In Olympia today, legislators are scheduled to consider hiking a tax on toxic substances to help keep polluted stormwater out of Puget Sound. But for the first five years, more than half the revenues would go to reducing the state's budget deficit, not cleaning up Puget Sound.

Financial and political obstacles have stymied efforts to save Puget Sound ever since the first clean–up agency was created 25 years ago. The state's newest Puget Sound agency is now in its third year. Critics and even the agency's own board members are growing impatient for the Puget Sound Partnership to take action.

Near the mouth of the Nisqually River and the southern end of Puget Sound, a gaggle of geese is grazing on a patch of wetland. The places where freshwater and saltwater meet are called estuaries. Most estuaries in Puget Sound have been replaced by cities and ports and farms. And that's left migratory species like waterfowl and salmon with few places to turn.

So last fall the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge took out a long dike. That let the tides reclaim 700 acres along the river mouth for the first time in more than a century. Refuge manager Jean Takekawa says she could see saltwater bringing the estuary back to life in a matter of days.

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