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09/07/2007: "The “San Juan Islands” Action Area"

the Puget Sound Partnership (Partnership) has released a map showing the boundary lines that define the “San Juan Action Area.” The name should not be confused with the name of our county boundaries, since the boundaries of an Action Area signify a geographic area, as opposed to a governmental area.

There are six Action Areas, which combine all, or portions of, deferent counties and cities into areas that share “Common issues and interests...Characteristics of the Sound's physical structure,” and “How water flows into and within the Sound.”

The defining of the borders of the Areas will allow the development of an agenda ( 2020 Action Agenda) by the Partnership’s Leadership Council . The Partnership’s Ecosystem Coordination Board will have at least one representative from each Area (the Central Puget Sound Area will have two), and will be one of the groups that will help to form the Agenda.



The Partnership plans to involve “local watershed groups, tribes, cities, counties, special purpose districts,” as well as the “private sector”, as they work on the Agenda. According to the Partnership, local plans, programs and actions that address the health of Puget Sound will make up a large part of the Action Agenda.

The stated idea is to work in collaboration with “representatives of tribes, watershed groups, local governments and private sector institutions will work together in each Action Area to:

• Consider scientific information on the ecosystem risks in their area.
• Identify key actions to address these risks.
• Evaluate existing programs and plans.
• Recommend area-specific actions, programs and strategies for adoption in the Action Agenda.”

At a local level, the above list looks an awful lot like the same one the San Juan Initiative is slowly working on. At the recent presentation in Friday Harbor by Partnership (as they prefer to be called) spokesperson Hilary Culverwell, she noted that one of the local groups they will be working with is the San Juan Initiative (SJI), which the County Council signed onto last year with a Memorandum of Understanding.

The SJI is made up with local representatives from various interest groups, as well as representatives from various state agencies. How all of this is going to play out in the future, and how much local control over the final outcome, and what that outcome will look like for San Juan County, is unknown.