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The Port Star • One of the Smallest Ports in the State• Logs are the only export; fracking

materials are the only import• Losing Money on $5 million of public

funding• Mandate is county economic development

but return on investment is terrible economically, ecologically, and socially

• Olympia cannot compete with other Ports

• Only export of logs has grown 600% over the past decade

• Imports down 250% over the past 10 years • Proppants support fracking

• Port funding from the public is $5million; making up s 1.5% of our property tax; or about $40 or a median household

• Losses on marine terminal -40% this past year

The Empire Sprawls Back• Thurston has sprawled tremendously in the past 50

years and continues to do so• Sprawl makes sustainable development more difficult:

habitat fragmentation, congestion, car dependency, etc.

• 3-D rendering of Olympia landcover, looking southeast to Mt. Adams

• New Sprawl between 2001 and 2011 in red and pink; existing sprawl footprint in grey; existing urban footprint in black; undeveloped areas in green are “up for grabs” – sprawl, habitat, or food?

• It is possible to measure density improvements per city, county, or state; and ask “how would density need to improve to accommodate new population without increasing sprawl footprint?” the answer for Washington State is —10 fold the background improvements of the past 10 years…the three lines above are scenarios based on present trajectories

• Considering loss rate of landcover, time to loss can be calculated; here each line shows 20 years changes relative to 1992 levels; barren (grey) and grassland (light blue) is logging activity; orange is urban; forest (yellow), wetlands (dark blue), and ice snow (brown) are declining

Weyerhauser the Hut • With other timber interests owns

2/3rds of the watershed• Logging is 1% of Washington

State Exports; 0.3% of Thurston County Jobs

• Loss of forest cover affects climate resilience in terms of flooding, fire, and habitat

• Loss of forest from 2001 to 2011 in red; trajectories on proportional or constant decline curves on the right

• Zoom of same data around Olympia; 3D rendering (lower right) looking south on Olympia’s watershed shows logging on steep slopes and impervious surfaces in black

Private Timberland,

65.3%Public

Timber-land, 11.6%

Household, single family units; 7.0%

Open Space, 5.0%

Other; 3.7%

Undeveloped land; 3.5%

Agriculture, 2.5%

Other Residential, 1.4% Parks; 0.5%

Who owns the watershed? Total Area of Parcels by Zoning Des-

ignation

• Ownership of land in the watershed by category on the left; timberlands for logging are in orange

• 1992-2001 forestry activity in the Deschutes watershed; the graph on the left shows loss (left bar) and regrowth (right bar)

• 2001-2011 forestry activities in the Deschutes watershed; the graph on the left shows loss (left bar) and regrowth (right bar); generously including intermediary stage “shrub/scrub”; logging intensity has increased in the past ten years!

2011 Value 2012 Value 2013 Value 2014 Value0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000China

Destinations for Washington State Exports (mm$)

ChinaOtherCanadaJapanUnited Arab EmiratesUnited KingdomKorea, SouthMexicoTaiwanQatarIndonesiaRussiaIndiaGermanyHong KongThailandSingaporeAustraliaTurkeyKenyaPhilippinesChileMalaysia

CIVILIAN AIRCRAFT, ENGINES, AND PARTS

53%

Other21%

SOYBEANS, NESOI6%

PETROL OIL BITUM MINERAL (NT CRUD) ETC NT BIO

3%

PASS VEH SPK-IG INT COM RCPR P ENG >1500 NOV

2%

WHEAT AND MESLIN, NESOI2%

CORN (MAIZE), OTHER THAN SEED CORN

2%

LT OILS, PREPS GT=70% PE-TROLEUM/BITUM NT BIOD

1%

CONIFEROUS WOOD IN THE ROUGH, NOT TREATED

1%

AIRPLANE & OT A/C, UNLADEN WEIGHT > 15,000 KG

1%

APPLES, FRESH1%

ULTRASONIC SCANNING AP-PARATUS

1%

POTATOES, PREPARED ETC., NO VINEGAR ETC., FRO1%

FLOURS AND MEALS OF SOYBEANS1%

SILICON CONTAIN BY WT NT < 99.99% OF SIL-ICON1%

FORAGE PRODUCTS NESOI (HAY, CLOVER, VETCHES,

1%DIAMONDS, NONINDUSTRIAL, WORKED

0%FERROUS WASTE & SCRAP NESOI

0%

PASS VEH SPK-IG INT COM RCPR P ENG > 3000 CC0%

ALUMINUM ALLOY RECT PLATES ETC, OVER .2 MM TH

0%CHERRIES, FRESH, NESOI

0%

MLK & CRM,CNTD,SWT,POWDR,GRAN/

SOLIDS,NOV 1.5%0%

CONIFEROUS WOOD SAWN, SLICED ETC, OVER 6 MM T

0%

SELF-PROPELLED WORKS TRUCKS AND FORKLIFTS, NE

0%

NONELECTRICAL ARTICLES OF GRAPHITE OR CARBON

0%

PETROLEUM COKE, CALCINED0%

Value of Timber as an Export of Washington State

A New Hope: The Rebellion

• Protect Critical Areas• Restoration• Zoning• Conservation Acquisitions • Public Funding• Participatory GIS/Digital

Democracy/Public Governance

17%

Percent of Wa-tershed that is "Protected or Public" Land

• Relative strength in terms of land protections and limitations on development given Nisqually NWR, Capitol Forest, and Joint Base Lewis McChord; what other ecosystem should be strategically protected?

• Park acquisition strategy can be anthropocentric (left) where we see “park deserts” where dense populations (red) outside of a sensible walking distance buffer (light green) from public lands (green); or an ecological priority approach (right) where undeveloped land next to protected ecosystems can be identified

• Thurston County has been able to implement very generous wetland protection buffers

• This analysis shows low occupancy parking areas in relation to parks or protected areas; American cities are 20-30% parking lots by area; check out Depave in Portland for successful efforts to convert impervious surfaces to gardens and green spaces

• Restoration on Nisqually NWR shows the extension of healing into the land

• The map on the left shows how willing a survey sample of residents would be to pay for climate change action on the county level (blue is $120+, keep in mind light green is Port of Olympia level funding). Size of the pie indicates relative population size of the zipcode area (light blue border)

• The pie graph on the right shows a survey of water utility customers in regards to what is most important issue in the management of Capitol Lake/Estuary from 1999

• Does the governance of our city and county reflect our values? Do leaders truly listen? • Research by Princeton University (upper right) showed that laws and regulations are more likely to pass if economic

elites support them, whereas the general public’s opinion has NO EFFECT on policy outcomes

Return of the Jedi: Growing Food on Endor• Conserve Farmland

• Garden

• Promote Good Practices

• Buying local food provides new farming jobs and is an investment against sprawl

• Enable new capacity in local food: processing, storage, incentives for farming from a labor or land use standpoint

• The map on the left shows in red high quality farmland under development pressure; the map on the right shows relatively strong county-sourced food sales in dark blue and blue

• Olympia has one of the strongest local food systems in the country

• GIS agriculture data tends to catalog monocrops (in green and yellow), whereas many local producers exist on land not zoned as agriculture that retains ecosystem diversity (wetlands, forests, grasslands); farms that are supported by local food purchases tend to implement ecologically friendly practices while retaining significant forest and wetland cover

Land Composition of “Local Food” Parcels

(Parcels selected from Thurston County Farm Map addresses, selected parcels used to “clip” land cover)

18.5%Forest9.0%Wetland6.2%Grassland

33.7%“Natural Landcovers” (sum of grassland, wetland, forest)

7.0%Cultivated Crops34.6%Pasture/Hay

• Utopian (and dystopian) scenarios can be modeled (left) and community action by address and date can be cataloged and visualized (right)-here all of the Garden Raised Urban Bounty gardens established over 8 years

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