Category Archives: Environment

Seattle School Board Wins Grinch Award

Posted on April 23rd, 2008 | Comments Off on Seattle School Board Wins Grinch Award

Threatened NW Tree Grove at Ingraham High School

“Hate those trees, sure do,” said the Grinch. Reverting back to his old form and stance, the Grinch announced yesterday that he is expanding his franchise of celebrations that we can do away with. Earth Day is one of those.

And in the spirit of those who agree with him, the Grinch awarded an honorary franchise membership to Seattle Public Schools for their dogged efforts to clearcut trees from their school campuses.

Trees are a bad influence on kids said the Grinch. Especially large old trees noted the Grinch. So the Seattle Public School’s efforts to remove 68 large old evergreen trees from the west side of the Ingraham High School campus in North Seattle got the Grinch’s attention.

Brilliant strategy said the Grinch. Seek public money to replace grimy moldy old portables and promise new classrooms to renovate and upgrade the campus. The public supports that. But don’t tell the public paying the bill that the plan is to build the new classrooms smack in the middle of one of the few large groves of old Douglas fir, Western Red Cedar and madrone trees left in Seattle. Most of these trees are now 75 years old and over 100 feet tall.

The Grinch praised Seattle Public Schools for excluding members of the public from participating in the design process. “Neighbors and other members of the public only ask embarrassing questions and waste your time,” said the Grinch.

Part of the strategy to decrease student support for Earth Day celebrations the Grinch noted was the consideration by Seattle Public Schools to also cut down another grove of trees on the east side of the campus by the Helene Madison Pool. In the tree report filed with the City of Seattle dated Oct 22, 2007, the enclosed Ingraham Master Plan had circled this grove of trees and wrote in large letters “POTENTIAL EAST PARKING EXPANSION” – 50 spaces.

“Brilliant!” said the Grinch. “The more we work to encourage students to drive to school by creating more parking spaces, the less environmental habitat there is for them to spend time in marveling and celebrating their natural environment.”

The Grinch said that while the Seattle School District dropped the proposal to cut the east forest down in their current plan, they’ll always be more chances to cut down the trees in the future. “And for now you can tell the public that you’re not going to cut down these trees and look like environmental heroes, while you move forward to decimate the grove on the west side,” he gloated.

The Grinch noted that the trees in the east grove remain a real threat because teachers at Ingraham High School have actually used this area for environmental learning. “Preserving trees and native natural areas are a continuing threat to our efforts to do away with celebrating Earth Day,” said the Grinch.

The Grinch praised the inaction of the Seattle School Board in responding to strong public concern about cutting down the trees. Obviously their continuing to move forward with building the addition as planned is encouraging noted the Grinch. To seriously listen to the taxpayers paying for the school renovation would be a mistake he said. Just stop up your ears he suggested, urging them not to give in to public demands to come up with an alternative design that would save the trees on the west side of the school.

The Grinch urged the Seattle School Board to remove their e-mail contact information from their website at www.seattleschools.org/area/board. “If members of the public get hold of this information, who knows how many might try to contact you, urging you to come up with a new design for the classroom addition that doesn’t require cutting down the 68 large Douglas fir, western red cedar and Pacific madrone trees on the west side of the campus.”

“And for God’s sake don’t tell them about the open grassy lawn on the North side of the school where you could build the new classrooms and not have to cut down any large trees.” yelled the Grinch.

The Grinch was last seen dancing a jig and then running away, yelling at the top of his voice, “Cut down those trees now!” Again and again.

Comments Off on Seattle School Board Wins Grinch Award

Posted in Environment, Urban Forests

Tagged , , , , , ,

King Co. Exec Ron Sims, Senators Ed Murray and Ken Jacobsen Sign Petition to Save the Trees!

Posted on April 14th, 2008 | 1 comment

Threatened NW Tree Grove at Ingraham High School

 

Efforts to save 62 old Douglas fir and Western Red Cedar trees from being cut down at Ingraham High School are gaining momentum. Neighbors have collected over 650 signatures on a petition urging “Ingraham High School, the Seattle School District, the Seattle School Board and the School Design Team to develop an alternative design for Ingraham High School that protects the 62 large Douglas Fir and Western Cedar trees, currently being proposed to be cut down on the west side of the high school”.

Signers of the petition include King County Executive Ron Sims; State Senators Ed Murray and Ken Jacobsen; and State Representatives Mary Lou Dickerson and Phyllis Kenney.

Other signers include Estella Leopold, Professor Emeritus in Botany at the University of Washington, Joan Thomas, a former President of the Washington Environmental Council, and Marilyn Knight, a former President of the League of Women Voters of Washington.

Also signing were 4 Democratic candidates for the State Legislature – Gerald Pollet and Scott White in the 46th LD, John Burbank in the 36th LD and Tina Orwall in the 33rd LD.

Senator Ed Murray was the prime sponsor in the Senate of the urban forestry bill for Green Cities E2SHB 2844, passed by the state legislature earlier this year that called on cities and counties to inventory existing trees and develop plans to conserve and retain existing trees.

Last week both the Community Council Federation of Seattle and the Haller Lake Community Club voted their support of the petition drive urging the school district to not cut down the trees but look at an alternative site.

The plans by the Seattle School District to cut down what has at latest count increased to 66 Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar trees, flies smack in the face of the efforts of the Washington State Legislature, as well as a recent order by Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle, to preserve existing trees in urban areas and overall increase the number of trees in the city.

The grove of trees at Ingraham is a poster child of efforts to save trees in Seattle and the state. If we can’t stop the destruction of over 2/3 of the trees in the grove at Ingraham, then no tree in Seattle is safe.

Neighbors support the effort to renovate Ingraham High School and build new classrooms to replace the old portables being taken down but note that other locations exist on the campus where the classrooms could be built without cutting down any large or old trees. In particular there is a large grassy open space on the north side of the school that could easily accommodate the classrooms.

Copies of the petitions containing over 650 signatures were delivered to the Seattle School Board at their Board meeting on Wednesday, April 9, 2008.

Earlier in the day King TV did an evening news segment on the Save the Trees campaign.

1 Comment

Posted in Environment, Urban Forests

Tagged , , , ,

Gregoire Signs Toxic Toys Legislation

Posted on April 3rd, 2008 | Comments Off on Gregoire Signs Toxic Toys Legislation

Washington State now has the toughest toxic toy legislation in the country. See Seattle Times: Gregoire signs “toxic toys” bill, making Washington state’s standards strictest in the nation.

Washington State takes a leadership role once again. Think Dino Rossi would have signed it?

Governor Gregoire made the right decision in the public interest.

Comments Off on Gregoire Signs Toxic Toys Legislation

Posted in Environment, Washington State Legislature

Tagged ,

Seattle School District Says Cutting Down 62 Evergreen Trees in City is Not Significant

Posted on March 16th, 2008 | 4 comments

Threatened NW Tree Grove at Ingraham High School

The Seattle School District is proposing cutting down 62 large Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar trees on the west side of the Ingraham High School Campus in North Seattle. In addition they are proposing adding some 113 new parking spaces to the residential neighborhood, including on street parking.

This action is part of the proposed renovation of Ingraham High School that includes demolishing seven portables and one modular building of 7800 square feet and constructing a 2 story building addition of 14,500 square feet of classrooms on the west side of the existing high school.

Anyone else would likely characterize the cutting down of such a large number of old trees and increasing parking spaces in a residential neighborhood as having a significant environmental impact. Yet the Seattle School District has published a Notice of Determination of Non-Significance in the March edition of the Journal saying that “the proposal does not create any probable significant environmental impacts.”

The responsible school official listed for this determination is Ronald J English. English was recently the center of another questionable environmental skirmish in the same Haller Lake residential neighborhood when he was involved with the proposed sale of a Seattle School District building – the former Nellie Goodhue School – located at Meridian Ave N and Roosevelt Way N. The school district initial determination would have opened the residential neighborhood to an onslaught of trucks because of a “determination” that it was zoned for a warehouse. The Haller Lake Community Club sued and the property has now been sold to be converted into 26 single family homes.

A look at the Environmental Checklist prepared by the the URS Corporation of Seattle that the Seattle School District based its decision on, reveals a number of problems that were not adequately addressed. The Environmental Checklist, for example, does not consider any alternative places on campus to construct the new classrooms or look at any other alternative building designs in their evaluation.

The checklist provides no value to the loss of open space or tree canopy as compared to other alternatives. It assigns no value to the loss old growth trees which it minimally characterizes as Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar. It does not give the age of the trees or the height or the canopy coverage but only says they are 12 to 24 inches in diameter. In reality many of the trees appear to be large mature trees matching the tallest evergreen trees in the neighborhood. I estimate them as 100 feet or more in height.

A person with the design team characterized them in a conversation as mature trees at the end of their life yet they are the same size as other trees in the neighborhood. Douglas fir trees can grow to 48 inches in diameter and cedar even larger. The “ready to die” image is how the logging industries characterizes trees to justify cutting them – is this the school district’s philosophy also?

In addition, the proposal does not take into account Mayor Nickels goal for regreening the city over the next three decades — the planting of 649,000 trees, plus keeping the tree cover we have.” as written about in the Seattle PI.The article notes that:

Since the early 1970s, Seattle has lost more than half of its tree canopy as more businesses and people have moved into the city and smaller homes have given way to apartments and megahouses. Invasive ivy and blackberry bushes have smothered and killed native trees.
Nickels is looking to reverse that trend, to keep Seattle from becoming “the city formerly known as emerald.” …

Trees increasingly are being viewed as an asset to urban spaces. They clean pollution from the air and turn a key global warming gas into oxygen. They catch rainfall and slow the flow of contaminated stormwater from roadways into salmon streams….

“The city is increasingly realizing the urban forest is really part of the infrastructure of the city,” Nicholas said. “It isn’t just about looking pretty.”
The mayor’s goal is to expand the tree canopy from the current 18 percent to 30 percent over the next 30 years. Canopy is a measure of the land covered in trees, not a count of individual trees.

The current Environmental Checklist does not consider any measure of canopy replacement or any measure of global warming impact equivalency. It does propose adding new trees but most of these appear to be deciduous “street trees” maybe 15 to 20 feet tall at most.
The checklist makes no mention of Mayor Greg Nickels Executive order of Sept 6, 2005 that directs “all City departments to replace every tree that is removed from City-owned land in Seattle with two new trees.” One would think that Seattle Public Schools would support this policy also for the school district.
An additional major problem with the Environment Checklist is that it relies on a parking and traffic analysis prepared for URS by Mirai Transportation and Engineering of Kirkland that makes a number of questionable assumptions.

Ingraham High School currently has some 117 parking spaces on campus and has a 50 year agreement with the Seattle Parks Department to use a lot directly east of the school and north of the Helene Madison pool on a shared basis. The school estimates that it uses some 82 of the 165 spaces available in the shared Parks Dept lot.

The Mirai study then makes an assumption that is not borne out by the existing situation. They state that the 50 year “agreement is not assumed to continue and the parking analysis assumes loss of this lot for both daily and special event use. ” Yet both a call to the Parks Department and a discussion with Martin Floe, Ingraham’s Principal, and also the Project manager for URS, provided no problem with the current use of the Park’s Department parking lot or indicated any reason to expect it to end. No other use is planned for the existing parking lot.

But the assumption that it is not available in determining parking needs for Ingraham results in a big impact on the neighborhood, adding some 113 new parking spaces and encouraging more traffic and parking. The only justification seemed to be that the School District somehow couldn’t trust the Parks Department or the City to continue the agreement in the future, even though the Athletic Fields at Ingraham are shared with the city and they don’t have any problems with that.

Currently peak parking for 1200 students, faculty and staff is 185 cars. At some point the school might add 200 more students but this is not even certain. But the Mirai Parking study suggests that 200 additional students will require some 45 more parking spaces. Seattle is an urban area, yet to calculate the additional cars, Mirai uses something called “the peak trip generation for suburban high schools in the Institute for Transportation Engineers Trip Generation Manual.

This is almost double the current rate for students at the school. The difference represents some 22 parking spaces. How can you justify using a calculation for suburban schools for an urban school?

The deadline for responding to the Notice of Determination of Non-Significance is 4 PM on March 19, 2008. The DNS and Checklist can be viewed at the School District’s website www.seattleschools.org/area/facilities/SchoolProjects/IngrahamLink.xml

Urge that they do a more thorough environmental analysis of their project that assesses the real costs of building in an urban forested area and looks at alternatives to cutting down old growth trees and that also evaluates alternatives and mitigation measures to reduce demand for parking in general at the school rather than adding new parking spaces.

Send comments to:
Ronald J English, Environmental Officer
Seattle School District No 1
PO Box 34165, MS32-151
Seattle, WA 98124
phone: 206-252-0110
fax: 206-252-0110
Seattle Public Schools is also holding a public community meeting on Tuesday March 18, 2008 from 7 PM to 9 PM in the Ingraham School Library to give a presentation of the design team for the renovation.

4 Comments

Posted in Environment, Urban Forests

Tagged , , ,

Hastings and McMorris Rodgers Consistently Vote Against the Environment

Posted on March 2nd, 2008 | Comments Off on Hastings and McMorris Rodgers Consistently Vote Against the Environment

The national League of Conservation Voters gave Republicans Doc Hastings (WA-4) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-5) both a 5 out of 100 rating for their environmental voting record for 2007. For the first time in 9 years Hastings scored one environmentally correct vote. For the previous 8 years Hastings had a score of zero. McMorris Rodgers also had a zero for her previous rating.

Hasting is being challenged this year by Democrat George Fearing.

Republican Dave Reichert (WA-8), in a tough re-election campaign in eastern King County, has finally seen the green light through the trees and actually doubled his score from 43 in the previous session of Congress to an 85 rating for 2007. Reichert is facing Democratic challenger Darcy Burner who he narrowly beat in 2006.

Of course one has to evaluate what this score actually represents for Reichert. A careful look at two different bills that Reichert voted for last year and this year show that he opposed the bills at every step of the way up until the final vote. You can read these stories about Reichert at Daniel Kirkdorffer’s blog On the Road to 2008.

see “Reichert Votes For Another Bill He Opposes Every Step Of The Way” Jan 18, 2007 and “Anatomy of a Reichert Vote ” Feb. 28, 2008

We observed this same voting behavior by Reichert, when he first voted for an amendment to weaken popcorn worker safety legislation and then was the outcome was clear, voted for final passage of the bill.

see “Republicans Hastings, McMorris Rodgers and Reichert Record Votes Opposing Popcorn Worker Safety” Oct 1, 2007

Meanwhile all of Washington’s Democratic Congressmen continued their strong voting records for the environment in 2007. Jay Inslee (WA-1), Brian Baird (WA-3), Norm Dicks (WA-6), and Jim McDermott (WA -7) all received scores of 95. Adam Smith (WA-9) received a 90 and Rick Larsen (WA-2) received the lowest rating of 80.

On the Senate side, Democrats Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell both received scores of 87 for their 2007 voting records.

Comments Off on Hastings and McMorris Rodgers Consistently Vote Against the Environment

Posted in Congress, Elections, Environment

Tagged , , , , ,

John McCain Gets Zero Rating from League of Conservation Voters

Posted on February 28th, 2008 | Comments Off on John McCain Gets Zero Rating from League of Conservation Voters

John McCain missed so many votes last year in Congress that he scored a zero on the League of Conservation Voters 2007 ratings. He was the only Senator to miss all of the key environmental votes used in the scoring.

As LCV noted in their recent press release:

“The presidential candidates’ scores all suffered from the occupational hazard of absenteeism. Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) missed four votes each in 2007, although both made a point of being on hand for the key vote that would have allowed a version of the energy bill to move forward that included a provision to repeal billions of dollars in tax breaks for big oil and put that money toward clean energy programs.

Clinton’s score in 2007 was 73 percent (87 percent lifetime); Obama’s was 67 percent (86 percent lifetime). * Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) scored 0 percent in 2007 (24 percent lifetime) due to missing all 15 votes scored, including the key vote on repealing tax giveaways to big oil – a measure that failed by only one vote.”

McCain’s LCV ratings:
0 (2007), 41 (2005-2006), 56 (2003-2004), 36 (2001-2002), 6 (1999-2000)

Obama’s LCV ratings:
67 (2007), 96 (2005-2006)

Clinton’s LCV ratings
73 (2007), 89 (2005-2006), 92 (2003-2004), 88 (2001-2002)

Of the other Presidential candidates who have dropped out of the race Joe Biden missed 4 of the environmental votes used in the rating in 2007 and received a score of 67. Christopher Dodd missed 6 of the environmental votes in 2007 and received a score of 60. Dennis Kucinich missed 3 of the environmental votes in the House and received a score of 80.

Comments Off on John McCain Gets Zero Rating from League of Conservation Voters

Posted in Democrats, Elections, Environment, Republicans

Tagged , , ,

Legislature Completes First Step in Passing Priorities for a Healthy Washington Bills

Posted on February 22nd, 2008 | Comments Off on Legislature Completes First Step in Passing Priorities for a Healthy Washington Bills

The environmental community is half way home this year in enacting their top four legislative bills collectively called Priorities for a Healthy Washington . The following four bills are still alive and moving, after having been passed by their house of origin in the Washington State Legislature before the Feb 19, 2008 cutoff date. They must now be passed by the other house.

* Climate Action and Green Jobs passed the House, 64 – 31.
* Local Solutions to Global Warming passed the Senate, 31 – 17.
* Evergreen Cities passed the House, 73 – 22.
* Local Farms – Healthy Kids passed the House, 95 -1;
companion legislation passed the Senate, 48 – 0.

Brief Description of bills taken from a recent e-mail from Priorities for a Healthy Washington:

* Climate Action and Green Jobs: The Climate Action & Green Jobs bill would lay the framework for limiting the sources and activities that cause the greatest amounts of global warming pollution in the state. It will also establish a program to prepare Washington workers for good jobs in the clean energy economy.

* Local Solutions to Global Warming: The choices made in local land use and zoning plans about where a growing population will live and work and how they will get around have a huge impact on global warming emissions. Local Solutions to Global Warming will help cities and counties shape communities in ways that will reduce climate pollution.

* Evergreen Cities: The Evergreen Cities bill would restore, retain and establish more trees and forests in our communities. The bill would also leverage partnerships with volunteers to steward the urban forests and provide funding for cities’ and counties’ forest plans.

* Local Farms – Healthy Kids: By getting more Washington fruits and vegetables into our schools, we can improve children’s health and create new and thriving markets for our farmers. The Local Farms – Healthy Kids bill will help preserve farmland and will expand children’s access to locally grown produce through our schools, food banks and farmers markets.

You can help keep the momentum going to pass these bills by contacting your representatives in the Washington State Legislature. Click on this Legislative link to find your legislators and send them an e-mail thanking them for their action to date and urging that they complete action by passing all four of the Priorities for a Healthy Washington bills coming from the other house.

Comments Off on Legislature Completes First Step in Passing Priorities for a Healthy Washington Bills

Posted in Environment, Washington State Legislature

Tagged ,

Eyman Running Initiative Campaign without Filing Required Reports with Public Disclosure Commission

Posted on February 14th, 2008 | Comments Off on Eyman Running Initiative Campaign without Filing Required Reports with Public Disclosure Commission

Tim Eyman and friends are once again in violation of Washington State’s Public Disclosure laws. This morning MajorityRulesBlog filed an official compliant with the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission regarding the lack of filing of campaign contribution and expenditure reports for Initiative 985.

In a phone call this morning I confirmed with the PDC that there was no error on their part – no reports have been received by them from Eyman besides a C1pc on initial formation of a committee entitled Reduce Congestion.org on January 3, 2008. ReduceCongestion.org has not updated this report with any additional information or reported any contributions or expenditures as of today, Feb 14, 2008. The deadline for filing Jan reports is Feb 10, 2008.

Yet they have sent mailings to people soliciting money, have a website up asking for money on behalf of ReduceCongestion.org which they secured on Dec. 18, 2007 , and are sending out e-mail asking for money.

Voters Want More Choices notes a Dec 30, 2007 pledge to Reduce Congestion.org of $42,029,77 yet there is no report from Reduce Congestion.org of any such pledge. There is also a Feb 11, 2008 report by Help Us Help Taxpayers for a pledge made in January of $7,650.02 to ReduceCongestion.org for January office compensation.

ReduceCongestion.org (Initiative 985) has printed up and mailed out petitions yet there are no reported expenses of any kind by the campaign. For all intents and purposes anyone checking public disclosure records would be lead to falsely believe that no money has been raised or spent on behalf on Initiative 985 by Reduce Congestion.org . This is obviously false.

Comments Off on Eyman Running Initiative Campaign without Filing Required Reports with Public Disclosure Commission

Posted in Elections, Environment, Initiatives, Washington State Legislature

Tagged , , , ,

Montana High School Cancels Climate Talk by Nobel Laureate.

Posted on January 17th, 2008 | 1 comment

It seems that a high school in Choteau, Montana thinks the best way to educate its students is to deny them the unique and rare opportunity to hear what a Nobel laureate has to say about global warming. What are they afraid of – that some students might actually be persuaded that global warming is real? Are they afraid that some students might come to question why more isn’t being done to protect their future from climate change?

The New York Times today reported that Nobel Laureate Steven W Running’s scheduled talk before 130 high school students was canceled after a few local conservative citizens complained to the school board and school superintendent.

Dr Running is a Professor of Ecology at the University of Montana. He was “a lead author” of the Report on Global Warming done by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the Nobel Peace Prize 2007. The IPCC shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore.

As noted by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in selecting the Intergovernmental Committee on Climate Change to receive its Nobel Peace Prize for 2007:

“Indications of changes in the earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.

Through the scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. Thousands of scientists and officials from over one hundred countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming. Whereas in the 1980s global warming seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent.”

Most high schools would view the opportunity to hear a Nobel Laureate speak as a great educational learning experience. And certainly most speaking engagements give an opportunity for students to ask questions. But if schools operated on the principle that if anyone in the community disagreed with a proposed speaker, he or she couldn’t speak, then the probability is that schools would never be having any guest speakers.

Sticking your head in the sand on global warming isn’t going to change the reality. Some people in Montana still need to realize that global warming will affect them also – that the world global means just that. Like it or not, it includes Montana. Global warming, if not brought into check, will have major impacts on Montana farmers and ranchers and conservatives. Global warming will not discriminate as to whether someone is conservative or liberal. It will affect us all.

1 Comment

Posted in Environment, free speech

Tagged , , , , ,

Governor Gregoire to Announce Climate Action & Green Jobs Bill as Priority

Posted on January 14th, 2008 | 1 comment

At the Priorities for a Healthy Washington Legislative Workshop held in Seattle on Saturday, it was disclosed that Governor Gregoire was going to announce on Monday that the “Climate Action & Green Jobs” bill would be a Governor’s Request Bill. This action will elevate the visibility and importance of this legislation and add to the momentum to get this this bill passed this year.

The Climate Action & Green Jobs bill is one of the 4 bills the environmental community has selected as their priorities for the 2008 Legislative Session starting Monday. The other 3 priority bills being pushed by the environmental community deal with “Local Solutions to Global Warming“, “Evergreen Cities” and “Local Farms – Healthy Kids”

from the Priorities for a Healthy Washington’s Legislative Proposal:


“The Climate Action and Green Jobs bill creates a structure and timeline for implementing the state’s global warming pollution reduction goals, and creates a program to prepare Washington workers for good jobs in the clean energy economy, providing pathways out of poverty for lower-income communities.

Accountability: The bill would make the Washington State Department of Ecology responsible for achieving the state’s emissions reduction goals. It would direct Ecology to develop responsible limits on all major sources of global warming pollution in the state.
Opportunity: The bill would create a competitive grants-based training program, to be funded and implemented in 2009, that will train and transition workers to clean energy jobs.
Regional solutions: The legislature would affirm the state’s participation in developing a regional market-based pollution trading system—like the one Washington is now helping to develop with numerous other western states and Canadian provinces.
Responsibility: requires reporting by those that are responsible for the greatest amount sources of global warming pollution.”

Gregoire’s Director of the Department of Ecology, Jay Manning, was the workshop’s lunch time speaker. Manning praised the environmental community for its successful efforts in developing the Priorities for a Healthy Washington’s Agenda and noted that being selected as one of the 4 priority bills gave a piece of legislation credibility in Olympia.

Over the last 6 year’s the success rate of passing the Priorities for a Healthy Washington’s 4 bills each year has increased, going from one bill passed the first year to seeing all four bills passed last year. Part of this success Manning noted was because of the environmental community’s accepting that sometimes compromise needed to be made. It’s willingness to be flexible has elevated the credibility of the environmental community in Olympia.

Manning noted that while the ideal solution to act on global warming was a national response, in the absence of action by the Bush Administration, it is necessary for the states and local cities and counties to do what they can.

Manning said that unlike other states, Washington State with its immense hydro power resources does not have a major CO2 problem from coal plants. Instead 50% of our CO2 emissions come from cars and other vehicles. This is why he said the state is appealing in Federal Court the recent decision by Bush’s EPA Administrator to deny Washington State and other states the ability to implement the California fuel emissions standards proposed as part of Clean Car Legislation enacted in some 16 states.

One goal will be to reduce the vehicle miles traveled (VMT)in the state. This includes trying to make fewer trips, driving less, increasing density and better planning to concentrate development with localized services, infilling undeveloped areas, and stopping building more roads.

Another component will be to continue to expand strong programs to reduce waste which Washington State leads the nation in. Recycling and waste reduction programs reduce the production of greenhouse gases.

There is a potential threat, Manning said, that there could be an further attempts by the Federal government to limit state action on global warming. He said the current efforts by state and local governments are concentrated on the West Coast, New England, and Wisconsin and Minnesota. He said that the recent West Coast Climate Initiative held in Portland Oregon had some 370 people in attendance and another 400 on the phone.

It is obvious that Manning and Governor Gregoire are already working hard on dealing with global climate change by trying to get Washington State to take action to reduce the production of greenhouse gases. This is not something you would have seen from Republican Dino Rossi if he had been elected.

And if you are concerned about global warming Republican Dino Rossi is not someone you want to see become Governor in the future. The Sierra Club lobbyist in Olympia, Craig Engelking, noted that when Rossi was in the Legislature he “voted for a bill that would have said Washington’s environmental standards could not exceed federal minimums.”

That means that if Rossi was Governor now he would not be appealing the recent decision by the EPA to deny Washington State the ability to implement California’s Clean Car standards, which exceed the Federal standards.

In addition, Engelking said “Rossi voted against a bill to create a privately funded Washington climate center that would research simple and innovative ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Washington. The center would have also helped identify what types of impacts climate change could have on Washington and what we can do about it. (SB 5674, 2001) “

1 Comment

Posted in Environment, Washington State Legislature

Tagged , , ,