Puget Sound Partnership Ecosystem Coordination Board

Puget Sound Partnership Ecosystem Coordination Board

NWIFC Meeting Notes

February 16, 2012

An agenda with related documents is available on the PSP’s website.

Action Agenda Comments- Martha Neuman & Chris Townsend

PSP provided a brief overview of the comments received on the Action Agenda update. Approximately 90 comment letters were received and posted on the PSP website. Generally, people noted that this version was seen as an improvement over the 2008, but the Action Agenda is too long and vague. The AA needs a strategic focus that defines the critical path to Puget Sound recovery. PSP needs to define better interim mile stones towards the 2020 recovery goals and better connection between the strategies for recovery.

PSP also received comments that there are too many near term actions (NTAs), but they also received suggestions for many more NTAs. There was also concern about NTAs not being funded, especially around storm water. NTAs are also too process oriented and need to be more focused on outcomes. Agencies are also concerned about being assigned NTAs when they are not funded to complete them.

There was broad support for organizing the Action Agenda around strategic initiatives, but they contain bold actions to be successful. The response to Treaty Rights at Risk initiative needs to be included. There was also a suggestion to implement the salmon recovery plan as a Strategic Initiatives and many commented that salmon recovery was not well represented in the Action Agenda.

PSP also received comments that the prioritization process should also be focused on the strategy and sub-strategy levels. There were also concerns about on-going programs not being prioritized. The prioritization of local actions is not clearly defined and PSP needs to develop a methodology for integrating work of the local action areas.

PSP is incorporating comments into the Action Agenda and moving forward on prioritization process.

ECB Comments

·  Concern about lack of agricultural representation on the ECB.

·  How will suggested NTAs be balanced with existing NTAs? Will NTAs be removed? – NTAs can be removed and/or improved, but PSP was not clear on the process.

·  Future Action Agenda updates should focus on NTAs, but is there a process of how to update strategies? - Not a clear answer, but noted they will need help from ECB members. The AA update process will need to be wrapped up soon. Change will focus on narrowing the priorities.

·  Funding is a concern and priority should be focused where we have current funding. Local agencies need help.

·  ECB members were thankful for the summary of comments.

·  How does PSP plan to shorten the AA? – There will be a +/- 40 page summary created with full detailed version online.

Strategic Initiatives – Chris Townsend

PSP has heard the needs to shorten and focus the AA. They plan to use the concept of strategic initiatives (SIs) to create focus. The NTAs in the SIs will not have to come strictly from the prioritized list. There is also an ECB funding committee to address the priorities and strategic initiatives. There will need to be a GAP analysis to determine where the funding for priorities is needed.

PSP still plans to focus on 3 SIs, but an additional bucket could be added. PSP currently plans to focus on habitat protection for salmon recovery, urban stormwater, and rural runoff pollution. The habitat protection bucket will contain the response to the TRAR initiative. The urban stormwater bucket will focus on stormwater retrofits and the rural runoff bucket will focus on protecting shellfish beds.

ECB Comments –

·  Many strong comments from local government and business- money, money, money…

·  Habitat protection will not create jobs and it will make it harder to get grants. – There is economic benefit from a functioning ecosystem.

·  What types of habitat will protected? - Informed by TRAR and prioritized NTAs. PSP not exactly clear on how this will happen.

·  PSP needs to make Puget Sound recovery more visible and applicable to the public.

·  Are strategic initiatives a short term or long term focus? – Hopefully short term.

·  Fishing creates jobs, but we always forget this fact. We should focus on recovery and not just on jobs.

·  Implementation of salmon recovery plans needs to be a priority bucket. How will PSP respond to this? – No clear answer.

·  Puget Sound recovery is not contrary to economic development.

·  Jobs can be created through NTAs and improving Puget Sound. There needs to be a priority screening question based on jobs.

·  Action Agenda is not the region’s economic development plan.

·  Lots of support for strategic initiatives.

·  Economic consequences of environmental actions need to be evaluated.

·  Process is developed to find ways not deal with difficult problems and the tribes are tired of the situation. Tribes have already lost their economies. Maybe holding back population growth and economic is a good thing. Tribes are losing in all directions.

·  Gerry O’Keefe makes a weird speech on the importance of keeping economic interests in mind. He feels limits to what is possible and noted PSP’s lack of regulatory authority. Gerry did not provide a lot of confidence in PSP’s ability to recover Puget Sound.

Prioritizing Near Term Actions- Ken Currens and Elizabeth McManus

Elizabeth explained that the prioritized list of NTAs is not going to be the key to bringing the Action Agenda together. It is a tool to inform PSP about what NTAs are important. PSP is also moving towards prioritizing sub-strategies instead of NTAs. Overall goal is maximize the ecological impact and progress towards restoring Puget Sound. Ranking is also a sequencing process.

PSP walked through the scoring mechanism for ranking the sub-strategies and then asked for ECB comment. The presentation focused on describing the framework that was developed, while not digging too deeply into the details. ECB has stated that the details should be developed by the technical team. There are three attributes for ranking, with seven criteria. The attributes include an ecological impact score (environmental impacts of NTAs), an implementation score (if funded, how likely is the NTA to succeed), and a strategy score (does it enable other actions). The ECB was tasked with agreeing on the framework for prioritization and then weight the scoring attributes (which of the three is most important). The science team is still working on the details for evaluating the differing criteria.

There was good discussion about what should be scored. On one hand, ECB wants to rank based on ecological impacts and not consider the economics. On the other hand economics are important, especially when economics limit important sub-stratiges. The ECB decided to rank sub-strategies based on their ecological impacts, then consider other criteria that provides imformation about the sub-strategies – implemtation, social impacts, funding, etc. Ranked list will be based on ecological impacts with other supporting information.

PSP will move forward with ranking sub-strategies based on ecological impacts, with supporting information, & present that to the ECB. PSP will gather a team of technical experts, create questions to evaluate about each criteria, run through the process, & look what at comes out the other end. Then re-evaluate. Will have a draft by 4/06 ECB meeting. The prioritized list will be finalized by 4/29.

ECB Comments

·  Does the process consider how likely sub-strategies are to be funded? – maybe.

·  Are treaty right protections considered? – yes, but PSP is not exactly sure how

·  Tribes could rank based on treaty rights (a fourth attribute & separate column)

·  We should fund projects in areas with treaty resources first

·  Today’s funding should not impact tomorrows actions

·  Ecological impacts should be the focus. If funding is not available for important actions, then funding should be found.

·  It is important to know whether something is likely to be funded, but ranking should not be based on it. We need to learn why important actions are not funded.

·  The social limiting factors to sub-strateiges is important attribute to study- PSP acknowelges this will be the most difficult area to score and develop a team of experts to evaluate it.

·  PSP should fund projects that get the most impact for the least cost.

·  Economic impact should not be forgotten.

·  There is a benefit to focusing on strategies that have a wide impact, even if it is process based (this is the strategy attribute).

·  Is PSP looking into why there is a lack of political will? ECB should provide leadership in this area.

·  Are we studying barriers to success- will the sub-strategy teach us something about future successes?

·  General consensus that the ranking criteria is an improvement over previous versions.

·  What about considering the quality of human life in the ranking criteria?

·  Other programmatic limitations may exist.

·  Durability of the strategy should also be considered.

·  Confidence in the success of the sub-strategy is important.

·  Social impacts and limitations are important to evaluate.

·  Current the implementation score is based on technical feasibility, should be it be focused on social feasibility? – It could be added as a 4th column

·  Strategy score could be thought as sequencing

·  ECB members want a short list of actions to advocate for

·  We need a clear path to achieving the targets that have been set

2012 ECB Work Plan

The ECB began discussion about what it would like to accomplish in 2012.

Some ideas that came out included:

·  Selling the valuable work of the PSP to the legislature & public.

·  Form ECB subcommittees to focus on implementing the strategic initiatives once they are formed.

·  Start working on ways to create more political will for Puget Sound recovery.

·  Continue the work of the funding subcommittee.

·  Create a regulatory review subcommittee focused on state land-use regulations and how to accommodate growth within GMA that protects habitat.

Public Comment

·  The preventing pollution from rural and agricultural runoff strategic initiative should include shellfish in the name.