New Puget Sound report finds these ‘red flags’ toward environmental recovery goals
Puget Sound is not recuperating at nearly the rate state leaders hoped for when they set environmental health recovery goals about a decade ago, according to a new report by the Puget Sound Partnership, a state agency created in 2007 and tasked with restoring and protecting the region.
The biennial 2021 State of the Sound report shows that very few of the “vital signs,” or indicators selected to monitor the environmental health of Puget Sound, met their 2020 targets. There is diminishing water quality, no sign of recovery for Chinook salmon populations and a Southern Resident orca population of 74, which is about three-quarters of the 2020 target of 95 whales, the report says.
“It’s a call to increase the momentum, and it’s a lot of red flags,” said Nathalie Hamel, vital signs reporting program lead at the Puget Sound Partnership.
Nursing Puget Sound back to health is no small task, particularly in the face of worsening global climate change, inadequate public funding and the continued turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Laura Blackmore, executive director of the Puget Sound Partnership.
“It’s like being asked to restore a house, but they say ‘We are only going to give you half the funding to do it, and we are going to destroy the living room at the same time’,” Blackmore said.
But she urges the public not to lose hope: There are still opportunities to improve the health of Puget Sound in the coming years, and some vital signs are doing better. Vital signs include metrics such as protected and restored habitat, healthy water quality and vibrant human quality of life.
There are 23 vital signs that failed to reach 2020 targets, compared to five that are near or at their 2020 targets. (There were also 21 vital signs that did not have a 2020 target and three with insufficient data.)
Progress is a mixed bag, with five vital signs getting worse, 17 not improving and 11 getting better. Nine vital signs had “mixed results,” and 10 had insufficient data, the report says.
Many of the improving vital signs have a common denominator: They are heavily influenced by hyperlocal actions, such as restoring floodplains and estuaries. The most progress was made in habitat restoration and conversion, according to the report.
The health of the sediment at the bottom of Puget Sound also shows promising advancements, with a decreasing number of chemicals found in Elliott Bay and Commencement Bay sediments over the past two decades, the report says.
Making progress is more difficult for vital signs influenced by international and national decisions, Hamel said. Almost 90% of the vital signs are at a moderate to high risk of being impacted by climate change by 2050, according to the report. None of the vital signs regarding species and food webs have improved.
The increasing human population in the Puget Sound region also makes recovery work more difficult, with development offsetting the benefits of habitat restoration, the report says. Over the next 30 years, the population of the Puget Sound region is expected to increase by 1.8 million people.
Progress is slow going for vital signs that inherently take longer to recover due to the pace of the natural world.
“Even if we did everything right, right now, for orcas, we wouldn’t get the result we want tomorrow,” Hamel said. “It would take another 20 years.”
More money, fewer problems
The Puget Sound Partnership team knows what needs to be done to improve Puget Sound’s health, but a lack of funding makes full realization of these plans extremely difficult, Hamel said.
Washington’s legislature has given the Partnership just 53% of the funding it has requested for recovery efforts over the past decade, according to the new report. That means that these programs are missing $763 million that experts say they need.
Congress passed a $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill in early November that Blackmore said contains an “infusion of funding” for the Puget Sound Partnership’s work.
“I am over the moon thrilled that that’s happening,” she said. “It’s wonderful to see that support from Congress and our delegation.”
But this money will run out in a matter of years, and there needs to be a local, sustainable funding source established, Blackmore said. (This measure was also suggested in the new report.)
“It could be a new tax, it could be a rejiggering of priorities,” she said. “I don’t have the answer, but I do think we need a sustainable funding source if we really care and want our orcas and salmon back.”
Investing in these solutions will save the Puget Sound region money in the long run, said Ander Russell, senior environmental advocate at Bellingham-based nonprofit RE Sources. That’s because if climate change worsens, we will have to pay to deal with more wildfires, floods and heatwaves.
“We can keep jumping from crisis to crisis and responding,” Russell said. “But it will cost us more to do that than to make these bold decisions to address the climate issue.”
Blackmore asks community members not to despair at the results of the 2021 State of the Sound report. She recommends that the public reach out to their legislators to push them to support increased funding for the recovery efforts.
“I would love to be in 2023 congratulating the state legislature for increasing funding statewide and doing real work of creating sustainable funding source for recovery,” Blackmore said. “I don’t want people to give up.”
This story was originally published November 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "New Puget Sound report finds these ‘red flags’ toward environmental recovery goals."
