OLYMPIA, Washington, November 10, 2008 (ENS) – Each year, 52 million pounds of toxic chemicals – nearly 150,000 pounds per day – inundate Puget Sound with contaminated runoff. This amounts to a toxic spill the size of Exxon Valdez every two years, according to the Puget Sound Partnership, a community effort of governments, tribes, scientists and businesses working together to restore and protect the Sound.

The toxic chemicals include oil and petroleum products, lead, and phthalates – and one million pounds of toxic metals such as zinc and copper. These metals, despite being released in lower concentrations than oil and petroleum, can harm threatened salmon species.

“These disturbing numbers are putting more than 40 species in Puget Sound at risk, including the Sound’s orca population, where we just saw a decline of nearly 10 percent in the past several months,” said the Partnership’s Executive Director David Dicks.

The Puget Sound Partnership Thursday released a draft Action Agenda for protecting, restoring and cleaning up Puget Sound, which encompasses the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area, home to about five million people.

Puget Sound as seen from the Seattle
Space Needle (Photo credit unknown)

The draft Action Agenda recommends using “a comprehensive and integrated approach to managing urban stormwater and rural surface water runoff.”

“By protecting the last remaining intact places, problems can be prevented before they occur, which is the best and most cost-effective approach to restoring ecosystem health,” the draft agenda states.

Among other measures, it would establish and maintain locally coordinated, effective on-site sewage system management to reduce pollutant loading to vulnerable surface waters.

It would prevent pollutants from being introduced into Puget Sound ecosystems in the first place, and to deal with contaminants already in the Sound it would prioritize and implement projects to clean up toxic contamination in water and upland areas.

If the draft agenda is adopted, it would protect and conserve stream flows for natural system and human uses and focus growth away from ecologically important and sensitive areas by encouraging dense, compact cities and vital rural communities.

“Human activities have vastly altered the ecosystem during the past 150 years,” the draft agenda states. “Restoration efforts need to bring large portions of river, wetland and marine systems back to life.”

Under the plan, the Partnership would implement and maintain priority ecosystem restoration projects for marine, nearshore, estuary, freshwater riparian and uplands.

It would revitalize waterfront communities while enhancing marine and freshwater shoreline environments and increase private landowners’ ability to undertake restoration projects.

New analysis supporting the draft Action Agenda identifies some “alarming” facts and trends related to the health of Puget Sound, said Dicks.

Two pollution reports, “Pollutant Loadings for Surface Runoff and Roadways” and “Improved Estimates of Loadings from Dischargers of Municipal and Industrial Wastewater,” confirm the state’s previous findings that surface runoff is the main pathway of the toxic chemicals getting into the Sound.

The primary sources of toxics to Puget Sound are the day-to-day activities of people, as the population grows and land gets more and more developed.

The estimates are based on current knowledge about toxic pollutants from surface runoff, air deposition, wastewater from discharge pipes, direct spills into the water and combined sewer/stormwater overflows only.

The reports, and a summary document, can be found online at www.ecy.wa.gov

The draft Action Agenda is subject to a public comment period that ends on November 20.

For convenience, an online “open house” has been added to the Partnership’s website for collecting comments: www.psp.wa.gov.

In addition, two public meetings, both beginning at 9 am, will be held this month to solicit feedback:

* Nov. 11: Embassy Suites Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Triple Crown Ballroom, 15920 W. Valley Highway, Seattle
* Nov. 21: Edmonds Conference Center

The Partnership’s Leadership Council will adopt the final Action Agenda on December 1 at a Sound-wide celebration event in Seattle.

“The Action Agenda is the best chance we have to repair the damage to Puget Sound and ensure we leave a legacy of a clean and healthy Puget Sound for our children and grandchildren,” Dicks said. “Success truly depends on all of us coming together and being a part of the solution.”

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WASHINGTON, DC, January 7, 2008 (ENS) – Three environmental groups today said they will sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to make a decision about whether or not to place the polar bear on the federal Endangered Species List by this coming Wednesday. To survive, polar bears must contend with shrinking sea ice, toxic contamination and petroleum development.

Today the Service said it is “working diligently to reach a final decision” about listing the bear as threatened but will not have made the determination by Wednesday. “We expect to provide a final recommendation to the Secretary of the Interior and finalize the decision within the next month,” the Service said.

The Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC, and Greenpeace say they will begin legal action Wednesday

“We certainly hope that the polar bear will be listed within the next month. But this is an administration of broken promises, from Bush’s campaign pledge to regulate greenhouse gases to Secretary Kempthorne’s failure to list a single species under the Endangered Species Act in the last 607 days,” said Kassie Siegel, climate program director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Polar bear on Arctic sea
ice (Photo courtesy MMS)

The Endangered Species Act requires a listing process of no longer than two years, but in this case almost three years have passed since the scientific petition was submitted in February 2005, calling on the government to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.

The groups sued the Bush administration in December 2005, when it missed its first deadline.

Responding to the suit in February, 2006, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that protection of polar bears “may be warranted,” and began a full status review of the species.

On December 27, 2006, the Service announced its proposal to list the species as “threatened” and had one year to make a final listing decision. The legal deadline for doing so is January 9, 2008.

“The polar bear needs a lifeline,” said Andrew Wetzler, director of the Endangered Species Project at NRDC. “Urgent action is required by our government. Polar bears’ very existence is already threatened by environmental disaster, and they also face toxic contamination and habitat destruction from oil and gas development. The administration’s endless delay is outrageous and unwarranted.”

The Service says it is working as fast as it can in light of new information received in September 2007 and public comments on that information.

“When the polar bear was proposed for listing in January 2007, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne directed the Service to work with the U.S. Geological Survey, USGS, the public and the scientific community to broaden our understanding of what is happening with the polar bear and to gather additional information to inform the final decision on whether the species warrants federal protection under the ESA [Endangered Species Act], the Service said today.

“In September 2007, USGS scientists supplied new research findings to the Service updating population information on the Southern Bering Sea polar bear and providing additional data on sea ice trends and effects on polar bear populations throughout the species’ range.

As a result of the new USGS research findings, the Service reopened and later extended a second comment period to allow the public time to review the information and respond. “We received numerous comments on the USGS reports and have been working to analyze and respond to the information provided during the comment period,” the Service said.

To date, the government has received more than 500,000 comments in support of protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, including letters from eminent polar bear experts, climate scientists, and more than 60 members of Congress, a record number of public comments in support of an Endangered Species Act listing, the environmental groups say.

But the groups do not view the number of comments as justification for further delay in issuing a determination.

“The Bush administration has squandered seven years denying the devastating scientific evidence of global warming,” said Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace USA. “Stalling has cost us dearly, putting the polar bear at risk of extinction and jeopardizing the future welfare of billions of people around the world. This further unjustified delay is emblematic of the administration’s approach.”

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