Jan 30 2008
Saving Puget Sound, by John Lombard
Saving Puget Sound is a refreshing change from the typical book about the environment: it’s hopeful, well-balanced, and realistic. Even better, it’s about where we live.
Given what our region has to offer—a vibrant cultural scene, world-class technical innovation, a healthy economy, and some of the most stunning natural beauty in the world—it seems inevitable that our population will continue to grow.
Author John Lombard, an environmental consultant and former coordinator for King County salmon recovery planning, looks at this situation and asks: does more people mean less nature? His answer: we can not only support growth, but actually improve the overall health of our wild places as we grow.
All we need to do, he says, is set goals everyone can agree on, and then be willing to abandon the piecemeal approach to conservation we’ve used up to now.
Lombard spent two and a half years researching the legal, technical, and public policy issues involved in regional conservation. He talked to fisherman, farmers, and landowners, as well as scientists, academics, and government officials.
Some readers may be put off by the sheer amount of detail, and by the academic-paper format chosen by the publisher. That would be too bad, because what Lombard says is relevant to anyone with a stake in our region’s future. In other words, to anyone who lives here.
One way to get a quick feel for the author’s thoughtful and balanced analysis is to read the Foreword and then jump straight to Chapter Three, “A Regional Strategy.”
In the Foreword, Lombard frames his message in a way that should make sense even to those who don’t consider themselves environmentalists. He talks about how his children share his own fascination with the natural world, and asks: where will future generations go in order to find that life-giving connection to nature we all take for granted today?
In laying out his regional strategy, Lombard says we can support both growth and conservation if there are significant changes in two main areas: land use and water use.
One way to conserve land, Lombard says, is to fairly compensate rural landowners who agree to preserve or restore critical areas such as streams, rivers, wetlands, or shorelines. He also shows how state and local governments can encourage development in already urbanized areas, and more effectively limit suburban sprawl.
Promoting wise use of water is going to be a more difficult task, given the current tangle of laws and water-rights claims. But a knowledgeable legal and scientific panel with the power to make binding decisions, Lombard says, can at least get us started on this increasingly important issue.
Chapter 5, “How We Get There,” looks squarely at what’s needed to make his proposals work. As you might expect, money is a the top of the list.
But you can’t get something for nothing, Lombard says. And right now we are all using or degrading resources, either directly or indirectly, without having to pay the associated costs.
The author emphasizes that injecting the true cost of water use or habitat destruction into our economic system will require broad consensus. Conservative or progressive, urbanite or farmer, environmentalist or not, we all have to agree that we’re getting something even more valuable in return.
Consensus and long-term thinking is going to be a hard sell in some quarters, but Lombard is very convincing when he argues that it can be done.
As the Puget Sound Partnership, Governor Gregoire’s ambitious plan for regional conservation, gets ready to start its first round of public meetings, it’s comforting to know that Saving Puget Sound is already there—with research, realism, and a possible way forward.