The end of the beginning for Puget Sound cleanup

The Dow Jones index was nearly 5,000 points higher when Puget Sound Partnership began work on a detailed plan to restore the Sound to robust health by 2020.

Eighteen months later, investors and marine biologists both require oxygen and depth sounders to fathom how far down they must go to reach bottom. Such is the economic environment that awaits an action agenda that will be approved Monday and forwarded to the 2009 Legislature.

Getting fully launched will require more money, political courage, bureaucratic cooperation, public support — and more money. The partnership's leadership council is respected and purposeful, with Bill Ruckelshaus as chair and David Dicks as executive director.

Lawmakers in Olympia can be confident they will given a complete plan that has been vetted by a science panel, combed through by highly motivated environmental groups, tribes, industry organizations, business associations and various levels of government. Legions of concerned citizens testified at regional hearings.

The breadth of the challenge is extraordinary: cleanup of Puget Sound. A profound assignment even if there were broad understanding the beloved body of water is in trouble.

Cleaning up Lake Washington decades ago was no simple task, but the nature of the enemy was easily defined: untreated sewage. Once the problem was understood, taxpayers and ratepayers — with tireless citizen leadership — built treatment plants to make beaches habitable and safe for swimming.

Certainly, there are echoes of old troubles. Puget Sound is vexed around Hood Canal by leaking septic tanks. Overall, the challenges for Puget Sound are more cosmic.

At a public hearing last Friday in Edmonds, Paul Roberts, an Everett City Council member and consultant on public-works issues for local governments, laid out the elemental pressures on the Sound: population growth, an economic and jobs base to support that population, a complex environmental setting and climate change.

Restoring and maintaining a healthy Puget Sound is about managing growth and housing density to promote more efficient transportation. Our leaking, drippy cars, with degrading brake pads and tires, are major factors in pollution. Runoff from paved roadways and parking lots is tougher to corral than untreated municipal sewage or a polluting factory.

Surface-water management — runoff from here and there — and all manner of land-use imperatives come into play. They are as central to success as motivating armies of citizens to volunteer their time on restoration projects and environmental vigilance, a la the exemplary WSU Island County Beach Watchers at Coupeville, on Whidbey Island.

The plan to be adopted Monday enjoys strong support, and respectful awe for the effort that brought it together, but right to the end, ideas were pushed.

Scientists want the definition of success to be broader and more demanding than healthy fish runs. Environmentalists want accountability made abundantly clear. Others want the cost of polluting the environment to be reflected in the price of goods that foul the environment. Still others want penalties to reflect the public costs of treating the Sound like a cesspool.

In the spirit of getting the last word in edgewise, here are two more points.

A year ago, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce sponsored an extraordinary symposium to let businesses share how they have been doing well by doing good. Environmental awareness is good for the bottom line. Pick the brains of these smart folks. Share the best green practices that save money, make money and contribute to saving the Sound. Celebrate them. Create incentives and develop allies.

Start crafting an innovative, Puget Sound-wide, multicounty financing mechanism for cleanup. Yes, a tax kept small by spreading it wide. The partnership received $570 million in the past two years from the Legislature. The program seeks $200 million to $300 million. Truly unfortunate timing. Federal money is coming in. Terrific. Use it well and go after more. To expect a massive check now out of Olympia is improbable, and almost unseemly and impolitic to request.

Explore ways to raise money and focus it. The public gets this stuff. A strong plan with good leadership nurtures trust.

Lance Dickie's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is ldickie@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera