay has decreased, but the latest research shows a significant decline of benthic organisms that live in the sediments of our urban bays.

The Gulf has big problems, for sure. Where’s the urgency in Puget Sound?

--Mike Sato