An island nonprofit that made headlines during the battle against Glacier has reinvented itself, and with a new name and a renewed vision, it’s once again making waves in the shoreline development world.

Amy Carey, director of the organization, announced last week that Preserve Our Islands has become Sound Action, a regional watchdog group that will seek to hold construction permitting agencies accountable for protecting aquatic habitat in Puget Sound. And in its first watchdogging effort, Sound Action has released an audit that the group believes shows the state Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW) isn’t following specific permitting laws meant to protect forage fish, a backbone of Puget Sound health.

“We have run Puget Sound to the brink,” Carey said after the announcement last week. “It really is past the time for agencies to be doing their jobs — not creating new laws, but paying attention to the laws that are on the books.”

However, the state, so far, doesn’t seem receptive to Sound Action’s message.

Randi Thurston, WDFW’s protection division manager, said she believes the agency does follow the laws in question and does all it can to protect aquatic habitat.

“The biologists here are really passionate about what they do, and they care about the fish,” Thurston said. “They take their jobs pretty seriously. One of them said, ‘It feels like I got punched in the gut.’”

Carey, however, said there’s a dire need for oversight of regulatory agencies such as WDFW, agencies that issue permits for nearshore development such as docks, bulkheads and boat ramps.

While working to prevent Glacier Northwest from expanding its mining operations on Maury Island, Carey said she and others involved with POI observed that agencies often issue aquatic permits without the proper environmental protections in place. And by the time the 15-year fight against Glacier ended in 2010, when the corporation sold the site to King County, POI couldn’t help but feel that the long battle on Maury was indicative of a more systemic problem. Many feel, she said, that the government isn’t doing all it can to halt projects that could cause marine habitat loss, one of the top threats to Puget Sound and the creatures that inhabit it.

“Throughout our fight, we found that regulatory agencies, for whatever reason, ignore environmental laws that are on the books,” Carey said.

Following its big victory, POI spent months researching current conservation efforts in Puget Sound, interviewing local experts about gaps in environmental protection and surveying its membership. POI’s board eventually agreed it should not abandon ship after the Glacier win, but follow a new path — staying involved in the county’s cleanup and development at the former Glacier site while also working to see that environmental protection laws are followed in future projects around the region.

“It feels really exciting to continue the momentum of this community organization, to go forward and do more good,” Carey said. “It’s a different kind of excitement than fighting a giant mining company.”

A slate of local and regional activists and experts have joined the effort. Sound Action’s new eight-person board includes David Bain, a widely recognized orca biologist, Mike Sato, former Communications Director for People for Puget Sound, and Susie Kalhorn, an experienced  environmental educator and former chemical oceanographer at the University of Washington.

Kalhorn, an islander who worked with POI several years ago and now chairs the Sound Action board, said no other nonprofit was attempting to provide such oversight, and Sound Action could play an important role in Puget Sound recovery.

“We have a lot of expertise gained and experienced gained by that many-years-long battle, and it makes sense that that could be applied elsewhere in Puget Sound,” she said. “If we want to have an environment that we can live in in the future, we really need to be activists at this point.”

At issue in Sound Action’s first audit is the state’s Hydraulic Code. Any nearshore development in Puget Sound must receive a Hydraulic Permit Approval (HPA) from WDFW before work near the shoreline can begin.

“This is where the state does a thumbs up or thumbs down,” Carey said.

Suspecting the state was putting its thumb up too easily, Sound Action requested and analyzed every HPA granted in the last 18 months. What they found, Carey said, was that an alarming number of HPAs didn’t include restrictions to prevent work from taking place when forage fish such as herring, surf smelt and sand lance may be spawning at those locations.

For instance, more than 90 percent of HPAs granted by the agencies didn’t include so-called fish windows for rock sole spawning and a similar number had no restrictions in place to protect lingcod.

“It’s clear that many of those permits were were occurring in areas where you’d have that forage fish spawning,” Carey said.

Thurston, however, said the state saw it differently. It does include fish windows in its HPAs when there are documented spawning grounds in those locations, she said. But if there aren’t, it has no basis to enforce such restrictions.

“If we tell the person they can’t do something, the onus is on us to have the science and prove that the restriction is necessary,” she said. “Just taking a brief look at (the audit), I think there were some assumptions made about how we conduct our HPA project that weren’t accurate.”

Carey, however, said she thinks it’s not always well documented where forage fish spawn in Puget Sound, meaning many projects likely do disrupt their habitat. What’s more, some forage fish are known to spawn everywhere, rather than specific beaches. It would make sense if fish windows were always put in place for those species, she said, or if applicants were required to survey the locations in question before getting approvals.

“It would be one thing if it was here and there, but the gap is so huge and so disconcerting because we’re talking about Puget Sound recovery, and everyone knows habitat loss is the number-one issue.”

Carey said she hoped Sound Action could work with state officials to identify where their processes could be improved so that eventually all HPAs would include the necessary restrictions to protect fish. Should the state be uncooperative, she said, the nonprofit may consider taking legal action to challenge approved permits.

“This is not intended just to be adversarial to Fish & Wildlife. We’re trying to fix a broken system. The law is a good law. … There are some clear gaps they need to fix,” Carey said.

Thurston said that while she didn’t agree with Carey’s assessment, she was open to taking a closer look at the audit and the HPAs in question.

“We’ll take a hard look. Are there instances we should have done something different? I’m not saying there aren’t going to be those instances, but I know we did a better job than what Amy said in her audit,” she said.

As for Sound Action, Kalhorn said she hoped the budding organization would eventually become a partner of sorts with state and county permitting agencies. While agencies may feel pressure from the development community, she said, Sound Action could be a voice for the environment.

“So those folks working to protect the commons know we have their backs and we want those laws to be applied,” she said. “I think this audit opens up the door, it reveals a problem, and I think we’re here to help fix it.”