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Area's defining waterway is a cesspool of pollution

By ROBERT McCLURE, LISA STIFFLER AND LISE OLSEN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

Every day, our eyes deceive us.

Puget Sound, that luscious body of blue crisscrossed by carefree sailors, weary commuters and far-ranging freighters, looks healthy enough.

Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
A shiner surf perch swims in a tank after it was netted recently from the beach at Golden Gardens Park by a team led by Jim Brennan, senior ecologist with King County’s Water and Land Resources Division. Brennan, center, oversees a program to monitor near-shore habitat, where the shiner surf perch are in abundance.
State and federal protectors of the environment assure us that the wholesale dumping of toxic chemicals -- from Commencement Bay to Sinclair Inlet, from Hood Canal to the Strait of Juan de Fuca -- ended a generation ago. They tell us they have cracked down on overfishing, overbuilding and overflows from sewage treatment plants.

The truth is, we're still treating the Sound like a sewer.

And we have ourselves to blame.

Below the waters that define our region lies a world of pollution and decline. A six-month Seattle Post-Intelligencer investigation has found:

The Sound's ecosystem seems to be spinning out of control, scientists say.

Highly toxic chemicals dumped decades ago still are poisoning marine creatures. Researchers believe pollution is interfering with reproduction across a wide swath of sea life. About half of the Puget Sound fish stocks tracked by state scientists are in trouble.

If you could pile up all the flesh, bone, cartilage and scales swimming around, the species that would weigh in at No. 1 is ratfish -- a fluorescent-green-eyed, devil-looking trash fish.

Some 92,000 acres of mud and sand on the seafloor are considered moderately to highly contaminated -- enough to cover Seattle and Tacoma. And we're not even looking for a new family of long-lived toxics that have been banned elsewhere.

Urban growth is the single biggest threat. Pollution that washes off streets and lawns and farms, or gurgles out of failing septic tanks, is taking its toll.

Tap your car's brakes and you may grind off a tiny bit of copper -- toxic to fish -- to be washed downstream in the next rain. Step on the gas and the car spews pollutants that also are sickening sea life.

Lands fouled by toxic waste litter the region, but the cleanup of hundreds of sites -- some more than a decade old -- hasn't even begun.

Government -- from Navy ships that cruise the seven seas to your local sewer department -- are major polluters. Hundreds of government and private facilities legally dump billions of gallons of polluted water each day into the Sound.

Despite more than a decade of stepped-up efforts to prevent oil spills, we're not as prepared as we should be. A big spill here couldn't be contained enough to avert widespread environmental damage.

Unlike other major American ecosystems, such as the Everglades and Chesapeake and San Francisco bays, Puget Sound has seen only modest restoration efforts. A promised cleanup by the state has fallen far short of its goals.

A five-part special report about the effects of pollution on the waters of Puget Sound.
- Part 1: Polluted waters
- Part 2: Extinction or bust
- Part 3: Ruinous runoff
- Part 4: Maritime mess
- Part 5: Turning things around
- Further developments
- More stories
- Join the forum
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Read the transcript of a live chat with reporters Robert McClure and Lisa Stiffler.
Overall, the Sound "is deteriorating. I don't see upward trends in anything," said Dan Penttila, a fish biologist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. "It will gradually deteriorate unless people live a lot differently than they do now."

"It's not large companies we can point to so much -- it's all of us," said Usha Varanasi, the federal government's top fish scientist for the Pacific Northwest.

Other scientists and environmentalists, pointing to a penny-pinching climate in Olympia, fear Washington's faltering efforts to heal the Sound will be dealt a severe blow.

The state Ecology Department, the primary enforcer of the federal Clean Water Act, has already volunteered to delay a program to crack down on long-lived pollutants; to reduce enforcement of hazardous-waste laws; to cut back on aid to cities and businesses that want to reduce pollution; and to eliminate the unit that enforces pollution laws at dairies.

The agency is promising to finally tighten up state water-quality standards -- but the action comes years after the job was supposed to have been done.

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