Governor Christine Gregoire said she plans create an initiative to clean and preserve the Puget Sound, causing the Metropolitan King County Council, and many other interested organizations, to discuss the possible challenges the County will face to successfully protect the natural resource.

The King County Council made the issue the topic of the day at its Town Hall meeting Monday, Sept. 26 at the Ballard Elks Lodge where council members listened to the public's concerns surrounding pollution, pesticides and other threats to the water and habitat.

Council Chair Larry Phillips recognized the large scope and magnitude of the project, but also said that King County should be proud of its accomplishments so far in terms of making progress towards large conservation projects.

"By comparison to the rest of the country we are long ways ahead," he said, noting King County's recent Salmon Recovery Plan submitted to the state and federal governments. "And we really want to focus national attention to the issues regarding Puget Sound."

One major roadblock for the success of the initiative could be getting the more than 200 jurisdictions and organizations that are invested in the future of Puget Sound to form an agreeable plan.

"We need a common vision, benchmarks and specific goals," said Elliot Marks, natural resource policy advisor to the governor.

But perhaps an even more difficult task is getting the public and the nation to realize the true cost of letting the Puget Sound deteriorate.

"The other thing we don't have is deep public support," said Marks. "This can't be a government-only solution. People must take responsibility and recognize the impact. It's about jobs, health and so much more, not just about the contaminated orca population."

More than 1.4 million people are expected to move to the Puget Sound area in the next several years, said Marks, and to be able to accommodate them, everyone, not just government and environmental groups, must get serious about fixing Puget Sound.

Tom Gibbs is the former executive director of Seattle Metro and in that role he helped coordinate the agency's cleanup of Lake Washington 40 years ago. He spoke at the meeting about his experiences with that project, including difficulties they encountered coordinating between agencies.

Marks said one of the governor's first goals is to pull these organizations together collectively.

"When we role this out, you'll probably see an initial set of actions and goals and high level leadership group charged with some tasks," said Marks. "I 'm trying to work with everyone here to sort that out. But it will be a staged approach because it is such a big and complicated beast."

Josh Baldi of the Washington State Department of Ecology said his agency's goals include the prevention and cleanup of pollution, support of natural resources and the improvement of air quality.

He noted a Department of Ecology study that found the main source of contaminants in the Puget Sound are coming from oil run-off on public streets, and said with the expected population increase it is likely to worsen.

Baldi cited this as a reason to increase public awareness and stricter enforcement of disposal of toxic materials.

The initiative is sure to address quite a daunting scope in terms of specific points of action, and King County executive Ron Sims' office has called cleaning the Puget Sound "our generation's responsibility."

"Everything that we know from our scientists and our experts says there are real problems with Puget Sound," said Sandeep Kaushik, deputy communications director for Sims. "We know these problems are coming through studies we have done, and if we don't plan now, we'll be in a tough position."

Right now Puget Sound still has some of its natural healing power, but at some point it will lose that power unless the people pull together and do something about it, said Marks

"It's death by a thousand cuts," he said. "It's a culmination of things that all add up to degradation. It's from what everyone does everyday, and it is urgent we fix it. The longer we wait the harder and more expensive it will be to fix. This long list of troubles requires a united public."

A large part of the Puget Sound recovery process will include the addition of the Brightwater wastewater treatment plant, a $1 billion investment scheduled to open in 2010, said Kaushik.

Right now three facilities treat the wastewater for King County: The West Point, South and Vashon treatment plants. The addition of the Brightwater plant is expected to help the Sound become cleaner as well as free up drinking water that is sometimes used for industrial or other purposes.

Kuashik said the new plant will be equipped with a bio filter that will clean the water to Class A status, making it usable for all purposes except drinking.

The Puget Sound is a hugely important part of the state and local economy, said Kaushik, noting that this is a very trade-based area. When asked if that could be part of the pollution problem, with large barge and cruise ships constantly in the Sound, he said there are things the County could do to mitigate those pollution impacts, such as changing the ways in which we deal with waste coming off ships.

Kaushik seemed confident that they would gather public support for the project.

"I think the public has an incredibly strong commitment to the environment," he said. "It won't be that difficult to reach out to them. I think in some sense they are already there."

Marks was unable to estimate a cost for the project but said the state now spends about $180 million every two years on Puget Sound recovery.

"We need to make sure we are spending the existing money wisely," he said. "The investment in the Puget Sound has been decreasing over the years as the population increases. That's not healthy."

Marks praised King County for its "progressive actions" towards Puget Sound recovery and said other counties need to get involved as well.

"Hopefully we can have the details of the initiative as early as the end of the year," he said. "But we don't want to put anything half-baked out there."