Big Wins for a Healthy Washington

Tom Geiger is the outreach director for the Washington Environmental Council. Tom oversees all public education and grassroots activities, helping to define messages, communicating with the media and developing organizational plans. He can be reached at: tom@wecprotects.org.

For the third year in a row, leading conservation groups working at the state level have successfully pushed for new and improved laws to better protect people, land, air and water in Washington.

A new law to promote green building, as well as a law to clean our air by limiting auto emissions, will help people and nature breathe a little easier. Progress was also made on helping promote the health of Hood Canal and Puget Sound, and eliminating some very toxic chemicals from our household products.

The conservation community’s development of four common-sense “Priorities for a Healthy Washington” for the 2005 session was crucial to this success. (To learn more, go to http://www.environmentalpriorities.org.) Instead of going to Olympia with a laundry list, the short list made a splash from the get-go. The Seattle PI’s editorial on December 27 called our proposals “a smart approach that should help lawmakers of both parties focus on a few areas where action can make a difference.”

Now we are celebrating some great success. After lots of hard work by the conservation community, all our partners and key legislative supporters, The Seattle Times opined: “Give the environmental community credit as well. For the third session, asking for less has meant more success.” We are making progress and are being successful in getting real improvements to the laws that will help millions of people live healthier lives.

Here is a summary of what happened to each of the four 2005 Priorities for a Healthy Washington.

1. High Performance Green Buildings: On April 8, Governor Gregoire signed SB 5509 into law. The new law requires state buildings, schools and universities to be built and certified as high performance, green buildings. This will result in buildings that save energy and water, are cheaper to operate, and improve student learning and employee performance.

2. Cleaner Cars-—Cleaner Air: The Governor signed Cleaner Air–Cleaner Cars (HB 1397) on May 6. We’ll all breathe easier with cleaner cars—that’s a win worth smiling about! Cleaner Air-—Cleaner Cars will reduce cancer-causing emissions and global warming pollution from new cars, increase consumer choice and save consumers a bundle at the gas pump.

3. Sound Solutions—Saving Hood Canal and Puget Sound: While our major bills did not pass, we were able to secure over $6 million dollars for local clean water projects, including funds to clean up Hood Canal, and a grant and loan program to help homeowners fix failing septic systems. A bill to prioritize tax incentives for habitat buffers did pass. And a key bill that would reduce water pollution from septic systems passed the House but came two votes shy of going to the full Senate for a vote.

4. Phasing Out Toxics: The priority to phase out this particularly toxic set of chemicals (HB 1488) failed to pass the legislature. However, recognizing the need to phase out PBDEs, the legislature did provide funding to the Department of Ecology to develop a plan for banning the most widely used form of PBDEs, called deca-BDE (deca). Ecology will report back to the legislature with recommendations in December.

Some other good bills that passed include oil spill prevention; improvements to the state’s approach to transportation; funding and a new program for the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program; and programs to increase solar power, renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Priorities for a Healthy Washington is an effort of the leading conservation groups (see bottom sidebar in right column for group names) that work in the state legislature to protect the health of people, land, air, water and wildlife of Washington. We work together to promote the passage of a focused list of priorities each legislative session. §