The Metropolitan King County Council today followed up work from its Town Hall meeting in May by calling for a formal plan for King County’s participation in the clean-up Puget Sound through the Puget Sound Partnership, the state agency leading the clean-up effort.

“Restoring the health of Puget Sound is a King County priority, and this legislation allows King County to get an early start on the ‘partnership’ piece of the Puget Sound Partnership,” said Councilmember Larry Phillips, Chair of the Council’s Growth Management and Natural Resources Committee. “The Partnership is just beginning to come together, but we don’t have any time to lose on the timeline for saving the Sound. At our Town Hall meeting in May, we were given an idea of how wide the Partnership’s Action Plan for cleaning up Puget Sound will be, and of the public-private partnership that will play a vital role in the success of the program. I want to make sure that when the Partnership is ready to get to work, King County is ready to participate.”

The Washington State Legislature this spring approved legislation to create a new state agency called the “Puget Sound Partnership” to lead the effort to clean-up the Sound. The agency is led by former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency head Bill Ruckelshaus. The legislature also approved $238 million to fund the agency’s work for the next two years.

The motion adopted by the Council today directs the Executive and the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks to develop and submit to the Council a work program for determining which responsibilities King County, local cities and other agencies will assume as the Partnership begins its work. The work program will include:

• Coordination of communications and meetings among local jurisdictions;
• Priority-setting for countywide projects, actions and studies that will help obtain state and federal funding via the Partnership;
• Assessments of the County’s readiness for the testing, monitoring and studies that will be required as part of the Partnership.
• A recommendation on potential creation of a division or office responsible for the coordination of County programs related to the restoration and protection of the Sound.

“Our parents’ generation worked together to save Lake Washington. We are now charged with a task that is just as vital, to save a waterway that is the economic and scenic heart of our region,” said Phillips. “If we want this precious resource to be available for our grandchildren, we must get to work to protect, clean and restore the Sound, and make sure everybody is on the same page to make that happen.”

Read more about this legislation on the King County Council’s LEGISEARCH system.
Type in “2007-0339”