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People For Puget Sound's Action Agenda

2/08- Positions on Action Agenda for public comments

Real Actions to Save Our Sound

The Puget Sound Partnership’s 2020 Action Agenda due this December is our ‘last, best chance’ to save Puget Sound (The Olympian, 2/18/08).

The Partnership and its Leadership Council say they need to know what people think priority actions and benchmarks in protecting and restoring the Sound should be.

In 2006, when the same question was asked, four themes emerged from public workshops around the Sound:

• Educate people about the Sound

• Enforce existing laws and regulations

• Put real money into doing the job right

• Take meaningful action now on our hardest problems

Today, People For Puget Sound thinks some truly meaningful near-term actions are:

• Station a rescue tug year round at Neah Bay and develop a network of tugs around the Sound to prevent oil spill catastrophe. Read more.

• Require all new development to conform to low-impact development standards. Read more.

• Restore to health 50 miles of nearshore habitat and 50 miles of streams every year. Read more.

• Require new “soft” shoreline armoring instead of concrete bulkheads. Read more.

• Ban “mixing zones” for toxic chemicals. Read more.

• Clean up failing septic systems and require new systems to remove nutrients

• Set instream water flow rules to protect fish and wildlife

The Partnership must include in the 2020 Action Agenda measurable benchmarks on:

• Number of acres of shellfish beds cleaned up every year

• Number of acres of wetlands restored every year

• Number of polluted waterways reduced every year

• Number of tons on toxics chemicals entering the Sound reduced every year

• Number of acres of toxic sediment sites cleaned up every year

• Number of gallons of reduced stormwater flow to the Sound every year

• Number of acres of dead zones in Puget Sound

• Number of stream-miles restored to fish passage

Tell the Puget Sound Partnership what you think: Speak up for real actions to restore the Sound to health.

It’s Your Puget Sound.

YOUR PARTICIPATION AND INVOLVEMENT IN DEVELOPING THE ACTION AGENDA IS ESSENTIAL.

Here are three ways you can participate on a regular basis between now and September 1, 2008:

Attend Partnership workshops and meetings near you. Let us know how it goes by emailing us;

Submit your comments and ideas via People For Puget Sound web site; we will deliver your comment sheet to the Partnership.

Join the Save Our Sound Campaign for timely updates and calls to action. Please contact Rein Attemann, 206.382.7007.

More information is available on the Partnership’s web site