2010 Legislative Agenda

Preserve Puget Sound

A healthy Puget Sound is critical to preserving wildlife, such as our salmon and orca, and it is essential to supporting countless recreational opportunities. Toxic dumping, development, and contaminated runoff from our roads and urban areas are threatening the health of Puget Sound, the wildlife it nurtures and our natural heritage. The orca population has dropped 20 percent since 1995, and salmon populations are at 10 percent of their historic abundance. Environment Washington supports:

• The creation of revenue for clean water infrastructure and stormwater control by placing a per-barrel fee on petroleum products that contribute to water pollution.

• The restoration of Clean Water Act protections to all of Washington’s waterways. This includes the headwaters and small streams for which jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act has been called into question as a result of recent court decisions.

• Tough permitting and enforcement. The EPA and state agencies should issue permits with tough numeric limits for each type of toxic pollution discharged, ratchet down those limits over time, and enforce those limits with credible penalties—not just warning letters.

Fight Global Warming

The growing impacts of global warming will threaten our safety and impose immense financial cost on our state. That’s why it’s time for the oldest and dirtiest power plants to clean up their act. Fossil fuel-fired giants, such as the TransAlta coal-fired power plant in Centralia, have been allowed to pollute without consequence.

In order to stop global warming and reap all the benefits of clean energy, we must require old clunker power plants to meet modern standards for global warming pollution. Environment Washington supports:

• End the $3 million to $5 million sale and use tax subsidy Washington state gives the coal industry.

• A plan to phase out the TransAlta coal plant by 2015. Coal supplies 20 percent of our electricity. That demand should be met with energy efficiency and a transition to clean, renewable energy.

• The EPA finalizing a strong rule to require big smokestack industries, such as the TransAlta coal-fired power plant, to meet modern pollution standards for carbon when new facilities are constructed or existing facilities are significantly modified.

Repower America and Washington

We have the technological know-how to meet 100 percent of our energy needs with clean, renewable energy. Wind turbines and solar panels can supply potentially limitless clean energy, and we can build high performance, energy-efficient homes and buildings that dramatically reduce our energy consumption. It’s time to leave dirty, dangerous energy behind and repower our economy with clean energy. Environment Washington supports:

• Preserving Washington voters’ intent to increase development of clean and affordable energy by maintaining the provisions of I-937 to meet the state’s critical climate action targets.

• Requiring at the federal level that utilities generate at least 25 percent of the nation’s energy from renewable sources, such as wind and solar power, by 2025.

• Cutting energy use in buildings nationwide by half and requiring utilities to use 15 percent less energy by 2020.

Sustain Environmental Protections in the Budget

Our state is in the midst of an economic recession that threatens the core environmental protections that keep our families safe.

In the face of these tough times, we must seek to protect our communities and grow the economy. We want our drinking water to be clean, the air we breathe to be pure, and toxic contamination to be cleaned up. We cannot afford disproportionate cuts to the core environmental programs that provide the basic safeguards that we all rely on. Environment Washington supports:

• A state budget that adequately protects our communities and promotes a sustainable economic recovery. Budget cuts to natural resource departments should not be disproportionate to cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Save Our Parks

From the countless recreational opportunities they provide to the wildlife habitat they protect, our state parks represent a big part of what makes Washington special. With more than 40 million visitors annually, Washington’s state parks system is among the most popular in the nation. But as demand for our parks increases, resources have dropped.

Temporary solutions have kept our parks open, but a lack of dedicated funding and a strapped state budget threaten the health and stability of these state treasures. Environment Washington supports long-term funding and protections for our state parks.