Are you helping to kill our Puget Sound? | LETTER TO THE EDITOR


January 19, 2013 · 10:25 AM

To the editor:

Here’s a New Year’s resolution worth keeping: If your car is leaking oil, get it fixed! Otherwise, you’re helping to kill the Puget Sound, which already has numerous “dead zones.”

The single largest pollutant in our otherwise lovely Sound is stormwater runoff that contains vehicle droppings. (Maybe you also don’t pick up your dog’s droppings, which, along with yard chemicals add to the deadly mix flowing Soundward.)

Take a look down as you walk across almost any moistened parking area and you’ll see lots of oil slicks, which, thanks to our plentiful and renewing rains, ride along together and adversely affect aquatic life, to say the least.

Some pollution is out-of-sight/out-of-mind, but oil slicks are everywhere; we just choose to ignore them and their implications, which are not at all kind to children and other living things. Shame on us. I challenge all local auto shops to run specials that encourage the repair of oil leaks.

JACO TEN HOVE

Winslow

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