Why Maury Island Matters

Puget Sound is kind of fucked. Among its many problems: Fish in Hood
Canal aren’t getting the oxygen they need, invasive sea squirts
(tube-shaped invertebrates) are crowding out important shell fisheries,
and a food chain messed up by pollution and shoreline development means
animals are struggling to eat.

Which is why a light-sensitive plant called eelgrass is so
important. Eelgrass is one of the few plants in Puget Sound with a life
span long enough to really settle in and act as a sustainable source of
shade, shelter, and nutrients for low-on-the-food-chain sea creatures.
Then when it dies, it feeds bugs and crabs. Eelgrass is like nonstop
life support, and protecting existing beds of it is crucial. A lot of
it grows in Puget Sound’s shallow northern bays, and the rest is
scattered in nearshore zones just below steep bluffs like the Maury
Island Aquatic Reserve, one of just four areas in Puget Sound
specifically designated for protection because of the high number of
endangered species that live and eat in the area.

In 1998, local mining company Glacier Northwest (a subsidiary of
Japanese giant Taiheiyo Cement) first applied to turn a dilapidated
dock into a high-tech dock directly below its gravel mine on Maury
Island, setting off a 10-year run of environmental-impact studies by
government agencies, permit applications and mitigation plans by
Glacier, and lawsuits from local environmentalists. Meanwhile, between
1998 and 2008, local environmental groups and the Washington State
Department of Natural Resources (DNR) were learning more and more about
the types of environmental parameters that sustain eelgrass
habitat.

The proposed Glacier dock—shaped like a T and designed to
transfer gravel to boats in a large conveyor tube—would
significantly alter the sensitive nearshore habitat with construction
noise, interrupted sediment drifting patterns along the beach, and
ground contamination from the unloading process. But most importantly,
the shade cast by the physical structure of the dock and conveyor tube
would surely kill off the eelgrass. Doing so would be in violation of
the Endangered Species Act (ESA) because of the way it would hurt
chinook salmon, orcas, and other species that develop and feed in those
eelgrass beds.

But a study done by the Army Corps of Engineers and completed in the
summer of 2008 gave the project its final permit in the face of
disagreement from environmental interests, and Glacier got permission
to build the dock anyway. The permission came on December 2, 2008, when
outgoing public lands commissioner Doug Sutherland—clearly stung
after a narrow loss to Democrat Peter Goldmark in last year’s
election—granted Glacier, who had contributed $50,000 toward his
reelection bid, a 30-year lease to work in the protected Maury Island
reserve in one of his final moves before leaving office. (“I looked at
the data we asked for, I looked at the information that was provided,
and it appeared to me there was no scientific reason not to proceed,”
Sutherland told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. As for
the $50,000, he said, “I know nothing about the independent
expenditure… That was not part of my campaign.”)

So a number of environmental groups led by a Maury Island operation
called Preserve Our Islands submitted a lawsuit in federal court
seeking to halt construction on the dock. They had the support of the
Goldmark administration, which doubted the legitimacy of Sutherland’s
decision to grant the lease (which Glacier only pays $1,500 a year for)
because they said that new science provided compelling reasons to doubt
the Army Corps of Engineers permit. To their great relief, U.S.
District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez ruled on August 13 in favor of
the salmon and the orcas, saying the Corps’ permit was no longer valid.
Without valid environmental permits, leases in aquatic reserves lose
their standing.

“The ESA is a really blunt tool when it comes to protecting salmon
and orcas,” Mike Sato, communications director for fellow plaintiff
People for Puget Sound, told The Stranger. “But it is a tool
that can stop some really bad stuff from happening. And in this case, I
think it did.”

But it isn’t a done deal. There is still a chance that two major
federal agencies (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
and the Corps) will find it worthwhile to reevaluate their permits
based on the latest information. However, given the stress that our
current economic situation has placed on many government agencies’
discretionary spending, that is somewhat unlikely. Even if they do
reevaluate the permit, the Corps could find that the project is too
harmful to the chinook and the orcas. That would once again spell doom
for the Glacier dock.

Bridget Moran, deputy supervisor for aquatics and agency resources
with the DNR, describes this instance of halting the construction as a
way to help mitigate against the “death by a thousand cuts” ailment
that is slowly killing Puget Sound one habitat at a time. “Each one
doesn’t seem like it has a big impact,” she said of the Maury Island
issue. “This ruling tells us to look more broadly at the bigger
pictures.”

Puget Sound is still fucked—but a little less so today than it
was a week ago. “We didn’t move forward on protecting Puget Sound,”
Sato said. “But we sure didn’t make it worse.”