Water is necessary for life, and clean water is integral to keeping our ecosystems balanced and functioning. The impacts of water pollution have far-reaching impacts for the well-being of people and planet. Understanding the threats to the health of the waterways and watersheds throughout Washington state and working together to address these from multiple angles is one of the most important environmental challenges we face in our regions. 

Public awareness and collective pressure for prioritizing clean water is how federal level funding and policy advocacy is possible. WEC and partners have tracked seven federal spending bills through two budget cycles, and utilized strategic storytelling to show decision makers and the public the value of federal clean water programs. Each year, WEC participates in Puget Sound Day On The Hill in Washington, D.C, meeting with members of the Washington delegation to advocate strong policy and funding for the protection of Puget Sound. During subsequent budget appropriations, Representative Kilmer secured a $3M increase in funding for Puget Sound, which was the largest percentage boost of any region. We have also engaged our congressional delegation in our work to get the Land and Water Conservation Fund passed and permanently funded, a critical federal fund that has long served to restore and protect public lands and waters.

Sometimes the consequences of the decline of water quality is clear and evident to the public. Multiple orca deaths in 2018 caused unprecedented levels of public concern, especially after Tahlequah carried the body of her dead calf around Puget Sound for 17 days. WEC played a major role in advocating for addressing the critical threats to the Southern Resident orcas, such as vessel noise and toxic pollution. It is this level of public awareness that allowed the orca bills (see Policy Wins and Funding Secured) to pass readily through both chambers of the state legislature in 2019. 

Orcas represent the accumulation of stressors on our aquatic ecosystems, reflective of far-ranging connections in our systems, human and ecological, that are harder to trace.

Though less commonly understood, the health of Puget Sound and the watershed is intricately tied to Washington’s forests. Take, for example, the massive decline of salmon stock, especially the Chinook. There are stressors that are readily apparent such as toxic pollution and the decline of forage fish due to increased shoreline armoring and dams. However, salmon also have a reciprocal relationship with our forests – salmon bring nitrogen back to the forest ecosystem to ensure its health, and forested riparian zones (which are often under threat of development) directly affect the water quality of juvenile salmon freshwater habitats. A healthy riparian zone keeps stream temperatures low, filters pollutants, provides habitat for many species, and provides stability during flooding. Tribal Nations in the region have long understood the key connective role salmon plays in such ways, which underscores the importance of partnering with Tribes to apply traditional knowledge and management towards stewardship and planning. This includes projects such as the Kitsap Natural Resources Management (see Cross-Systems Change) and Local Climate Action Plans (see Multi-level Regional Strategies). 

Clean water is directly linked with the health of our forests, which capture, filter, and retain water far more effectively than any human-made system for the same purposes. To that end, WEC worked to secure changes to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund that allows those dollars to be used for forestry projects that protect water quality. Historically, the funding has only been used for “gray” projects like water treatment facilities. With this change, there is now a large source of funding that can provide financial incentives for sustainable, smart forestry. So far, this program has funded forest projects in Pierce, Skamania, and other areas around the state. 

When we pave over forest lands with impermeable surfaces and without careful consideration of how to preserve the functioning of the ecosystem, we compromise these abilities of the natural systems. Water that would otherwise be naturally filtered through soil passed over our roads, collecting pollutants, and goes straight into Puget Sound through our stormwater infrastructure. That is why WEC helped create and fund the Stormwater Financial Assistance Program, so that local governments had resources for clean water retrofit projects that prioritize green infrastructure. This program has since ranked and funded more than 300 projects across the state and has so far kept more than 1.5 million pounds of pollution from entering Washington’s waterways annually. In 2018, we helped to secure a new round of funding for the program in the capital budget, for a cumulative total of $208M secured since the first round of funding in 2013.

The above funding source, in conjunction with the Nature’s Scorecard program (see People Power and Accountability), ensures that our municipalities are partners and collaborators in sustainable development that limits stormwater pollution from collecting and entering our waterways. 

Finally, we must also limit excess production of pollutants on the road. When WEC participates in advocating for public transportation investments alongside EPC coalition members, we are taking part in protecting clean water, orcas, and salmon for healthy communities. To this end, WEC and partners worked on public education campaigns, such as the “Be an Orca Hero” campaign during transit month which highlighted these interconnections and was featured by King County Metro. Now the campaign has been incorporated as part of the Orcas Love Raingarden curriculum in Tacoma schools.

The extraction and processing of fossil fuels, as well as the infrastructure that transports it through a region, can have profound impacts on the water quality and the health of the environment. 

The far reaching impacts of oil spills are widely acknowledged. We secured oil spill prevention measures in 2014, 2015, 2018, and 2019 and engaged in subsequent rulemakings and public engagement processes, including: 

• updates to state’s barrel tax to apply to all modes of transport (pipeline, vessel & train),
•  more stable barrel tax amount, 
• public disclosure and publicly available reporting of oil transport information and trends, 
• series of new protection laws to strengthen oil spill prevention and preparedness, 
• and stronger insurance requirements on fossil fuel industry. 

What is less acknowledged are the immediate impacts of fossil fuel infrastructure on the surrounding communities. Though our region is more often targeted for export terminals to transport products by waterways, the end of a chain that begins in Canada, these facilities (the Tacoma LNG plant as merely one example) pose a danger to the surrounding communities through possible accidents and groundwater contamination. 

Industrial and historical groundwater contamination continues to have an impact on the health of communities. For instance, 56 percent of the toxic sites that were identified through the Model Toxic Control Act (MTCA) are located in low-income communities and 46 percent are located in communities of color (link to F&C). MTCA represents a part of WEC’s history, and, in its 32 years, has successfully cleaned up over 7,000 sites throughout the state, and prevented many other sources of pollution that harm our communities by poisoning our water, air, and land. MTCA’s broad success demonstrates how this law serves as one of the most important tools for environmental protection here in Washington.

However, many sites remained unaddressed, due to funding gaps. Passed in 1988, MTCA’s funding mechanism—tied to the price of oil—was volatile and could not keep up with the demand to fund clean-up and prevention efforts.

Additionally, the use of the funding wasn’t always directed to the most impacted communities. As lots remained vacant—a hurdle to development because sites required clean up—and communities continued to be harmed by toxics and underinvestment, there was a critical need to shore up the existing funding systems to adequately address the opportunity gaps created by historical injustices. 

During the 2019 legislative session, WEC worked to push the state legislature to address these gaps in the initial MTCA law and ensure that the Polluter Pays model adequately covers the need for cleanup and prevention funding. We provided key leadership to stabilize MTCA’s funding source, resulting in increased funding from approximately $315M to $475M per biennium. WEC and our partners also secured important changes before the funding was stabilized that incorporated environmental justice and racial equity into how the funding is applied, and as a result, many community of color led groups were awarded first-time MTCA grants in 2017.

These successes were possible due to the convergence of several factors, which serve as an illustrative case-study for how WEC works to institute change: 1) when public participation grants were zeroed out in 2015 due to lack of funding, WEC built a coalition of frontline community groups, local governments, and other allies like low-income housing developers to work together and advocate changes to the law; 2) we leveraged Front & Centered’s 2016 equity analysis to show officials that toxic polluted sites are disproportionately located in communities of color and low-income areas across Washington; and 3) key elected officials resolved to fix the problems and we provided them with input from the public and other stakeholders, highlighting the community impacts that occur from a lack of funding and project delays. 

Historical toxic pollution from many decades ago continues to have significant reverberations today, in water quality, healthy habitats, housing, economics, perpetuation of inequities, and community health. These impacts are a sobering reminder that we must continue to challenge the false narrative that our actions and our lives are somehow separate from the environment.