The Stormwater Strategic Initiative is excited to announce a public comment period for the Marine Water Quality Implementation Strategy (MWQ-IS).

The comment period is open February 28 through April 1, 2025.  

• Click here to view the 2025 draft material for review.
• Click here to access comment review instructions and form.

The MWQ-IS outlines a recovery plan to accelerate progress towards improving and addressing marine water quality in Puget Sound. Marine water quality includes many components, such as dissolved oxygen, bacteria, and nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. Balanced levels of these components are critical for supporting healthy marine ecosystems.  

When a waterbody’s nutrient levels become too high, excessive aquatic plant growth can be triggered, resulting in dangerously low oxygen which causes harmful impacts throughout the marine food web. While Puget Sound’s nutrient and oxygen levels naturally vary, human activities can increase nutrient loads to a harmful level. Fertilizer and wastewater are the largest human-caused (known as anthropogenic) contributors to nutrient problems in Puget Sound. To recover our marine water quality and keep Puget Sound ecosystems healthy, we need to both improve treatment infrastructure and practices to limit nutrient sources flowing into Puget Sound from wastewater and stormwater, and invest in the ongoing monitoring and research needed to understand how human-caused nutrients are affecting the complex marine ecosystem. 

The MWQ-IS includes strategies for addressing known anthropogenic nitrogen sources to Puget Sound as well as investing monitoring, research, and modeling to further our understanding of how anthropogenic nutrients impact marine waters and how these nutrient problems travel from upstream sources through the watersheds of Puget Sound.  

The Stormwater Strategic Initiative thanks the many partners who participated in this four-year development process. We look forward to continuing to work towards collective solutions that will improve the marine water quality of Puget Sound. 

Did You Know?

How do Implementation Strategies fit into Puget Sound Recovery? 

Implementation Strategies are plans for achieving specific ecosystem targets for the Puget Sound Vital Sign indicators. The Vital Sign indicators are like a human’s blood pressure reading that indicate or reflect the health of the patient. Implementation Strategies are like the treatment plan to achieve better health - they describe the sequence of steps, activities, and results needed to move closer to a recovery goal.