*2/9/10 Crosscut -By Daniel Jack Chasan
If a report falls into Puget Sound and no one notices, has it really fallen? The Puget Sound Partnership’s first-ever State of the Sound Report came out on Tuesday to virtually no attention from the local press and no ringing declarations by an (otherwise-occupied) governor, who launched an ambitious save-the-Sound crusade just three years ago.
To be fair, the report contains no big surprises. In a nutshell, it says that some things are better, while others are worse. “Because the Puget Sound ecosytem is complex,” the Partnership’s press release explains, “it is not surprising that some parts of it may improve while others decline.”
… This all “leaves a critical question unanswered,” writes People for Puget Sound executive director Kathy Fletcher in a blog http://www.pugetsound.org/blog/kf020210 . “Are we on track to restore the Sound to health by the year 2020?” Well, no. The current financial picture would be a whole lot bleaker without the one-shot contribution of federal stimulus funds. The report itself says there’s not enough money to do the job. “To achieve recovery by the 2020 deadline,” it says, “additional resources will be needed.”
Fletcher writes, “If we aren’t on track yet to restore the Sound to health by 2020, and I don’t think we are, we need to get on track. … Will the Partnership get the job done? I sure hope so, because Puget Sound is running out of time.”
More at
http://crosscut.com/blog/crosscut/19323/
Filed under: Government |
