Olympic Peninsula Environmental News

Our Core Values

• We will focus on the long-term health of the Puget Sound ecosystem
• Sustainable water supply and clean water supply mean common agreed upon rules for maintaining them.
  
• Protecting the Sound means protecting the shoreline.
  
• Some areas of our environment are critical to it’s long term viability. These critical areas require more protection than most.
• Sustainable forests must be created for the long term health of native species.
  
• Balance between human use and wildlife is essential.  However this does not mean that all human activity takes precedence.
  
• Restoring fish stocks is essential to long term local food supply. This means making hard decisions about land use.
  
• Driving down the cost of ecologically safe products is essential since the largest users of products are middle class and the poor.
• Alternative fuels and energy are essential to the long term health of the air, the Sound, the Straits and Hood Canal. We support any efforts attempting to implement them, but will always balance with the ecosystems needs.
• New methods of achieving these goals needs incentive, not bureaucratic blockage.  Lack of support for gray water systems standards is an example of this.
  
• Regulations need incentive and/or enforcement to be of any value. This is part of the cost of protection.
• We will not just write these down, but stand up and have our voices counted when critical issues challenge these. In a democracy, it is not enough to say you believe in something, you must act in accordance with your beliefs.
  

These values are the basis of support for any efforts at environmental regulation.