Metropolitan King County Council Chair Larry Phillips hailed the federal endangered species listing of the Puget Sound Orca Whale as opportunity to bring awareness to the degrading condition of Puget Sound and generate the community will necessary to clean up Puget Sound and save the Orcas.

“The Orca, like the Chinook, is an icon that defines our region and our heritage,” said Phillips, a co-chair of the Water Resource Inventory Area (WRIA) 8 Steering Committee and Cedar River Council. “The health of the Orca population tells us about the health of our most important body of water—Puget Sound, which is also an indicator of the health of the region’s other waterways and entire ecosystem. This listing is an opportunity to stop the downward spiral in Puget Sound’s health and restore it and the orcas to their previous glory. But we must act now.”

Phillips points to the successful WRIA model pioneered in coordinating a local response to the endangered species listing of Chinook Salmon as an example of local citizens working across governmental boundaries to formulate a species recovery plan. He also points to the clean up of Lake Washington in the 1960s and 1970s as an example that Puget Sound region citizens care about the health of their waterways and have the political will to constitute radical change.

“Puget Sound’s recovery is this generation’s clean up of Lake Washington. If we can come together as concerned citizens and policy makers to address the health of Puget Sound, our children will be telling the story to their children just as I tell my son about what Lake Washington used to look like before Jim Ellis and Metro cleaned it up.”

Phillips looks forward to working with Governor Christine Gregoire and King County Executive Ron Sims, both of whom soon plan to announce Puget Sound initiatives.