Keeping Washington safe from oil spills

Here in Washington, we pride ourselves and count ourselves lucky to live in such a beautiful place, with a great quality of life along Puget Sound. But as we saw last April in the Gulf of Mexico, one spill could devastate all we have for, a lifetime.

There may not be drilling platforms off our coast, but more than 4,000 vessel transports and 15 billion gallons of oil regularly travel to and from ports of call in the Northwest Straits & Puget Sound each year. Five large refineries receive tanker-loads of Alaskan oil hundreds of times annually.

Unlike the Gulf of Mexico, Puget Sound is a confined body of water, meaning an oil spill here cannot easily disperse into the open ocean. It’s estimated a significant oil spill could cause $10.8 billion in economic losses and affect 165,000 jobs in Washington, as the Puget Sound ports in Seattle and Tacoma together form the second-largest harbor in the country for container traffic.

And that doesn’t even account for the ecological damage and devastation of marine life. Such a spill could easily eliminate salmon runs and our resident orca populations.

Reps. Christine Rolfes, Zack Hudgins, and Dave Upthegrove are doing something about it. Check out the video.