Op-Ed: The Orca Whales Didn't Hire Toby Thaler
“This plan will literally pave over orca recovery efforts.”
So said Jennifer Godfrey, Seattle Symphony bassist and founder of Orca Nexus, in a January press release opposing the Seattle Comprehensive Plan — the city’s 20-year housing growth framework, now fully adopted and in effect. Godfrey has spent the better part of a year in court trying to force the City back to the drawing board on its environmental review, arguing that new housing will remove trees, increase impervious surface, generate stormwater runoff, and ultimately harm the 74 remaining Southern Resident killer whales.
She is not wrong that impervious surfaces are killing salmon and threatening orcas. She is wrong about which ones.
If Godfrey and her coalition are genuinely concerned about runoff entering Seattle’s watersheds, there is a policy agenda available to them that does not require blocking 112,000 housing units. It would mandate permeable pavement for any surface parking lot undergoing resurfacing, require retrofit on lots above a certain acreage, and phase in replacement across the city’s hundreds of identified surface parking parcels — the ones generating tire and brake particulate runoff into the drainage system with every rain event, right now, today, before any new apartments can be built. Unlike existing roads and parking lots, new apartment buildings are required to provide stormwater retention on site.
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https://www.theurbanist.org/op-ed-the-orca-whales-didnt-hire-toby-thaler/