Our accomplishments - and the road ahead
During over three years of organizing and outreach, Defenders of Highline Forest and community members we have worked with have made a real difference.
In 2021, our petition led to the withdrawal of a proposal for an 11-acre airport employee parking lot in North SeaTac Park
In spring, 2021, founding members of Defenders of Highline Forest launched a petition calling on the Port of Seattle to withdraw a proposal from its Sustainable Airport Master Plan (SAMP) to replace 11 acres of trees in North SeaTac Park with an airport employee parking lot. Over 2,400 community members signed the petition, several media outlets covered the issue, and, in August, the Port of Seattle announced that it had removed that proposal from the SAMP.
Soon after, we learned that the Port proposes much more deforestation for our community The Port’s SAMP and its Real Estate Strategic Plan recommend replacing an estimated 110 acres of cooling and air-cleaning trees in communities near the airport with parking lots, warehouses, and other industrial structures. That’s an area roughly equivalent to 100 football fields. More than a quarter of it would be inside North SeaTac Park. See the details on that here.
Losing this amount of forest would be extremely harmful to the health and welfare of residents - let alone wildlife. So we got back to organizing and created the Community Forest Consensus.
The Community Forest Consensus, now signed by over 3,700 community members, is an effective education and organizing tool
The Consensus calls for permanent protection of the entirety of North SeaTac Park and a moratorium on destruction of forest on publicly-owned land within two miles of SeaTac Airport until there’s a comprehensive plan in place to ensure an adequate level of healthy tree canopy for residents.
The document links to research showing that airport noise and pollution cause residents to live shorter and sicker lives and are implicated in higher rates of many harmful health impacts, including asthma, cancer, strokes, underweight and premature births, and childhood learning problems. And it links to research establishing that adequate tree canopy offers critically important protection against this pollution.
Through factsheets, flyers distributed at events and door to door, community meetings and online events, presentations to community groups and conferences, outreach to media, presence at Port and other public meetings, hundreds of emails, letters and postcards sent to Port and other officials, we have made it clear that the Port must live up to the environmental justice values it espouses. Again and again, for example, we have called on the Port to live up to the Letter of Commitment it signed as part of the King County - Cities Climate Collaboration to reduce sprawl and protect and restore forests.
Our consistent outreach to elected officials was likely responsible for inclusion of an amendment in this year’s FAA reauthorization law that - if the Port chooses to act - provides an easier path to protecting North SeaTac Park
A line item in this year’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill offers the Port of Seattle, which owns the land, an uncomplicated pathway to either temporarily protect the park by leasing it for recreational use for up to 10 years - or to permanently protect it by transferring to a local government for that purpose. The local government would be the City of SeaTac, which has been leasing the park from the Port.
We have Rep. Adam Smith to thank for getting this language into the law. Following passage of the FAA Reauthorization Act, the Congressman released a statement which included these words acknowledging your advocacy: “I believe this reauthorization takes meaningful steps to enhance engagement between the FAA and residents in these communities and tackle the health, environmental, and quality of life impacts of aviation noise and emissions. I applaud the local leaders and organizations whose tireless advocacy helps advance this important work.”