The Washington Stormwater Center is a member of the Stormwater Strategic Initiative Lead (SIL) which is one of three initiative teams funded by The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through the National Estuary Program (NEP) to facilitate Puget Sound recovery. This team is led by partner Washington State Department of Ecology and includes WSC and the Washington State Department of Commerce.

The team is working on Implementation Strategies for the Benthic Index of Biotic Integrity (BIBI) and Toxics in Fish/Aquatic Species. Project level funding decisions are made with a standing Stormwater Strategic Advisory Team (SIAT) for portfolio funding decisions. Since 2016, our team has funded over $13 million worth of research, outreach, pilots, and monitoring projects.

WSC participates in team management, Advisory Team management, technical reviews of strategies and projects, and provides underlying science and gray literature integration to the initiative. An important aspect of this work is creating linkages between Center and WSU research and outreach and the work of the Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program and the Puget Sound Partnership’s Science Team.

The WSC LID and Ecotoxicology Research programs’ work supports the Center’s participation in the Stormwater Strategic Initiative Lead Team by providing up-to-date, relevant, and cutting-edge science and project reviews to inform selection and implementation of effective stormwater management strategies. Many of the projects this team funds address green stormwater infrastructure which plays a substantial role in strategies to recover Puget Sound.

Relevant literature reviews are shared widely with Puget Sound practitioners and conversely, project-level results are reviewed and shared by the LID program and other researchers within WSC.