Washington state is well aware that water quality in the Puget Sound has significantly declined, but the state government’s voluntary approach to addressing the causes—including industrial farm runoff— has proven ineffective. “There is no regulatory backstop to ensure agricultural operations comply with state water quality laws,” says the Western Environmental Law Center in a new report.
“Washington state and federal government spend taxpayer money on programs designed to fix the pollution problem, but recently only two of 17 reporting regions in Puget Sound showed any improvements in water quality,” the Law Center said. The report states that water pollution in Puget Sound has severely hurt wild salmon and shellfish populations. The Washington Fish and Wildlife Department predicts that this year’s wild salmon runs in Puget Sound will be one-third of what they were in 2015.
With an additional one million new people expected in the area in the next 15 years, along with the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification, “the quality of our waters and the health of Puget Sound are expected to decline irreparably if we do not make swift and effective changes to our current regulatory and conservation efforts,” says the Law Center. The report tracks the history of state and federal water pollution regulations in Washington, offering more more than 900 factual citations, in order to “stand up to scrutiny from entities currently perpetuating misinformation in Washington about industrial agriculture pollution’s effects on water quality.”