Golden Gardens Bath House
8498 Seaview Pl. NW
Seattle, Washington
Monday, September 17, 2007

Thank you. I would be hard pressed to find a current issue as pervasive as climate change. As our understanding about the dynamics of climate change and how we are already feeling its effects grows, we can see probable and possible impacts that have an amazing breadth.

We can see maps depicting huge expanses of land that may be inundated by rising sea levels. We hear projections of increased range and virulence of diseases.

With increasing frequency we learn of research results that describe potentially drastic impacts to natural resources from events like more intense storms and more frequent wildfires.
Scientists are doing yeoman's duty in improving the understanding of policy-makers, natural resource managers and citizens alike of how climate affects our lives, our livelihoods, our economy, and the natural environment.

They are also helping us paint an ever-clearer picture of how a changing climate will affect what we value, including our salmon.

The International Panel on Climate Change has released a seminal report that presents the best explanation of the current reality of climate change.

This report also lays out in detail how the actions of individuals and society are driving the change, and what our climate future may be given past and future actions that could exacerbate, mitigate or reduce climate change drivers.

I believe Climate Change is the defining issue for humankind in the 21st Century, and I've committed King County to tackling it head on.

I believe that counties such as ours have a unique role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for the impacts of climate change.

Counties and local governments have regional jurisdiction over such policy areas as air quality, land use planning, transportation, zoning, forest preservation, water conservation, and wastewater and solid waste management.

We are still in the early stages of understanding what climate change could mean for us, in terms of natural resources, public health and safety, transportation, and other fundamental aspects of our society, culture and quality of life.

But what we do know is that the science tells us we need to prepare for a range of probable and potential impacts. I believe that 50 years from now there will be communities that will be winners and those will be losers.

The communities that are thriving half a century from now will be the ones that take action today in response to the growing body of scientific evidence about global warming and its cause.

And the best way to protect the people, economy and environment of King County and beyond is to take specific actions to reduce greenhouse gases and invest the money needed to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Earlier this year I unveiled the King County Climate Plan, which called on our region to cut greenhouse gas pollution by 80 percent below current levels by 2050.

I've called on our region's leaders to work together to create a specific timetable that incrementally reduces emissions to those levels.

And I've called on King County staff to view all of the work they do through the lens of global warming, and to be innovative and committed to aggressively reducing emissions that are changing our climate and threaten our quality of life at every level.

Our employees are taking this seriously and I am pleased with King County's ramped up and now nationally acclaimed efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption, encourage markets for clean fuels, develop a green fleet, encourage green building, convert waste into green energy and protect our environment.

It is now clear to me that we cannot wait for the federal government to act decisively on global warming. It is equally clear to me that we CAN make real progress today – at the local level – to mitigate for and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

At King County we have been working hard to lead by example, and help other local governments respond.

One of the more-recent additions to King County's global warming toolkit is our Guidebook for Local, Regional and State Governments. This book helps leaders plan for the impacts of climate change, such as the increased risk of drought and flooding, new diseases, invasive species and other potential changes that come about as a result of global warming.

The goal is to arm governments with the know-how to adapt to climate change.

I'd like to tell you a bit about what King County has done, through land use planning and other authorities and actions, to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions while we protect our community from the impacts of climate change on our region.

• In King County, we have a Comprehensive Plan that we update every four years in coordination with Washington State's Growth Management Act. It is our best tool in curbing sprawl.

• We knew intuitively that this was good for health, climate change, and community engagement. We said: when your work, home, stores, school and playground are all near one-another, then you drive less. You reduce your greenhouse gas emissions - you're also healthier. And you see your neighbors more. This seemed like simple math to us.

Then we commissioned the "LUTAQH" report. We now know the next generation of that report and the related program as "Healthscape," but the point is the same: people are healthier, and they reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, when their communities are pedestrian-friendly.

• We continue to use the results of this study in protecting our Urban Growth Area Boundary. In our past two updates to our Comprehensive Plan, we have embedded public health and climate change considerations explicitly into our land-use decisions.

Certainly, transportation – passenger vehicle use – is the largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions in our county, and has the most potential for reducing emissions. We must get people of their cars and onto their feet, onto their bicycles, onto our buses, and onto our trails.

I have long been a proponent of expanding and linking our trail system, and we are making great strides at King County. We have one of the best trail systems in the nation with more than 175 miles of trails for walking, biking and hiking.

Our trail network spans from Bothell to Auburn, and from Seattle to Snoqualmie. I have pledged that in the years to come, King County will continue to plan, acquire, develop, and maintain a regional trail network that will expand to 300 miles.

I tell my staff that we must use our four levers of change – land use, transportation, environmental management and renewable energy – to be a catalyst for developing and implementing strategies that prepare us for, and mitigate against, the harmful effects of global warming.

At King County we have had many opportunities to think creatively about how to develop and grow the alternative energy market. I cannot possibly discuss them all now, but here are a few examples.

• Earlier this year, King County completed an agreement with Natural Selection Farms of Sunnyside in Yakima County, to guarantee the purchase of 500,000 gallons annually of canola oil for use in biodeisel for our Metro transit fleet.
  

As the state's largest commercial biodiesel customer, Metro will be in a position to expand its environmental reach. Its use of biodiesel is expected to remove an estimated 22,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air in the coming year.

That's the equivalent of removing 2,800 vehicles from King County roadways. Put another way, an additional 6,628 trees would have to be planted to offset the same amount of carbon dioxide that's being eliminated through this use of biodiesel.

• In a partnership that began in 2000 with the EPA, Fuel Cell Inc. and King County, we have the first hydrogen fuel cell demonstration at our Renton treatment plant that converts waste to energy. This technology could be used in over 400 similar sized plants across the country, providing those treatment plants with the capacity to generate the energy they need to treat the waste from the waste treatment process itself.

• In the spring of 2004, King County Metro began delivery of 235 GM hybrid-powered buses, the single largest order for buses ever placed in the U.S.
  This was the culmination of two-year collaboration as we worked hand-in-hand with GM and New Flyer to make the 60 foot hybrid-bus a reality for transit agencies across the country.
  
  We also recently signed a new contract with GM committing to purchase another 500-plus vehicles between now and 2014.

• In the fall of 2006, the King County Fleet Division led 14 fleet departments to form the Northwest Hybrid Truck Consortium, which will collaboratively buy hybrid diesel-electric trucks at a lower unit price. The consortium will also serve as a testing ground to provide on-the-road experience, data collection, and analysis of the new trucks, and accelerate production and deployment of the trucks for mainstream use.

The purchase will be helped by a $250,000 grant awarded by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. King County is also collaborating with WestStart-CALStart on strategies to commercialize these trucks.

• Also, in 2006, we became the first mass transit system in the country to join the Chicago Climate Exchange, a voluntary market in which members commit to reducing carbon emissions. Our participation also ensures that we have input on how the rules governing transit emissions in a cap and trade system are written. Namely, making sure the values of transit in replacing single-occupancy vehicles and of a transit system using biodiesel and hybrid technology to reduce emissions, are considered.

• While not an alternative energy demonstration, King County was just recently selected by the federal Department of Transportation to pilot a Pay-As-You-Drive Insurance proposal, in partnership with the state and Unigard Insurance. This program could result in car insurance becoming an incentive for reducing congestion and air pollution, further helping our efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and promote energy independence.

• And earlier this summer we signed a contract to convert the methane gas from the decomposing garbage in our landfill into pipeline quality natural gas. What was costing us $80,000 a year to maintain and flare off will now bring in $1.3 million annually, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 22,000 passenger cars.
  

And because landfill gas is considered a "green energy," King County will retain all carbon credits generated by the project.

I'm very excited at the prospect of reducing C02 emissions, saving taxpayers money, and turning waste into a resource.

These are all strong public-private partnerships. We're putting the new technologies and ideas developed by the private sector into action in the public sector, for the benefit of the entire community.

Reducing emissions is critical to protecting and restoring Puget Sound, but so too is beefing up efforts to protect our remaining natural resources, such as salmon.

The emerging science on global warming is our clarion call to protect the naturally-functioning ecosystems that remain in local watersheds and to restore habitat where possible.

As King County now views all its work through a climate change lens, salmon recovery efforts must do the same.

And while the challenge of preparing for climate change is daunting, I am motivated when I consider that the emerging science about climate change better equips local governments with the information we need to build public support for actions that protect our environment.

The signals we are getting from our natural resources are troubling to me as an individual and as an elected official.

The Cascade Range's glaciers are shrinking as climate change takes hold. Those glistening waters of the Puget Sound mask a water body – so essential to our salmon and to us – that bears the signs of a landscape that has changed in dramatic ways.

And the signal we are getting from our salmon is just as alarming. By any measure, our salmon populations are smaller and less healthy than they were only a few decades ago.

As a result, cultures, economies and rivers from Alaska to Seattle to California are being starved of the nourishment that these fish provide.

Two recent reports in this region have really pushed the question of localized impacts, especially to our salmon resources.

A study by NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center done in the Snohomish watershed, just to the north of us, tells us that climate change is likely to have large negative impact on freshwater salmon habitat, and that this will in turn make the salmon recovery targets in the Chinook Recovery Plan much more difficult to attain.

The recovery targets were appropriately aggressive to begin with, so this news must lead us to take a hard look at our recovery strategies.

In eastern Washington, a report done by the Independent Science Advisory Board in the Columbia Basin paints a distressing picture for salmon populations across the entire Pacific Northwest.

It describes a vast array of impacts to salmon at all freshwater life stages.

Most troubling is its conclusion that climate change-driven temperature increases alone will result in the loss of up to 7 percent of current salmon habitat by 2030, and up to 22 percent by 2090.

Couple this with additional potential habitat losses from other causes and the picture gets even bleaker. Our depleted salmon populations may not be able to bear these losses.

My message today however is about commitment and hope, and not about bad news and despair.

Local governments are on the front lines, at the nexus of a range of fundamental and sometimes conflicting human values.

Local governments in Puget Sound are tackling the complex and far-reaching habitat problems that must be addressed to bring salmon back.

These problems should not be a surprise to anyone by now.

We are dealing with the predictable results of a steady growth in the human population over the past century: changes in land cover that have altered the hydrology of our watersheds; increased demands on water for consumptive uses; and pollution that changes the quality of our water in harmful ways.

Overlay these existing conditions with climate change, further anticipated growth, and a property rights movement that isn't going away, and we can see the depth and breadth of the challenge we face.

And we are stepping up to this challenge.

Local governments are not helpless in addressing these fundamental problems. In fact, local government plays a key role in overcoming these challenges.

It's my belief that local elected officials and governments in Washington are duty-bound to bring a progressive and proactive approach to salmon recovery.

We have a range of powerful policy and programmatic tools to bring to bear creatively toward achieving harvestable, self-sustaining salmon populations.

These tools include:

• The Growth Management Act – This law is in many ways the cornerstone of local efforts to protect the habitats and habitat forming processes that are essential for the long term viability of all of our salmon. This Act was passed in Washington in 1990 with the aim of addressing uncoordinated and unplanned growth that posed a threat to the environment, sustainable economic development, and the quality of life in Washington.

The GMA requires state and local governments to manage growth by identifying and protecting critical areas and natural resource lands, designating urban growth areas, preparing comprehensive plans and implementing them through capital investments and development regulations.

A key element of the Act was the establishment of the Urban Growth Areas that hold the line on growth in the rural and natural resources areas. By the time the existing Pacific Salmon Treaty was signed in 1999 many counties and cities had adopted their first Comprehensive Plans under this Act. Today 29 counties and 218 cities are managing growth comprehensively under the GMA.

• The Shoreline Management Act – This state law was adopted by a public vote in 1972 and laid some of the groundwork for the Growth Management Act.

It continues to play an important role in resource protection. Its focus is "to prevent the inherent harm in an uncoordinated and piecemeal development of the state's shorelines." It does this by encouraging uses of the shoreline that are water dependent, protecting the shoreline, and promoting the enjoyment of natural shorelines.

This law requires local governments to develop and implement Shoreline Master Programs. These programs regulate new development and use of shorelines along rivers and larger streams, lakes over 20 acres and marine waterfronts. They are opened for review and revision every seven years and we are in the middle of such a review in King County as we speak.

• Clean Water Act compliance – We have been working to protect and improve the quality of our lakes, rivers and streams with the guidance of this law since its passage in 1972. Both point and non-point pollution are addressed under this law.

In Washington the implementation of this law has become a partnership between the state and local governments. For jurisdictions like King County this translates to applying for and abiding by rigorous discharge permits for our wastewater, stormwater and roads maintenance programs. It can also involve working with federal and state agencies in the Total Daily Maximum Loading program to develop strategies for reducing specific pollutants in our surface waters.

• Endangered Species Act response – As a legal driver, the Endangered Species Act is perhaps more explicit than the others in its call for governments at all levels to take species conservation action. In Puget Sound we have been addressing ESA issues for salmon for nearly a decade. Is there any wonder that our resident orcas have been added to the endangered species list, given that they are so dependent on salmon for their own survival?

In addition to these fundamental habitat policy tools, local governments implement a range of programs that can improve habitat in large and small ways. These programs include open space and parks acquisition, management programs that protect habitat and natural processes that create and sustain habitat over time, and even cleaning and recycling wastewater so that it can be re-used, saving water in streams and rivers for fish.

• Purchasing large areas of habitat – Protecting lands that support habitat and habitat forming processes is a major focus for us. We have made hundreds of fee simple and conservation easement purchases that have protected thousands and thousands of acres.

And we have gone way beyond small-scale habitat acquisitions to buying up development rights on watersheds. For example, in 2004 we paid $22 million for the development rights of the Snoqualmie Tree Farm.

This purchase protects 90,000 acres of timberland in our most intact watershed for perpetuity. An important part of this story is that we had already preserved approximately 40,000 acres of open space around the county prior to that purchase. And we continue to explore opportunities to protect more habitat through acquisition.

• As manager of the largest wastewater treatment system in Puget Sound, King County is helping drive advances in cleaning and recycling wastewater.

By 2011 we will be reclaiming almost 10 percent of the base flow into our treatment facilities. This translates to several millions of gallons of water every day that can substitute for water that would otherwise be taken from our rivers and streams.

We are also making major investments in a new treatment plant that will use state-of-the-art treatment systems to clean our discharge into Puget Sound to almost drinking water quality.

I believe that the successes of local governments using these tools and programs will help buffer our salmon populations from the impacts of a changing climate.

And I believe that by supporting our salmon this way we are supporting the cultures, economies, and ecosystems that are sustained by salmon.

I hope a clear picture is emerging of the prominent role local governments play in preparing for climate change impacts and moving our salmon toward our goal of harvestable, sustainable populations.

I would add that we need to ensure that our habitat actions are integrated with harvest and hatchery actions in the context of present and future climate change.

I visited with the Pacific Salmon Commission in February and suggested that managers of the "Hs" come together to develop an integrated strategy for climate change.

This need still exists. Given the international, regional and local implications of not preparing our salmon-dependent ecosystems, cultures and economies for climate change, we are duty bound to take action.

We need focused dialog across national and state boundaries, among all levels of government, and in our watersheds. And we need it to lead to action. Time is of the essence.

[Closing]
A willingness to try new ways and to take these challenges head-on puts King County in the position as a living lab of innovation and a model for local governments not only in Washington state, but around the nation and beyond.

We're ready to take on new challenges, to do more and to accomplish more in the battle against global warming.

Related information

• Fall for Salmon brochure (1.97MB PDF)