SEATTLE – After years of work, cities in Washington are doing more to protect Puget Sound from its biggest source of pollution: stormwater runoff.

A report from the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance and Washington Environmental Council helped motivate them.

In 2017, the groups released their progress rating, called "Nature's Scorecard," for 83 Puget Sound municipalities to measure how they were meeting 2012 codes to reduce toxic stormwater.

It found fewer than half were making meaningful progress.

"After we published that scorecard, we got some more municipalities reaching back out to us and a little more willing to work with us after actually seeing their scores,” says Alyssa Barton, policy manager for the alliance. “And so we continued to reach out and work with them."

In the 2019 scorecard released this month, nearly three-quarters of municipalities are making meaningful progress.

The analysis gauges how towns and cities are doing based on five state Department of Ecology measures for stormwater permitting, such as improving filtration and planting native trees to filter pollutants.

Barton notes that reducing Puget Sound pollution is beneficial for people as well as wildlife, including salmon health and orca recovery.

Lynden is one of the municipalities that made big strides after the 2017 scorecard. The small town in northwest Washington went from not meeting any of the standards to meeting all five.

Lynden city planning director Heidi Gudde says folks working for small towns have to wear a lot of hats, and they received help from a stormwater permitting consultant to do this work.

"As a small town, it's really difficult to track all of those different markers, as far as stormwater's concerned and site design and landscape and natural environment, but we're really stepping up our game in all areas," she says.

The Nature's Scorecard release also coincides with updated stormwater permit requirements from the state Department of Ecology.

Abbey Stockwell, municipal stormwater permit planner for the agency, says one of the biggest updates is to source control of pollution.

"It's really about preventing pollution from entering these stormwater systems, which are draining directly to creeks and the Puget Sound and the rivers,” she states. “There's no treatment involved before it hits these receiving waters."

While most have improved, about 16% of municipalities haven't made any progress since 2012.


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As the Environmental Protection Agency scales back enforcement because of staff shortages and new federal rollbacks, concerns are growing in Michigan and across the country about who will hold polluters accountable.

Michigan, with more than 11,000 inland lakes and access to four Great Lakes holding 90% of the nation's freshwater, faces challenges as EPA budget cuts reduce enforcement by nearly 20% and eliminate more than 200 staff.

Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center, said in a recent webinar that his organization commissions polling and focus groups every two years on clean-water issues in the Great Lakes.

"And it's an 85% issue. It's almost as if, when you push people and you say, 'How much should we do to protect the Great Lakes and restore them?' he asked, "It's like, whatever it costs, you do it."

Supporters of EPA cuts, especially in energy, manufacturing and agriculture, contend strict environmental rules are too costly for businesses. In late 2024, more than 100 industry groups urged then-President-elect Donald Trump to roll back regulations they said were "strangling" the economy.

Partisanship continues to shape the debate over environmental laws, with lawmakers often split along party lines when it comes to regulations.

David Uhlmann, a former EPA official and environmental law attorney, stressed in the webinar the need to take politics out of environmental protection.

"The environmental laws require EPA working with the state to promote clean air, healthy rivers and streams, to make sure that we're living in communities free of toxic waste," he said. "Those laws apply regardless of who the president is."

In Fiscal Year 2024, the EPA's enacted budget was more than $9 billion, with a workforce of more than 15,000 employees.


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Washington lawmakers have created a new Prescribed Burn Liability Fund to help make controlled burns less risky on public, private and tribal lands across the state.

Advocates said low-intensity fires, which clear dead vegetation and small trees, are among the best tools to reduce wildfire severity but fears of runaway fires have limited their use.

Cody Desautel, executive director of the Colville Tribes, helped write the bill to create the fund. He said although there is risk, data from the Forest Service and other agencies show controlled burns are very safe.

"They pull off 99.84% of their burns within prescription within the planned footprint," Desautel pointed out. "The risk of it is really low but for the rare occurrences you see it, the cost can be fairly high."

Desautel noted a century of fire suppression has increased burnable materials in forests, causing more intense wildfires.

Indigenous people have practiced controlled burns for millennia, Desautel added, to both prevent fires and promote plant growth. To reduce wildfire damage, he argued the state needs a new approach.

"We're going to have to shift our perspective, how we deal with fire, how we create fire resilience," Desautel urged. "It has to be suppression in combination with fuels and forest health treatments that makes fires easier to manage."

Rep. Adam Bernbaum, D-Port Angeles, sponsored the bill to create the liability fund. He said when fires are bigger and harder to control, along with loss of life and property, it can also make things more expensive for communities living close to forest land.

"The rising property insurance rates there make it challenging for low-income, middle-income people across the state," Bernbaum observed.

Bernbaum hopes the new policy will help bring down insurance rates for homeowners and encourage more people to get certified to implement prescribed burns. He added the fund should be up and running by the beginning of 2026.


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The sale of public lands along with a rollback of protections for national monuments is back on the table now that Republicans control both houses of Congress.

During his first term, President Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to reduce the size of national monuments in Utah and Nevada. The Washington Post set off alarm bells last month after it reported that New Mexico's Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks is among the six national monuments the Trump administration is considering for energy development.

Mark Allison, executive director of New Mexico Wild, said it is a complicated issue.

"We see attempts through the courts, the House rules process, through budget reconciliation and even federal legislation where they're trying to either turn what are public lands over to states or actually directly privatize them and sell them off to the highest bidder," he explained.

That came to pass last week when the House Natural Resources Committee passed legislation to sell or transfer 460,000 acres of federal lands in Nevada and Utah to local governments or private entities.

In the 2025 State of the Rockies survey, 72% of residents polled in eight Western states said they would prefer their member of Congress emphasize protecting clean air, water and wildlife habitat while boosting outdoor recreation over maximizing the amount of public land used for oil and gas drilling.

That was a 2% increase from the year before. But Allison fears public sentiment consistently expressed in the annual Colorado College poll could be ignored.

"If this comes, we want to be ready to have just an overwhelming and immediate response to tell the administration that we stand by our monuments in New Mexico and don't want to see them harmed," he added.

In the final days of his administration, President Joe Biden designated more than 600,000 acres of desert east of California's Coachella Valley as the Chuckwalla National Monument. But a Texas-based group has filed a lawsuit to stop the designation, arguing the president overstepped his authority.


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