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Norm Dicks to the rescue
6/12/09 blog by Kathy Fletcher on the House subcommittee approval of $50 million for Puget Sound clean up
6/12/09
by Kathy Fletcher
Fortunately for Puget Sound, Norm Dicks, who represents Washington state’s 6th district in the US Congress, chairs the subcommittee in the House of Representatives that holds the purse-strings for EPA. For each of the past two years, he’s been able to send $20 million to Puget Sound. In a bold step this week, his subcommittee upped the amount to $50 million for the coming year. Thank you, Norm!
This isn’t the final word. The full House and the Senate still have to act. But what a great start.
And with the feds stepping up, isn’t it a shame that the state legislature went home this spring without passing the Invest in Clean Water bill? That legislation would have generated $100 million per year statewide for stormwater solutions at the local level. The state House of Representatives passed the bill, but the Senate didn’t. The $100 million would come from a fee on petroleum, charged at the refinery, reflecting the fact that petroleum is the #1 culprit in stormwater pollution. Think the oil companies can afford to pay?
So we still have our work cut out for us to make sure that we don’t fritter our money away on other things while Puget Sound dies. While Norm can help us out from DC, the rest of the job is going to have to be done right here.
And remember: Money to rectify the damage we’ve done to the Sound is only part of the battle. We also need to stop doing more damage—but fortunately, that’s a lot cheaper than cleaning up later.