What are we defending?
Trees protect people from pollution that harms health and shortens lives near SeaTac Airport. Public Health Seattle & King County has documented this connection and recommends increasing green space and trees here to protect residents.
The Port of Seattle knows of these findings. It also knows that trees protect residents from deadly climate change impacts, having committed, for that reason, to restoring forests and reducing sprawl.
Then why do its plans include recommendations to replace an estimated 110 acres of forest (an area of about 100 football fields) with even more heat and pollution-generating industrial development in neighborhoods within two miles of the airport?
Community plans from the 1970s and 80s show that most of this land was set aside for parks and nature preserves in order to buffer residents from airport impacts after airport expansion made thousands of homes and entire neighborhoods uninhabitable. North SeaTac Park had especially protected status and was created, according to the FAA, “to compensate area residents for cumulative airport impacts.” (Photo by Karen Nicol)
A critical public health task for our region - saving the towering old trees of the Highline forest, restoring its canopy to levels healthy for people and wildlife, and ensuring its survival through future droughts and heat - is not yet on this region’s public policy agenda. Let’s put it there.
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