For Immediate Release

June 10, 2009

Interior Appropriations Bill Contains $50 million for Puget Sound Cleanup

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The House subcommittee chaired by U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) today approved a major increase in funding for the Puget Sound pollution cleanup effort, recommending $50 million in the next fiscal year, a funding level equivalent to the federal role in the Chesapeake Bay cleanup program.

The congressman has long sought to elevate the federal government’s priority for funding research and remedial actions on Puget Sound, the nation’s second largest estuary.  Though the EPA had addressed targeted sites around the Sound through its nationwide estuary program for many years, Dicks launched the first specifically-designated Puget Sound program within the EPA budget in 2005, and he has worked to expand its scope and funding since then.

Consistent with the Obama Administration’s FY 2010 budget proposals for dramatic increases in the Great Lakes cleanup funding, Dicks seized the opportunity in next year’s appropriations bill to boost the federal assistance for Puget Sound from $20 million in the current year to $50 million in the next fiscal year.

“This is a much more appropriate federal commitment, on par with the multi-jurisdictional program that we have been funding on the Chesapeake Bay and, similarly, complementing pollution control efforts at the state and local level,” Rep. Dicks said. 

The funding was approved today by the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, which also included another major increment --$20 million in the next fiscal year—in the budget of the National Park Service for the effort to remove the two dams on the Elwha River and restore what was once one of the region’s greatest salmon-producing rivers. 

The Elwha restoration project is also benefitting this year from an allocation of $54 million that was approved as part of the economic stimulus program in order to create near-term employment.

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