The Link Between Healthy Rural Lands and a Healthy Sound

According to the Puget Sound Partnership, stormwater runoff is the primary cause of pollution in Puget Sound.  As residential and commercial development sprawls into our rural areas, forests and farms are lost and the amount of impervious surfaces such as roads, roofs and parking lots increases.  Rainwater picks up more and more chemicals that empty into storm drains and eventually into Puget Sound. The Partnership also provides this startling fact: “two million acres of forest at the base of our mountains has been cut, paved and built up in less than one generation – that’s an area as large as King and Pierce counties combined.” 

It is called the Puget Sound basin for a reason.  The lands around the Sound are part of a huge funnel - what is built, where it is built and how it is built determines the quality of the water in the Sound.  The loss of our upland forests to development has a direct and detrimental impact on the health of Puget Sound.

If we know that our population is continuing to increase dramatically, our forests are being lost to development and the resulting stormwater runoff is the primary pollutant to Puget Sound, it becomes clear that in order to protect the Sound we must protect our remaining upland forests and make our cities and towns vibrant and livable magnets for population growth.  The Cascade Agenda sets out to do just that.

 “The Cascade Agenda is a cornerstone of the efforts in our region to save Puget Sound.  What happens on the land directly impacts the health of the Sound.

 

What happens on the land – the spaces between the shoreline and the Cascades to the east and the shoreline and the Olympics to the west, is what matters to the future of Puget Sound.  And, of course, what happens on the land is also critical to the current and future quality of life in the communities where we live.

 

I am pleased that the Cascade Agenda recognizes this – that we need to transcend arbitrary jurisdictional borders and think about the region as an ecosystem.  Everything we do affects the land, the water and the air in our ecosystem.”

David Dicks

Director

Puget Sound Partnership