The following is written by Sumner Mayor Dave Enslow:

When you talk to Sumner’s oldest residents, they remember when the rivers ran so healthy that they were packed with salmon.  They brag about not even needing a pole to grab one.  Wouldn’t it be nice to get see that again?

They say old habits die hard, but changing all our little habits is what will get our rivers back to their pristine conditions.  If you’re going to wash your car, for example, using a commercial car wash processes the run off so that your car’s grease and grime doesn’t go right into the river.  If you want to wash at home, like I did, wash it over the lawn, which absorbs the runoff and filters it.  You see in the picture that not only am I working on changing my habits, but I also roped in my three-year-old granddaughter to get her started right. (Now we just have to work on aiming the water a bit better!)

There’s more too.  We can’t pour oil or wash paintbrushes over the stormwater drains.  We should turn off the faucets while we brush our teeth.  And we should use fertilizer very carefully so it doesn’t wash into the rivers.  Sometimes, we may wish we had the “good old days” when we didn’t worry so much about these things and simple tasks maybe seemed a bit simpler.  Then again, if we want the really good old days of pristine rivers and healthy salmon runs, we’ll only get there if we clean up our act a bit.  Together, we can do it–just ask my granddaughter!

There are more tips for how to adopt healthy habits at www.pugetsoundstartshere.org.