Contact Electeds

Read below for suggested emails to electeds and other outreach opportunities.

Frequently Used Contact Info

City of SeaTac : Mayor Mohamed Egal, Deputy Mayor Iris Guzman, and Councilmembers Peter Kwon, James Lovell, Senayet Negusse, Jake Simpson, and Joe Vinson

megal@seatacwa.gov, iguzman@seatacwa.gov, pkwon@seatacwa.gov, lovell@seatacwa.gov, snegusse@seatacwa.gov, jsimpson@seatacwa.gov, jvinson@seatacwa.gov

Port of Seattle: Commission President Sam Cho, Vice President Hamdi Mohamed, and Commissioners Ryan Calkins, Fred Felleman, and Toshiko Hasegawa

calkins.r@portseattle.org, cho.s@portseattle.org, felleman.f@portseattle.org, Hasegawa.t@portseattle.org, Mohamed.h@portseattle.org, commission-public-records@portseattle.org, EnvironmentSEA@portseattle.org, metruck.s@portseattle.org

SUGGESTED ACTIONS

AUGUST 2024

Update, Sept 2024: Thank you Defenders! SeaTac’s City Council received your 79 emails supporting their decisive action to protect North SeaTac Park and the Council voted to take strong action. Read more in our September newsletter HERE.

SeaTac’s City Council is deciding whether to take action on a provision in the 2024 FAA Reauthorization Act that can simplify protection of North SeaTac Park. View the City’s related slide presentation here. This park is now owned by the Port of Seattle and is zoned commercial aviation. The Defenders urge the City Council to act decisively on this important opportunity.

Please consider emailing the Council, if possible, before 2PM on August 13th, to urge their action on this matter. Suggested text is below for you to use or adapt. If you can send the email by that time, direct it to publiccomment@seatacwa.gov.

If you write after that time, you can send your message directly to the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Councilmembers: jsimpson@seatacwa.gov, snegusse@seatacwa.gov, megal@seatacwa.gov,iguzman@seatacwa.gov, pkwon@seatacwa.gov, jlovell@seatacwa.gov, jvinson@seatacwa.gov .

You can also attend this meeting by zoom or in person. To do so, sign up by 2PM. More information is here.

Suggested email:

Dear Mayor Egal, Deputy Mayor Guzman, and Councilmembers Kwon, Lovell, Negusse, Simpson, and Vinson,

Thank you for standing up for North SeaTac Park.

The Council is now deliberating on whether to act on a provision in the 2024 FAA Reauthorization Act that offers a potential pathway for permanently protecting the park. I strongly urge you to prioritize this opportunity.

[Consider adding something here about how the park is important to you personally]

Action on the FAA provision must be complete before it expires, in 2028. This may seem long enough to allow for delay on this matter. But it is not. The needed research, negotiations, planning, and search for funding alone could take longer. Other City priorities, for example, a proposed $120 million Civic Center, compete for limited staff time and funds.

The park is zoned for commercial development. Its forest and waterways face intense and rapidly intensifying ecological and development pressures. Plans are now underway to expand the airport all around it, including cargo warehouses, parking lots, roads, and other facilities. There are even recommendations for industrial development within park boundaries.

And, although the City has secured grants and made significant investments to protect and restore the park's forest, large areas, especially in its southern portion, remain in decline. Needed restoration is unlikely to happen as long as the park is zoned for commercial development. Tub Lake Bog, one of the last remaining peat moss bogs in King County, is at especially high risk. Loss of the buffer forest in the park around this bog could mean the loss of the bog itself.

For five decades, multiple government agencies have published plans and proposals to protect this park - from the 1975 SeaTac Communities Plan to the 2020 City of SeaTac Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Plan. It is past time to fulfill this promise! Your dedicated work has brought us to the brink of achieving this. Please don’t stop now.

Please secure this major legacy and this treasure for future generations. Thank you for listening and for your action to protect this park.

Sincerely,

June 2024

The Port of Seattle has finalized a Land Stewardship Plan that fails to stop the expected removal of dozens of acres of health-protecting trees in the densely-populated neighborhoods adjacent to SeaTac International Airport. Please let them know what you think! Our suggestion:

calkins.r@portseattle.org, Cho.s@portseattle.org, felleman.f@portseattle.org, Hasegawa.t@portseattle.org, Mohamed.h@portseattle.org, commission-public-records@portseattle.org, EnvironmentSEA@portseattle.org, metruck.s@portseattle.org
CC: info@treeactionseattle.com, info@defendersofhighlineforest.org

Dear Port of Seattle Aviation Environmental Information officials, Executive Director Metruck, Commission President Cho, Vice President Mohamed, and Commissioners Calkins, Felleman, and Hasegawa,

Your final Land Stewardship Plan (LSP), released to the public in April 2024, fails to protect dozens of acres of health-protecting forest in our neighborhoods near homes, schools, businesses, and places of worship. *

In nearly 100 letters to your agency during the comment period on this plan, including this letter from Defenders of Highline Forest, community members called on the Port to amend the LSP to protect these areas of community forest. In addition, over 3,700 community members have signed the Community Forest Consensus, making the same call.

And yet, despite this input, you have not only failed to revise the LSP to protect this forest*, but you have also failed to even acknowledge that we have called on you to do this. Your April 17th presentation on the finalized LSP includes no mention of our calls to you to protect this forest.

Clearly, you are not listening.

The positive elements of the LSP are overshadowed by your Sustainable Airport Master Plan (SAMP) proposals to replace large areas of health-protecting areas of forest in neighborhoods in Riverton Park, SW Seattle, and near North SeaTac Park with new sources of industrial pollution like cargo warehouses, parking lots, and roads. The public money you invest to tout the positive elements of the LSP may position you to more easily deflect public criticism of the SAMP deforestation proposals. But no rhetoric can make up for your failure to heed longstanding and frequent community calls to save the neighborhood forest that protects our health. No rhetoric can lessen the reality of the devastating impact your deforestation proposals represent.

Research establishes that our tree canopy protects us from deadly aviation pollution.
Tree canopy in SeaTac, where these proposals are sited, is is already among the sparsest in the county. And the health of people in those communities is already among the most vulnerable in the county, largely due to the presence of the airport.
Replacing this forest with additional polluting sources fundamentally conflicts with the Port’s stated aim for its Land Stewardship Plan, to “address environmental justice, improve environmental health, increase climate resilience, and improve habitat for fish and wildlife.”
Replacing forest with warehouses and even more traffic fundamentally conflicts with the Port’s commitment to “reduce sprawl” and restore forests

Please revisit the LSP. The map in Figure 16 categorizes large areas of forested land in our neighborhoods (forest now proposed for destruction in the SAMP), as as “not of ecological use”. Please re-categorize this land to recognize its high value for both ecology and human health. Please amend your April 17th presentation on the LSP to reflect the significant public calls you have received to protect this forest.

Thank you,

*In both its draft and final version, the map in Figure 16 categorizes most forested land in the near-airport community as not of “ecological use.” This ecologically ‘useless’ land includes an estimated 110+ acres of mostly-forested land in densely-populated areas that the Port’s SAMP recommends to be replaced with cargo warehouses and other industrial airport expansion. Impacted neighborhoods include Riverton Heights, Southwest SeaTac, the neighborhood just south of SeaTac Park, and 55 acres within SeaTac Park itself.