The mess being caused by polluted runoff in the Northwest isn’t letting up, and neither are supporters of a plan to pay for stormwater cleanup.
Over a single rainy weekend this winter, Seattle Public Utilities got 700 calls about flooding and sent cleanup crews to 332 locations. In Port Angeles, the storm system was so overwhelmed after a December downpour that 15 million gallons of raw sewage and rainwater fouled the city’s shoreline. Officials there recommended the public steer clear of the bay for at least a week due to health concerns.
In a move to mitigate stormwater woes like these, lawmakers in Olympia this week announced the 2011 Clean Water Jobs Act. It’s the third year running that Washington’s legislators have debated a plan to create a dedicated, ongoing funding source to pay for the cleanup and reduction of toxic runoff. Stormwater is created when rain hits roofs, driveways, highways, and landscaped yards, sponging off oil and grease, pesticides, and other filth, dumping it straight into the region’s waterways.
The Clean Water Jobs Act would put a 1 percent fee on petroleum products, pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Other products can be added to the list if the state Department of Ecology decides they’re “significant contributors to the contamination of surface water runoff.” The legislation, SB 5604/HB 1735, is one of the top priorities for the state’s environmental coalition. It also has support from city and county government groups, as well as the labor community.
The environmental community projects the fees could raise approximately $100 million a year to pay for projects to clean up toxic runoff. There’s nothing like it in other Northwest states or provinces. The fees would pay for the construction of stormwater infrastructure, with an emphasis on green solutions called low-impact development. LID focuses on natural ways to control stormwater, such as the construction of rain gardens and swales, green roofs, porous pavement, as well as planting or protecting trees and plants that capture rain drops in their branches or absorb water from the ground.
Here’s how the money would be used:
Sprawl is a scourge on so many fronts. It paves over evergreen forests and productive farmlands. It sends expensive asphalt highways snaking into rural areas. It creates long, polluting commutes. And it threatens to undermine efforts to cleanup filthy stormwater runoff by pocking the landscape far and wide with impervious surfaces.