Olympic Peninsula Environmental News

Well, I spent much of the sunny day in another meeting of the Strait Ecosystem Recovery Network (ERN). This body, comprised of various local governmental, tribal and non profit volunteers, all have been helping the Puget Sound Partnership prioritize their recovery efforts on the Straits, as well as 6 other areas around the Sound. The notable issue of the day for me was that discussion got a bit testy when the representatives of the various local governments, non profits and Tribes took exception to the Partnership rewarding certain dysfunctional ERNs by allowing them break up into multiple groups, moving from 7 action areas to 10, all the while splitting the small allocation of money that is given to the rest of the groups into a smaller pie. What does that mean, though, really? Is it such a large issue?

Since 2009, these volunteer efforts to support the PSP have been working for hundreds of hours to categorize and prioritize the work needed to recover the Sound to health. They are the subject matter experts of the Sound and Strait.

The Puget Sound Partnership originally setup 7 “Action Areas” comprised of representatives from organizations that work to protect the Strait and Sound. These include city and county governments, doing work in land use planning and sewage treatment, non profits that are working on salmon recovery and other efforts, and the Tribes. The Partnership budgeted their limited resources among the 7 to help with efforts like outreach, education and staffing. But apparently, the Ecosystem Recovery Network group up around the North Central Sound area have had no luck in resolving any of their various differences. So instead of telling them to get their act together (after two or more years of trying), or dissolving and reforming the group, the Partnership has rewarded them by allowing them to break into smaller groups, and then rewarded them by taking the monies allocated to all of the existing functional groups and splitting and redividing it by the new number of groups. All this without consulting with all of the existing groups, or expanding the monies to not penalize the original 7. We now are told that we now have less money than before to try and help clean up the Sound and Straits.

So, in essence, the PSP has rewarded the dysfunctional groups by allowing them to break up and then taken monies away from the rest of the groups that have actually been successful in their efforts. All efforts to change the decision of the Partnership, done without consultation of the other action areas, has been in vain.

When the Strait ERN decided that perhaps they would send a letter to the PSP declaring their displeasure with this state of affairs, Representative Tharinger, who chaired the meeting attempted to forcefully argue the group into backing down, by clarifying to them what the ‘reality’ of the situation was all about, that they were ‘out of line’ in attempting to change this situation.

It seems as if all would be well served to remember that dozens of organizations have sacrificed hundreds, maybe thousands of hours of time, some paid for by taxpayers if they are governmental, in time that could have been spent at other tasks, and some by volunteers who care about seeing the Sound and Strait recovered to former health. People from these cash strapped non profits are giving up their personal time to try and accomplish these lofty goals. While Steve is collecting pay for being there, we are not. These volunteers in the cause, after acting on their best efforts, see those who can’t get their acts together rewarded by more public monies, while the functional units get less to succeed. A bit of humility to our point of view is the least we expect.

Today, a friend told me that his grandfather used to say, “you get the result you reward.” Does the Partnership really wish to reward those that can’t come to consensus, and alternatively let those of us, frustrated by hundreds of hours of meetings to prioritize issues that the predecessor of the Partnership successfully identified years ago, continue on with less funding? Do they really want to reward with more funding those that can’t come to consensus?

The Strait ERN has spent hundreds of hours building the prioritized lists, over the last two years, we have the groups, from the cities, tribes and non-profits that have track records of actually getting things done. We are waiting for and desperate for the funding. Tax bases are shrinking. Non profits are finding their donations shrinking, and laying off critical long time effective staff. Organizations like the NW Straits, which has been responsible for our county Marine Resource Committees and Derelict Gear recovery efforts, have been the unintended consequence to improperly thought through efforts, like the campaign in WA DC to end Congressional earmarks (the Straits Commission was an earmark to the NOAA budget).

In the meantime, the Sound and Strait are continuing to deteriorate. The Partnership has a goal, that seems to be receding before us like a mirage, to recover the Sound and Straits to health by 2020. To see the Partnership stripping away money to hand to those who can’t get their acts together is a demoralizing study in organizational dysfunction.

Filed under: Puget Sound | Tagged: Puget Sound |