Risks of wildfire, earthquake, flooding, saltwater inundation threaten water supply, agriculture, transportation, safety
Drought and sea-level rise are some of biggest natural dangers facing Skagit, Whatcom and San Juan counties today, according to their respective vulnerability assessments, but each community will see its own challenges — such as water supply and limited roadways on the islands, reduced crop production in Skagit and an excess of wildfire kindling in Whatcom.
As part of the comprehensive state planning process due this year, House Bill 1181 mandates that counties must now incorporate climate-related hazard assessments.
The comprehensive plan, required under the Growth Management Act, contains long-range policies, visions and goals for each community. It is intended as the centerpiece guide to county decision-making, codes and day-to-day actions.
Each county must draft a Climate Action Plan to provide implementation strategies for the climate element of the comprehensive plan. In coming months, the counties will continue reviewing the plan to ensure consistency with the expected population and employment projections for the next 20 years.
Skagit County Commissioner Joe Woodmansee says the process of prioritizing assets for the comprehensive plan is not as simple as it may seem.
“I don’t really know what assets we’re really trying to protect,” he said at a recent board meeting. “Whether it’s mom and pop’s house that’s been there for 100 years or if it’s the old river bottom that used to be where mom and pop’s house is.”
To Heidi Rous, climate director with the consulting firm Kimley-Horn, which did Skagit’s analysis, those are the “very hard and personal choices that it may come to.”
Drought and wildfire
In Skagit County, fisheries and reservoirs are the assets most vulnerable to drought. Drought episodes have lasted more than a single season several times in the last century, most recently in 2015.
More drought means more fires. Drought also reduces available habitat, impacting flow velocity and water depth which will affect generations of fish life cycles. Half of the county’s streams are expected to decrease by an average of 40% in the next 25 years.
Multiple types of threats can produce seemingly contradictory solutions. Skagit County Commissioner Angela Day noted that tree planting is encouraged to mitigate “heat islands,” or disproportionately hot urban areas, while keeping brush and trees away from homes is part of creating “firewise” properties.
“How do we balance risks like that?” she asked.
Michael Feerer, founder of the Whatcom Million Trees Project, a nonprofit organization planting and protecting trees in Whatcom County has an answer.
It’s not about fewer trees, he told Salish Current; it’s about managing them.
“When you look at the recent wildfires that can get down in California and Hawai‘i, all the headline kind of fires, you’ll see occasional articles of the home that just looks virtually untouched and everything around it is all burnt,” he said. “That’s because, it’s been shown again and again, it had nothing to do with trees around them or anything. It had to do with the simple low-cost hardening steps that really any homeowner can take.”
In Whatcom County, fires scorching 20 acres or more occur every 5-10 years on average mostly in the east side of the county. In the Chuckanut Mountains, the average is every 40. This is expected to increase in the coming decades.
One way to see the increased fire danger is by following the money. Statewide, according to a communications officer, the Department of National Resources estimates it will spend $221.3 million on wildfire suppression this year, with costs going up annually. By the 2050s, summers are predicted to be 6.6 degrees hotter than its baseline of 68 degrees, and 11 degrees by 2100.
Urban areas are also at risk. For example, Feerer calls the Sehome Arboretum a “disaster waiting to happen.”
“If there is a major wildfire event up close, in other words, not way out in the Cascades, but somewhere closer to town, it’s a potentially huge problem, because those hot embers can blow up to one or two miles away… Not only is it just the houses that are along the edge of the Arboretum that are at risk, a lot of Bellingham is at risk.”
Historical trends show a 1.3-degree temperature increase since 1895 in San Juan County, with a much faster rise predicted over the coming decades.
Unlike Whatcom and Skagit, San Juan County sits in a rain shadow and on distinctive bedrock with steep terrain, meaning limited water resources, according to Washington Water Science Center. Already, 77% of the islands are considered abnormally dry compared to historical precipitation levels. By 2050, estimates say San Juan County will see 13% less rain and 16% less by 2080.
Despite this, San Juan has seen a downward trend in wildfires since 1970. Typically fewer than 50 acres burned per year due to community efforts, prescribed burns and geography, according to the San Juan County Community Wildfire Protection Plan. With the increasing drought, this trend will likely reverse.
Skagit especially will see decreased snowpack in the springtime, which can lead to delayed crop production. Reduced snowpack also decreases water supply to reservoirs that provide electricity and water to the county.
Drier land and higher seas
Whatcom researchers say adapting to sea-level rise will be one of the defining challenges of the century. Sea levels in the Salish Sea have risen 0.12 feet between 1930 and 2024, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, and have a 50% estimated likelihood of exceeding .7 feet by 2050 and 2.1 feet by 2100. This rise is influenced by various factors, including ice melting from glaciers and ice sheets and thermal expansion of water. In Skagit, with its extensive coastal lowlands, sea-level rise poses a major threat to farms, fisheries, rivers, preserves, fire stations, railroads and reservoirs. Increased temperature, salinity and tidal height in critical estuaries will drastically impact the productivity of salmon and other aquatic species. Smolt, for example, could see an annual loss of 211,000–530,000.
Increased sea levels will also inundate BNSF’s gas and petroleum pipelines where they come out of the Chuckanuts into the flatlands west of Mount Vernon. Prevention tactics like dikes or levees, drainage channels and floodgates can mitigate or postpone these effects.
Currently in Whatcom County, 133 buildings are identified as at risk of flooding during king tides, and 1,977 will flood during a 100-year coastal event. That 100-year cycle is expected to shrink to every 20 years in 2040–2060 and to occur yearly by 2080–2100. Birch Bay and Sandy Point are the most vulnerable areas.
Haxton Way, a major route to Gooseberry Point for the Lummi Nation and Whatcom County’s Lummi Island Ferry, already floods between Kwina Road and Slater Road during king tides under existing conditions.
With another 0.8 feet of sea-level rise, Slater Road west of Haxton Way begins to flood with king tides. With 3.3 feet of sea-level rise, both Slater Road and Haxton Way flood by more than a foot of water. With 6.6 feet of sea-level rise, 77.3 miles of county roads are vulnerable during the 100-year coastal storm.
In San Juan, wastewater systems, especially aging septic systems, are at high risk of inundation and failure, with some ongoing efforts to improve infrastructure inspection and maintenance. Costly water supply alternatives highlight the need for greater focus on building water resilience.
While efforts are underway to identify alternative driving routes to ones threatened by sea-level rise, private land ownership is a significant challenge to finding alternatives to possible disruptions of goods and emergency response.
Roads at greatest risk include Nelson Lane and Shoreland Drive on Lopez Island; Afterglow Drive, Avenida de Oro, Turn Point Road, Myers Road, Warbass Way, Killdeer Lane, Cape Drive and Marine Lane on San Juan Island; Broken Point Road and Neck Point Road on Shaw Island; and Gibson Road, Obstruction Pass Road, Waterfront Way and Beach Haven Road on Orcas Island.
A 2013 study by Coastal Geologic Services, Inc. estimated that 69 structures in the San Juans are located below the highest observed water levels to date, which puts them at risk for flooding. A 2024 study identified between 490 and 1,431 structures at risk of annual flooding in the mid-and long-term predictions. Many at-risk structures are residential, with other vulnerable buildings including boat houses, hangars and net sheds. Similarly to Whatcom, no schools or hospitals are identified within high-risk areas for sea-level rise.
Thousands of feet of stormwater ditches and pipes and tens of thousands of feet of stormwater flowlines are exposed to sea-level rise risk.
Groundwater aquifers are further at-risk of saltwater intrusion from rising sea levels contaminating water sources. Lopez Island’s geology creates the highest potential for seawater intrusion, and it is also more dependent on groundwater than San Juan or Orcas.
Solutions
While it’s easy to get caught in “eco-grief,” as Feerer calls it, he said that “one of the best antidotes to spare and grief and sadness about climate or environmental impacts that we’re all facing now in the dire headlines is to get involved hands on in local positive climate action.”
The Pacific Northwest is full of nonprofit actors striving to make change, he said, like the Whatcom Land Trust and Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association.
“We get, at work parties, people coming up to us all the time afterward saying, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so glad I came out to do this. I feel like I’m doing something instead of waiting for politicians to make some kind of right decision to do something so you know people can take charge with their own hands and feet,’ and that’s very uplifting and empowering,” he said.
The next century will be punctuated with goals of enhancing community preparedness and emergency response, integrating climate projections into land use and development planning, improving transportation reliability and ensuring long-term water security through conservation.
“Things are getting dire,” Feerer said, “but if the focus is on what we can do right here locally, that really helps a lot, because as we face more and more climate issues, our resiliency as a community is super important.”
— By Sam Fletcher
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Commentary: What’s next for the environment in Northwest Washington?” Nov. 13, 2024
• “How islands respond to threat of climate change,” Oct. 7, 2024
• “Storm-battered county road target of relocation efforts,” May 2, 2024
• “After the flood: still rebuilding amid uncertainty, anxiety — and community,” Nov. 17, 2022