Commentary: As we brace ourselves for attacks on core federal protections for our water, air and health, we also have unique opportunities to deploy environmental solutions at the state level.
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As the 2025 Washington state legislative session commences, elected representatives are tasked with setting spending priorities for the next two years amid a $10 billion-dollar state budget shortfall. At the same time, they must address a host of pressing issues facing their constituents, chief among them a funding crisis threatening public education, housing and affordability, and looming environmental and climate concerns.
Fortunately, Washingtonians overwhelmingly voted to preserve the Climate Commitment Act (CCA), and with it billions of dollars of revenue from climate polluters to go toward projects across the state that slash carbon emissions and build climate resilience.
It’s worth reminding ourselves, and our elected leaders, that climate change is neither a far-off issue nor one that exists in isolation.
The threats posed to our region by climate impacts are multifaceted. Floods, storms, droughts, wildfires and heat waves stress everything from infrastructure to housing to utility bills to food production and prices to the ability for kids to learn. In the same way, climate solutions and investments in resilience funded by the CCA can address multiple societal concerns simultaneously.
Watersheds, forests and education
In Washington, these issues are intertwined thanks to a mid-20th century approach to funding public education that directed a portion of timber revenue from state trust lands toward school construction projects.
Whatcom County has embraced climate resilience as a goal and recognizes that mature forest protection is one of the best ways to preserve what we already have in these natural systems. Updating the funding mechanism to better address the near-term needs of local beneficiaries like Mount Baker School District would alleviate tensions that can arise when communities are asked to choose between better near-term revenue for schools and the myriad benefits of conserving mature forests.
A $2 billion public education package is up for consideration. This funding package would move K–12 public schools toward being fully funded, taking pressure off of the Department of Natural Resources to provide timber revenues to fill gaps in school operating budgets (a use for which common school funds were never intended).
A proposed prescribed fire claims fund would use CCA dollars to support prescribed fire and cultural burning to reduce wildfire risk. The fund is modeled on a similar Oregon program set up to reduce steep financial barriers to insuring and implementing more “good fire” management through prescribed burn and cultural burn projects.
Planning, development and climate action
Planning and development project permitting processes are two seemingly mundane avenues through which enduring racial inequities and injustices can either be perpetuated or remedied.
The Cumulative Risk Burden (CuRB) Pollution Act, which seeks to integrate environmental justice considerations into certain project decisions, is back on the docket in 2025. Climate justice group Front and Centered explains, “Under current laws, the process that permits businesses to pollute is not required to consider the effects of our history of environmental racism and the cumulative health risk and burden the most impacted communities face.”
Slashing pollution and waste, protecting the Salish Sea
Recycling in Washington is at a crossroads. Regional buyers of recycled goods are calling it quits and individuals are frustrated by inconsistent recycling protocols and a growing sense that much of what they try to recycle ends up landfilled anyway.
The Recycling Reform Act (House Bill 1150) would require packaging and paper product companies and brands to fund our recycling system. If passed, the legislation would bring consistent and accessible recycling to all state residents. It would also incentivize companies to reduce packaging and excess waste, and create education programs to reduce confusion.
Beyond trash, the state can also address water pollution from sewage. Legislation is being put forward that would establish a public-facing database with maps and records of sewage spills, allowing the public to learn about potentially dangerous spills ahead of when on-site postings happen.
In communities like Bellingham, Anacortes and Mount Vernon, climate-driven increases the frequency and severity of high rain events will translate to an increase in combined sewage overflow events, where stormwater and wastewater systems combine when overwhelmed and send stormwater containing untreated sewage into open waters where people fish, swim, work and play.
In addition to effluent, many wastewater treatment facilities across our state also produce biosolids, a waste product often repurposed as a fertilizer for croplands and gardens. Senate Bill 5033 will initiate a testing program for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals,” in the biosolids that are produced in the state.
A recent EPA risk assessment found that soils containing 1 ppb of PFAS could pose an unacceptable risk to human health, and multiple states have investigated the landspreading of biosolids after farmers have attributed contaminated wells, dead cattle and crop failures to PFAS. The bill isn’t perfect, but would be a crucial first step in understanding how contaminated Washington’s biosolids are and where PFAS may be concentrated. It may also provide insight into the quality of our food and crops grown on land where biosolids have been routinely spread.
— Contributed by Jay Kosa
Also read in Salish Current:
“Washingtonians will make their voices heard on climate change on Election Day,” Oct. 30, 2024
“How islands respond to threats of climate change,” Oct. 7, 2024
“Bellingham strives to protect trees on public, private land,” July 24, 2024
“Storm-battered county road on Lopez target of relocation efforts,” May 2, 2024
“Making charcoal as a first step to facing climate change,” June 2, 2023
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