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Quite a week for Puget Sound
12/2/08 Kathy writes about the Action Agenda, exporting gravel from Maury Island, and saying 'no' to bad ideas
12/2/08
On Monday the Puget Sound Partnership released its “Action Agenda” to restore the health of Puget Sound by the year 2020. At the public ceremony attended by hundreds of luminaries, many inspiring words were uttered about our obligation to future generations. The very next day, lame duck Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland issued a lease to allow the construction of a huge gravel export operation on the shores of the Maury Island Aquatic reserve, home to endangered orcas, salmon and seabirds.
This is our problem in a nutshell: everyone is for saving Puget Sound in general. But when it comes to the very specific, very real decisions that harm Puget Sound, where are the lofty sentiments and the concern for our grandchildren?
One of the black clouds hanging over the Puget Sound Partnership’s celebration the other day was the bleak budgetary outlook. Optimism about the new plan is tempered by the knowledge that money will be hard to come by. Not to sound too naïve, but since it’s expensive to undo the harm that we’ve done to our Sound over the years, why would we proceed to do more? Saying “no” to a bad idea like the Maury Island gravel dock doesn’t restore the Sound to health, but at least it’s a pretty cost-effective way to avoid making things worse.
Maybe I’m also naïve to think that in a year when we lost seven more of our endangered orcas, most likely to starvation, responsible decision-makers would say no to a project that puts one of the whales’ favorite winter fishing grounds at risk. Perhaps the whales had heard what was up in Sutherland’s office on Tuesday, when they decided to spend that very day hanging out in the Vashon area—their first visit of the season.
Monday night I attended Dr. Riki Ott’s presentation at Elliott Bay Books on her new book about the Exxon Valdez spill, “Not One Drop.” The title comes from a long-ago statement of the (almost) ex-Senator of Alaska, Ted Stevens. In the early 1970s, when the politicians and the oil companies were pushing through the trans-Alaska crude oil pipeline and the oilport in Valdez, Alaska, Senator Stevens promised that “not one drop of oil would ever be spilled” in Prince William Sound.
I heard an echo in Doug Sutherland’s press release today, announcing the lease for the Maury Island gravel export dock. The announcement’s headline: “Environmental bar set exceptionally high to protect marine habitat.”