What price Puget Sound?

We are not quite sure what to make of the multibillion-dollar price put on Puget Sound. Our first thought was, no one ever had to buy it, and we are not going to sell it. We are not even thinking of putting a mortgage on it.

A team of economists at Earth Economics, an environmental group, has gone through a long calculation and determined that Puget Sound and its attendant ecosystem are worth $7 billion to $62 billion a year. Probably there is value in this calculation, though the spread between the numbers suggests that eco-accounting is not yet an exact science.

The higher figure suggests that the Sound has an asset value greater than a trillion dollars. We hope very much we will not have to pay taxes on it, and in that regard we note that King County Assessor Scott Noble has so far declined to assess it.

But what does it mean? The purpose of pricing the Sound is apparently to tell people that degrading it costs them, and that protecting it is worth money. Often that is so.

But much of the value of the Sound comes from the same development that creates the problems. Elliott and Commencement bays are surely worth more as deep-water harbors than had they been preserved like the Nisqually Delta.

And yet, having the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, we would preserve the Nisqually. Is that an economic decision? It wasn't, at the time.

— Bruce Ramsey