About our MRC
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About our MRC |
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We are a novel citizen advisory group created by federal law. Island County is one of seven in the Northern Puget Sound authorized by the bipartisan efforts of Senator Patty Murray (D) and Congressman Jack Metcalf, (R) to protect and enhance the marine resources of the Puget Sound. Their efforts resulted in creation of the Northwest Straits Marine Conservation Initiative, passed in 1998. Acting in concert with the other involved counties, the Island County Board of Commissioners officially established a Marine Resources Committee (MRC) and appointed its citizen members in August 1999. The 13 members represent a cross-section of the community: the island’s considerable Naval interests; shore land property interests, local planning, environmental protection interests, a scientist, the director of Washington State University’s local extension program, two commercial ports, sports fisheries interest, agriculture, law and volunteers active within the WSU Extension ‘Beach Watchers’ program.
Our current members include:
· Chairman Tom Campbell, representing recreational interests
· Vice-chair Tom Roehl, representing the South Whidbey Port
· Don Meehan, representing Washington State University and County Lead
· Hi Bronson, representing Camano Island commercial fishing uses
· Sayed Z. El-Sayed, representing science
· Mike Gallion, representing sports fishing interests
· Matt Klope, representing the Navy in science and marine fields
· Roger Sherman, representing agriculture
· Tom Shaughnessy, representing the Coupeville Port
· Jeff Tate, representing Island County Government
· Dick Toft, representing the Navy
· Gary Wood, WSU Beach Watcher, delegate to the regional Northwest Straits Commission
The MRCs’ delegated role is to involve the citizens and leaders of our community directly in future discussions, decisions and restoration commitments; enabling and assisting all segments of the public to protect and preserve the waters and their bounties as interested stakeholders. The MRCs’ position is therefore community-based at its core. Each county committee is an agency of its local government and conducts open meetings with majority votes governing it decisions. While the panels do not make laws or enforce them, their role is to serve in advisory capacity.
The MRC’s role can examine particular habitat restoration issues—such as eelgrass mapping [Eelgrass project] or applying for grants to fund forage fish and shoreline hardening sites as in the case of Island County.
The MRCs may also address problems relating to a marine system depletion or an at-risk population. No other agency or entity is in a better position to thoroughly and fairly investigate the available options or solutions posed by the conditions of restoration. An MRC is uniquely qualified to balance the fact and expert opinions on a disputed habitat or related question before it, and render advice when necessary to the appropriate or Commissioners. For instance an MRC might advise an agency regarding necessary corrective or remedial action. Or perhaps a federal or state agency is unaware of a potential problem that a local MRC is in a better position to observe. Advice is provided on a case-by-case basis. It is noteworthy that MRCs are free of the usual regulatory straitjackets that apply to agencies with enforcement or regulatory powers.
It is our opinion that the power to advise can outperform the power to enforce or regulate because the goal is different Years of experience show that environmental enforcement and regulation in practice too often becomes an adversary or accusatory process. Instead of acting on behalf of a species or habitat to create solutions to problems in the field, these governmental agencies inevitably find their assets and staff tied up in lawsuits due to damage that has already occurred or losses that were already caused. Meanwhile the habitat or marine life at risk or dying out is not a party to the dispute. Nor are the scientists who might find a solution.
Instead lawyers intervene and participants litigate from opposite sides. A mediator system designed for resolution in criminal matters and civil damages claims for money may find itself ill fit to restore a habitat or monitor an ecosystem in a timely manner.
“Environmental” cases do not easily fit this adversary system. After years the enforcement battles have become political: the EPA vs. business; the Regulators vs. property owner’s rights. Money drives PR campaigns that fight for public opinion on these issues with the same methods hamburger chains use to seek consumers—the TV ad. In this war, positions are exaggerated and claims distorted.
Meanwhile the original habitat goes unnoticed. Species in decline simply appear as smaller and smaller statistics. Somewhere in that traditional process the original habitat or marine species problem got lost. One or the other is gone now. There is no incentive to work on a fix because that would be admitting responsibility. There is nothing left to fix. A fine may be ordered; or a clean up, often years and millions of dollars too late.
The MRC is not a law enforcement or a regulatory agency. It cannot and need not act in this unworkable format. It cannot accuse, order or force people to do as commanded. It is instead, designed to be a source of solutions, a gatherer of ideas, a proponent of projects and provider of hard work addressed to the environmental threat in question. It is in sum, a whole new approach that is being viewed as a model by the entire country.
Clearly the success of this process will depend upon maintaining a professional and cooperative relationship between the county and its MRC. Only the group’s best efforts and demonstrable working knowledge stand behind a panel’s recommendations. Good science is the start. That in turn can generate trust.
We have five years in which to try. This may indeed be our last chance to act in time to turn some of these critical marine resources around.
Island County consists of two-well populated islands: Whidbey and Camano, surrounded by the waters of the Northern Puget Sound and the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Our waters host gray whales, Orcas, salmon, bottom & forage fish and Dungeness crab. In all the local marine environment supports more than 220 species of fish, 26 species of marine mammals, 100 species of birds including shoreline birds, sea birds and waterfowl; abundant invertebrates, plants and a growing number of windsurfers.
While decline in salmon populations makes for headline news, because never before has a species been listed as threatened in an urban area. More quietly and less romantically, whole groups of fish species have been similarly put at risk and several runs are now officially “severely reduced” over their counts just 10 years ago. This broader decline is the bigger and untold story.
The rapid and often unplanned development and growth to the Puget Sound in the past decade is negatively effecting our environment. To prevent a continued downward spiral to our marine resources, science has stepped in to produce breakthroughs to habitat restoration. Advances in conservation and species protection techniques have the power and resources to curb the detrimental impacts of growth.
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Shipping and the risks to Puget Sound—the MRCs’ role |
Meanwhile the Sound’s waters continue to be impacted with increased commercial, military and pleasure boating.
A county-level MRC must incorporate and reconcile the impact of these complex surface traffic issues.
| Should tug escorts be mandatory for oil tankers within the Straits and Sound? |
| What precisely is our regional oil-spill response plan? |
| Are our safety measures considered sound and practiced sufficiently? |
| Are foreign bilge-wastes introducing unwanted critters to the local ecosystem? Which ones? Why? |
| What provisions are online respecting a major vessel loss of power accident, collision or grounding? The 1999 experience of the Oregon coastal wreckage of the New Clarissa—some of which remains ashore at this writing—certainly highlight the importance of resolving such issues in advance. |
To their credit, marine resource advocates and users work together as representatives on the MRCs to protect and enhance the marine environment. Absent any real effort to save these resources by outside interests, there are few incentives for commercial users to protect and enhance the marine environment.
Local examples of habitat and marine life changes in Island County abound: Orca pods that used to visit Whidbey Island—and/or make it their year-round home—are rarely seen these days. Both Whidbey and Camano islands, once home to abundant bottom fish populations, today are in desperate need of wholesale restoration. The restoration is necessary for the animals’ well-being and that of Puget Sound’s as well to ensure future access by commercial and sports fishers.
Onshore, once-abundant marine habitats are gone from some newly-developed areas; resident seabird populations are down; shellfish harvests have depleted to the point where the beds have been closed; various sea grasses, which provide shelter to spawning fish and crabs, have declined.
Thousands of sea and shorebirds—more than 100 species—nest at and/or visit Island County year-round to breed or nest among the island’s near shore habitats. The unrestricted destruction of such marshes and wetlands long since justified the consideration for their restoration lies within the umbrella of marine resources protection.
Shipping also affects the waters of Island County. Whidbey Island’s adjoining commercial shipping channels carry all sorts of traffic: oil tankers in transit to their refineries in Anacortes; floating freight and bulk-load barges towed in pairs of or threes by tugboats; international container and factory ships servicing the entire Pacific Rim; a steady ingress and egress of cruise line ships and regularly scheduled ferries; plus the Sound’s sizeable home fleet of US Navy ships and submarines, as well as the Coast Guard.
Comprehensive scientific reviews of the region over a period of years have independently recognized that several of the most important commercial fisheries—together with wholly unrelated mammalian populations—have declined precipitously in the last two decades. Such losses are established by confirmed fisheries reductions. Such population declines are not attributable to the normal ebb and flow within a species’ historic census variations.
Commercial, military and pleasure boating particularly affect Admiralty Strait, Puget Sound’s entrance and sole navigational route to the major commercial and military ports in Seattle, Everett and Bremerton
Balancing economic trends with environmental needs
The northern Puget Sound is not a remote or exotic ecosystem suitable for wholesale sanctuary consideration; however scenic and unspoiled it recent past may have been.
To the contrary, the metropolitan Seattle area has become wholly urbanized and the broader region constitutes one of the Pacific Rim’s primary economic crossroads. With this success—just as in every other region that experiences intense growth—comes traffic burdens, housing sprawl, infrastructure overload, habitat losses and woefully unfounded local fiscal crises. The resulting difficult challenges, group pressures and political concerns further divert the public’s attention and strain local resources to their limit.
If present economic trends continue as forecast, Northwest Washington will grow itself into the world’s leading resource for several important 21st Century industries and technologies. Viewed from the perspective of the region’s environment, the first danger would be to disregard these economic realities.
Successful planning, as well as habitat preservation and restoration, all require advance input, designed to fit the load that will be placed upon the system. Environmental protection is rarely mandatory, as we know. Often times the risks are simply ignored while the damage continues, with the hope that lost forests, streams or wildlife can or will be repaired and replaced later. This inactive approach turns out to be costly in the long run.
Formation of Northwest Straits Commission
*An expert international panel in 1998 called for the creation of Northwest Strait Commission (NWSC) and issued a landmark report on the Northern Puget Sound’s state of health.
Essentially this exhaustive and scholarly review concluded that present efforts were failing to protect a host of species and habitats in peril and further recommended that local, county-by-county involvement on a coordinated basis was the last best hope for a gravely endangered and declining marine ecosystem. The entire region’s recent growth and competing marine uses had combined over the years to create a problem that no one intended to happen; it continues to threaten whole marine populations. While federal monies had funded much of the more important research that identified this crisis, federal efforts to do something about it were of little impact; substantial local participation was absent.
The report and its novel plan became the basis of Sen. Murray’s and Rep. Metcalf’s bold and bipartisan solution. In the midst of a legislative era lacking in bipartisan cooperation, Congress jointly adopted a framework that set county participation and control of the MRC panels into law.
In exchange for local autonomy and funding guarantees, the county panels would be subject to a requirement of fully “Accountable Results.” Under this provision the local MRCs and the Northwest Straits Commission as a whole, shall prove after FIVE YEARS that their locally-established habitat protection and other community-based efforts have yielded measurable improvement in the areas of species decline and loss of habitat.
If these improvements are not sufficiently established at that date, the plan will be scrapped by it own terms and the MRCs would be out of business.
Under this system the federal government supplies the considerable funding that habitat-restoration and species monitoring require to flow through the commission to the counties. Past efforts to protect these marine resources had failed because of insufficient local funds. The federal commitment hopefully removes local agency’s limited resources as an obstacle to the program’s goals.
To no one’ surprise, this federal challenge of accountability was readily accepted.
Island County’s initial committee members represent a bona fide cross-section of marine resource interested stakeholders. Each of the seven county MRCs appoints a representative to the regional Northwest Straits Commission. Other delegates to the NWSC include governor and tribal appointees.
