Todays tide change is over 10 feet and it is not unusual for it to be over 12' - that moves a lot of water in and out of Puget Sound

I have been quite involved with Puget Sound maritime interests since 1971. Many of my friends in the early '70s were commercial fisherman who were wiped out by the Boltdt Decision that forced over 50% of the commercial fishers to turn in their licenses. As the commercial salmon stock continued to decrease during the '80s and '90s the pressure to "Do Something" increased. The obvious answer was to restore the salmon spawning habitats but that would have required extensive changes to the clear cutting logging methods in the NW (I worked for the largest timber company in the NW during this time) and that was unacceptable for many years. Up until the middle '90s it was thought that the only economically practical method of timber extraction was to clear cut

The Washington State public schools received a significant portion of their state funding from the sale or lease of mature timber on public lands so it was very difficult to change the logging methods what were destroying the salmon spawning (clear cutting pollutes the spawning beds and worse - exposes the spawning beds to direct sunlight which raises the water temperature which decreases the survival rate of the salmon fry)

The salmon runs are still pathetically low, the spawning beds are not being restored, so the state is looking for other "positive" actions that they can take so as to appear to be dealing with decreased Puget Sound salmon stocks. The recreational boater has little voice in state politics so we will have to make more than our fair contribution.

Why are there no prohibitions on the sale of "soft toxic" paint if it is such a bad thing?

Why are public sewer systems allowed to "over flow" during heavy rain periods and introduce orders of magnitude more raw sewage in a single event than all the boaters in the Sound do in a year?

Why is the city of Victoria allowed to dump all it's RAW sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca which feeds directly into Puget Sound?

The madness / insanity doesn't just affect boaters. My wife runs Tacoma's Public Water system - she tells me that they must now pay a fine to the EPA if they spill PUBLIC DRINKING WATER into the Puyallup River! Yes - she takes that water out of the Green River (flows directly into Puget Sound), lets it flow 30 miles downhill into Tacoma storage facilities, introduces chlorine at less than 0.5 ppm, and then distributes to the public. But it that same water goes into the river it is an expensive fine.

Sorry for the rant - I guess I am getting to be a cranky old man.

35 years ago when I worked for an oil company and was a serious environmentalist we couldn't get the state or federal government to take any actions to protect our waters. 25 years ago when I worked for the largest timber harvesting company in the state, and still considered myself and environmentalist, we couldn't get the state or federal government to take any actions to protect our waters. Now that I am a full time sailor - those same governments come after me and tell me to stop polluting the water - 'tis more than I can stand.