Category Archives: Out of initial committee – Senate 2023

SB5688

SB5688 – Creating programs selling carbon offsets and other ecosystem services based on state and local government lands. (NTIB?)
Prime Sponsor – Senator Lovelett (D; 40th District; Anacortes) (Co-Sponsors Nguyen, Hunt, Liias, Rolfes, and Saldaña – Ds) (By request of the Department of Natural Resources.)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology February 10th, and passed out of committee February 17th. Referred to Ways and Means.
Next step would be – Still in Ways and Means at the fiscal cutoff. (May be NTIB.)
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
HB1789 is a different version of this bill, also requested by DNR. They have the same provisions for DNR’s activities. This bill also requires Ecology to create a program to help agencies and local governments develop carbon offset programs. That bill has a much more expansive findings section, and different definitions of “ecosystems services” and “ecosystem service marketplace” though it’s not clear to me that the differences have any practical significance.

Summary –
The bill would require the Department of Ecology to create a program to help agencies and local government develop carbon offset programs for lands they manage, including funding or technical assistance to assess projects’ technical feasibility, investment requirements, development and operational costs, expected returns, administrative and legal hurdles, risks, and pitfalls.

It would authorize the Department of Natural Resources to enter into contracts for up to 125 years based on providing ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and storage, air and water filtration, climate stabilization, disturbance mitigation, pollination, pest and disease control, waste decomposition and detoxification, and nutrient from land it manages. DNR could sell voluntary or compliance credits directly through established marketplaces, or contract with project developers or brokers to handle that, including paying them for determining projects’ feasibility; negotiating payments with an ecosystem service marketplace; and marketing and selling credits on one.

The Board of Natural Resources would develop rules for these contracts and set minumum payments covering periods of at least three months for them; it might also choose to set an actual price based on current markets. DNR would be required to report to the Board about each signed contract, including its term and projected revenues. (The bill says the Board could delegate its authority to approve “any credit sales that the Board is required by law to approve” to the Commissioner of Public Lands, but what sales those would be isn’t clear to me.)

Revenues from the sale of credits would be distributed to the Forest Development Account, the Aquatic Lands Enhancement Account, counties, and school districts in the same way that revenues from forests and aquatic lands are currently distributed.

SB5579

SB5579 – Allows Ecology to stop enforcing requirements for reducing hydrofluorcarbon emissions if supply chain problems might impair state businesses or consumers.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Braun (R; 20th District; Cowlitz & Lewis County) (Co-sponsor Lynda Wilson – R)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology February 14th. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee February 17th. Referred to Ways and Means.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Substitute –
This would authorize Ecology to grant variances from the requirements in these situations rather than allowing the department to simply stop enforcing them.

Summary –
The bill would allow Ecology to stop enforcing the current requirements for reducing hydrofluorcarbon emissions if it determined that supply chain problems or similar
disruptions threatened to impair businesses or consumers in the state, and that suspending enforcement of a requirement would mitigate the problem.

SB5509

SB5509 – Creating a Washington State public infrastructure bank.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Kuderer (D; 21st District; Bellevue) (Co-Sponsor Lovelett – D)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Business, Financial Services Gaming & Trade January 31st. Amended to change the bank’s capitalization from an appropriation to a five year loan from the State and passed out of committee February 16th.
Next step would be –
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would create a State infrastructure bank once that had been capitalized with sufficient State or Federal funds to allow it to issue competitive loans and various legal processes had been completed, including the approval of its organization by the local and tribal governments becoming members. The bank would be governed by an operating board of nine directors, serving without reimbursement; five of them would be elected local or tribal government officials chosen by those governments, three would be appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate, and the State Treasurer would be a director. The Board would hire a salaried executive director, and the bank’s administration and operations would be carried out by the State Treasurer’s Office.

The bank would be authorized to engage in a lot of typical business activities, including buying and selling property, acquiring insurance, and issuing bonds (on its own behalf, not as State debt.) The State Treasurer and local or tribal governments would be authorized to invest in these bonds, in addition to private parties. The bank would make loans to state or local or tribal governments for infrastructure and economic development projects, and could collect fees or chargers it decided would help accomplish its activities from its member governments. (It would have a goal of providing 30% of its annual lending to support housing in low to moderate-income areas after it had been operating for five years.) The actual bill doesn’t list examples, but its findings list projects for the planning, acquisition, construction, repair, replacement, rehabilitation, or improvement of streets and roads, bridges, water systems, storm and sanitary sewage systems, solid waste handling, communications systems, housing, and other public infrastructure and economic development projects. The bank could provide technical or financing assistance to state, local and tribal governments for helping to implement their financing programs, and it could distribute surplus funds to them if two-thirds of the Board approved. It could enter into agreements with other banks, including the National Cooperative Bank, or trust companies, to deal with its obligations relative to these bonds, or any matters relating to the exercise of its powers.

The bill would include the bank’s financial, commercial, and proprietary information in the current exemptions from disclosure in the Public Records Act

SB5380

SB5380 – Consolidating and streamlining the siting of clean energy projects.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Nguyen (D; 34th District; White Center)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology  January 24th. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee February 10th. Referred to Ways and Means.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1216 is a companion bill in the House.

Substitute –
There’s a three page staff summary of the substitute’s changes at the beginning of it.

Summary –
The bill would create an Interagency Clean Energy Siting Coordinating Council, co-chaired by the Departments of Commerce and Ecology, with participation by a long list of agencies. The chairs would assign staff in each agency to lead the Council’s work and provide ongoing updates to the Governor and appropriate committees of the Legislature. The Council would identify actions to improve siting and permitting of projects for wind and solar energy, transmission, green electrolytic and renewable hydrogen, alternative jet fuels, battery and pumped storage of clean energy, and the manufacturing of clean energy products. Its work would include a through review of the recommendations of the 2022 Low Carbon Energy Facility Siting Improvement Study, creating implementation plans and timelines, and making recommendations for needed funding or policy changes. The Council would also track Federal efforts to improve clean energy project siting and permitting, including potential Federal funding; identify agency actions to improve coordination across state, local, and federal processes or to pursue supportive funding; conduct outreach to parties with interests in clean energy siting and permitting for ongoing input on how to improve agency processes and actions; and establish work groups as needed to focus on specific energy types or specific geographies for project siting. It might create advisory committees to inform this work; it would support the creation and annual updating by the Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs of a list of contacts at tribes and tribal preferences regarding outreach about clean energy project siting and permitting. It would provide an annual report to the Governor and appropriate committees of the Legislature summarizing progress on efficient, effective, and responsible siting and permitting of clean energy projects; areas of additional work; resource needs; and any needed policy changes.

The Council would also advise Commerce on contracting with an independent third party to evaluate state agency siting and permitting processes and related Federal and state requirements; identify successful models for siting and permitting projects in other states; develop recommendations for improving these processes, including potential policy changes and funding; and report on the evaluation and recommendations by July 1, 2024. The Council would develop a consolidated clean energy application similar to the joint aquatic resources permit application for at least the state permits for clean energy projects, and would explore developing a consolidated permit for them. Ecology would lead these efforts, with updates on them to the Governor and Legislature due by July 1, 2024. It would engage with Federal agencies and local governments to explore including various applications or permits in consolidated versions. It would be authorized to design a single application for multiple clean energy project types, separate applications for individual clean energy technologies, or an application for related resources. A consolidated permit process would have to identify criteria or conditions that had to be met for projects to use it, and Ecology would be authorized to analyze those conditions as part of a nonproject review.

The bill would create a way for applicants to apply to Commerce for designation as a clean energy project of statewide significance, and would have Ecology implement and assist with a fully coordinated permitting process for those as an alternative to applying for expedited permitting through the State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. Applications for the designation would have to include an explanation of how the project is expected to contribute to the state’s achievement of its greenhouse gas emission limits, and is consistent with the State Energy Strategy. They’d also need an explanation of any contribution it’s expected to make to other state requirements for clean energy and greenhouse gas emissions; an explanation of how it’s expected to contribute to the state’s economic development goals; a plan for meaningful engagement with tribes having interests on or near the site; a description of potential community benefits and impacts from the project, a plan for meaningful community engagement in its development, and an explanation of how the applicant might use a legal document specifying the benefits the developer agrees to fund or furnish in exchange for community support of a project. Commerce would approve or deny a one-time application for a project, assessing whether it provided the explanations above, had sufficient need for coordinated state assistance, had been reviewed through a nonproject environmental review process, or a least-conflict siting process for pumped solar that the bill establishes, and was consistent with the recommendations of those; and considering its anticipated positive or adverse impacts on environmental and public health. The department would have to consider information in an application demonstrating meaningful tribal outreach and engagement “favorably” in deciding whether to approve it.

Designated clean energy project of statewide significance would be assigned a Commerce staff navigator to assist with the initial project assessment and with the coordinated permitting process, if the project proponent chose to use that. The navigator would also convene appropriate partners from state and local government, private entities, nongovernmental organizations, and others to support successful completion of the project; and work with each of those to expedite their actions in moving the project forward.

Ecology would manage the coordinated permitting process. (The proponent of a designated project who chose to use this would have to reimburse the department for the costs of supporting its permitting.) It would conduct an initial assessment of the amount of coordination each project needed, considering its complexity, size, and the experience of those involved. It would address the expected type of environmental review; the anticipated state and local permits, approvals, forms and requirements; information needs and issues of concern of each participating agency; time required for the SEPA review and permit decisions by each participating agency given the greatest possible efficiencies achievable through any concurrent studies and with any consolidated applications, hearings, and comment periods. This would have to be provided to the proponent and the public within sixty days. Ecology would also ensure the proponent had been informed of all information needed to apply for permits; facilitate communication between proponents and staff to promote timely permit decisions and adherence to agreed schedules; verify completion of administrative review and permit procedures among agencies; assist in resolving any conflict or inconsistency among permit requirements and conditions; consult with potentially affected tribes and potentially affected overburdened communities according to the bill’s requirements; and coordinate with jurisdictions to assist with fulfilling their local permitting requirements. The Department would convene a work plan meeting for the project with the other parties relevant to its permitting, reviewing permitting processes and estimating timelines, with full attention to achieving the maximum efficiencies possible. It would create and maintain a shared coordinated permitting process schedule; parties would have to notify Ecology of the reasons for any delays and offer potential solutions or an amended timeline.

The bill requires early, meaningful, and individual consultation by Ecology with any affected tribe on a variety of potential project impacts on rights or resources, independent of and in addition to, any public participation process required by state law or a state agency. The department would also be required to identify overburdened communities that might be affected by a designated project participating in the process, and to verify that they’d been meaningfully engaged in a timely manner by participating agencies, and that their comments had been considered in determining potential impacts.

Counties and cities with designated clean energy projects of statewide significance in their jurisdictions would be required to enter into an agreement with Ecology and the project proponents for expediting the completion of projects. They’d have to expedite processing of permits for the project’s design and construction; environmental review; and requests for needed street, right-of-way, or easement vacations. They’d have to make local officials or planning staff available to serve on the navigator’s team to move the project forward; develop and follow a plan for consultation with potentially affected tribes; and carry out any other actions Ecology identified as needed for the coordinated permitting process. Local governments would not be allowed to require these applicants for these electrical energy projects to demonstrate their necessity or utility, other than as part of the public information required by Federal agencies as part of some applications.

The bill would have the WSU Energy Program conduct a least-conflict pumped storage siting process for the state, including ample opportunities for self-identified stakeholders to participate, to identify areas where there’s the least amount of conflict about sites. (It might include considering the colocation of pumped storage with wind or solar energy generation.) The project would develop a public map and associated GIS data layers by June 30th, 2025, highlighting those areas; it would not include any information tribes identified as sensitive, though that would be used to inform the project.

Ecology would be required to develop nonproject environmental impact statements, in consultation with various stakeholders, on the probable significant adverse environmental impacts of green electrolytic or renewable hydrogen projects, and of solar projects in the Columbia Basin. These would include related mitigation measures. Proponents of such projects would have to incorporate these impact analyses in a coordinated project-level review process, and the lead agency conducting a project-level environmental review of one of those would have to adopt that nonproject impact statement to identify and mitigate project-level probable significant impacts, “where appropriate.” However, the agency would also have to review and update that analysis, if that were needed, and would have to address any probable significant impacts that were not analyzed in the nonproject statement and identify any avoidance, minimization, and mitigation measures specific to the project for those impacts.

SB5322

SB5322 – Requiring environmental and labor reporting on materials for public building construction and renovation.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Wellman (D; 41st District; Mercer Island) (Co-Sponsors Hasegawa, Keiser, Valdez, Claire Wilson – Ds)
(By request of the Department of Commerce.)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on State Government & Elections January 27th, and passed out of committee that day. Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology January 31st. Replaced by a substitute making some minor changes and passed out of committee February 10th. Referred to Ways & Means, and had a hearing there on February 22nd.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1282 is a companion bill in the House.

Comments –
This is a somewhat revised version of Senator Stanford’s SB5366, which was introduced in 2021 and then in 2022 as a companion bill to Representative Duerr’s bills in those sessions, but wasn’t heard.

Substitute –
There’s a staff summary of the minor changes in the substitute at the beginning of it.

Summary –
The bill would require public institutions of higher educations’ and state agencies’ contracts for construction and renovation projects to require reports of environmental information by cost of certain construction materials for buildings over 50,000 sq.ft., and additional information about labor standards in producing the materials for buildings over 100,000 sq ft. It would cover structural concrete, reinforcing and structural steel, and engineered wood products; they’d be due before substantial completion of a project. Firms that were selected for projects would have to provide data on quantities of covered products, current environmental product declarations for at least 90% of the value of those; any completed health product declarations; manufacturers’ names and locations; any supplier codes of conduct, and any certifications of firms by the Office of Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises. They’d have to ask their suppliers of each covered product in the larger projects for the names and locations of the actual production facilities and a specified report on working conditions for all employees at those, or the steps taken to reasonably obtain that data. (However, they wouldn’t be required to verify any information provided by suppliers, and they’d be exempted from requesting information about working conditions that would cause a significant delay in completion, a significant increase in overall project cost, or result in only one supplier being able to provide the product.)

By July 1, 2024, specifications for a project contract would only be allowed to include performance-based specifications for structural concrete unless that wasn’t practicable. The bill would continue the public database of provided data that was funded in the 2021-2023 budget, and publish the global warming potentials reported in the environmental product declarations. Commerce would have to further elaborate covered product definitions; develop measurement and reporting standards to ensure that data was consistent and comparable; as well as creating model language for specifications, bid documents, and contracts to support the implementation of the reporting requirements. The department would also produce an educational brief providing an overview of embodied carbon; describing the appropriate use of environmental product declarations, including the preconditions needed for them to be comparable; outlining reporting standards, including covered product definitions, standards for reporting quantities, and working conditions; describing the data collection and reporting required by the bill; providing instructions for the use of the database; and listing applicable product category rules for covered products.

If funds were appropriated for it, the Department of Commerce would be authorized to provide financial assistance to small businesses to help offset the costs of producing environmental product declarations and reducing embodied carbon in the built environment, while ensuring they weren’t put at a competitive disadvantage in state contracting as a result of the bill’s requirements.

It would require Commerce to convene a Buy Clean and Buy Fair workgroup with representatives from a specified list of stakeholders to identify opportunities for and barriers to growing the use and production of low carbon materials, promoting high labor standards in manufacturing, and preserving and expanding low carbon materials manufacturing in the state. The group would consider state and domestic supply of raw materials and other supply chain challenges, regulatory barriers, competitiveness of local and domestic manufacturers, costs, and data availability from local, state, national, and foreign product suppliers. It would identify opportunities to encourage the continued conversion to lower carbon cements. By September 2025, it would submit a report on policy recommendations to the Legislature and the Governor. The report would summarize data collected through the bill and other previous projects, make recommendations for improving environmental production declaration data quality and for ways of mitigating Scope 2 emissions through green power purchases, identify barriers and opportunities to the effective use of the database and collected data, and survey the regulatory landscape to identify areas of alignment and discrepancy between local, state, federal, and private policy on embodied carbon and identify opportunities to promote consistency across policies, rules, and regulations.

SB5247

SB5247 – Creating a Washington Climate Corps and evaluating climate and energy transition workforce needs.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Nobles (D; 28th District; Fircrest) (Co-Sponsors Saldaña, Lovelett, Randall, Shewmake – Ds) (By request of the Governor.)
Current status – Passed out of the Senate Committee on State Government & Elections January 13th; had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Higher Education & Workforce Development January 18th; passed out February 1st. Referred to Senate Ways and Means.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1176 is a companion bill in the House.

Summary –
The bill would establish a Washington Climate Corps to provide climate-related service opportunities for young adults and veterans, with the objective of building low-carbon and climate-resilient communities and ecosystems while providing education, workforce development, and career pathways to service members. It would be administered by Serve Washington, which also manages the Americorps program, with administrative support from OFM, and would prioritize service in  overburdened communities. It would develop new service opportunities, and establish common requirements for participating service programs. In coordination with a range of stakeholders, it would develop and run a program for Climate Corps members during their service to provide leadership training, foster environmental stewardship and civic engagement, and expose them to climate related professional and educational opportunities. It would administer grants to support equitable access to participation in the Corps, reduce the cost of hosting members for service programs in the network, and support the development of new programs in geographic and topical areas that lack them.

The bill would have the Washington State Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board establish a clean energy technology advisory committee to evaluate clean energy technology workforce needs and make recommendations to the Governor and Legislature. It would review workforce and business issues in the energy sector and its supply chain, and the impacts of the transition to clean energy on dependent sectors. It would recommend strategies to prevent workforce displacement, support job creation in clean energy technology, and provide support in dealing with workforce changes to businesses and adversely impacted workers. (The bill isn’t explicit, but apparently the Board would select the committee members from all interested parties, but including business and worker representatives from sectors affected by the transition.)

Each biennium, the Board would evaluate the workforce impact of Washington’s climate policies in consultation with the the advisory committee, the Department of Commerce, and Employment Security. It would do a literature review, in addition to its own research, on labor market trends and workforce demand in traditional and clean energy professions; demographics of the sectors; restructuring of jobs and skill sets associated with climate change mitigation policies; the wages and benefits of jobs in clean energy and the skills needed in them, an analysis of how the skills and training of the existing workforce can fill those needs; additional workforce development needs; and challenges that could emerge under multiple future decarbonization scenarios.

It would also make recommendations each biennium for necessary steps to support workforce training for clean energy technology occupations, consulting with postsecondary training partners, and considering the occupational training and skills already covered in existing programs; new skills that could be integrated into those; occupations and skill sets that require developing new programs; and resources needed to deliver training programs and support workers in the transition to clean energy technology.

The board would conduct a study of the feasibility of a program to preserve income and benefits for workers close to retirement who face job loss or transition because of energy technology sector changes. It would report at least every two years to the Governor and committees of the Legislature with recommendations on how the state can support worker and employer needs in response to changing workforce requirements for clean energy technology, including the recommendations of the advisory committee and the Board’s own work.

(The bill would also repeal the legislation establishing several earlier programs about workforce development in green industries.)

SB5203

SB5203 – Updating planning requirements to improve the State’s climate response.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Lovelett (D; 40th District; Anacortes) (Co-Sponsor Liias – D) (By request of the Governor.)
Current status – Had a hearing on a substitute in the Senate Committee on Local Government, January 17th. Replaced by a new substitute and passed out of committee February 9th; referred to Ways and Means.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1181 is a companion bill in the House.

Substitute –
There’s a staff report on the substitute which was heard in committee.The changes in the substitute which was voted out of committee are summarized by staff in a couple of pages at the beginning of it.

Summary –

The bill would add a climate change and resiliency goal to the fourteen others that are to guide the development of comprehensive plans, and have that also apply to the countywide planning process and regional transportation planning. The new goal would have planning adapt to and mitigate the effects of a changing climate; support reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and per capita vehicle miles traveled; prepare for climate impact scenarios; foster resiliency to climate impacts and natural hazards; protect and enhance environmental, economic, and human health and safety; and advance environmental justice. The bill would add consideration of climate impacts to shoreline master planning. However, jurisdictions would not be obliged to comply with these amendments until the state had provided funding for that.

It would specify that the land use element of comprehensive plans must give special consideration to achieving environmental justice in its goals and policies, including efforts to avoid creating or worsening environmental health disparities; should consider using approaches that reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled; must reduce and mitigate the risk to lives and property posed by wildfires with measures like reducing residential development pressure in the wildland urban interface area, creating open space buffers between development and wildfire prone landscapes, and protecting existing development through community preparedness and fire adaptation.

It would expand the kinds of transit routes that should have level of service standards to help to achieve environmental justice goals, and expand transportation forecasts to include multimodal and rural demand. It expands language about bicycles and pedestrians to include other forms of active transportation. It would prohibit denying approval to a development that failed to meet traffic level of service standards if its transportation needs might be met through improvements for active transportation, enhanced public transportation, ride-sharing programs, demand management, or other strategies funded by the development.

It would require comprehensive plans to include a climate change and resiliency element designed to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions, enhance resiliency, and avoid the adverse impacts of climate change. This would have to include efforts to reduce local emissions and avoid creating or worsening local climate impacts on vulnerable populations and overburdened communities. Countries with over 100,000 people or specified densities or growth rates and planning under the Growth Management Act would be required to include a greenhouse gas emissions reduction subelement, and other jurisdictions would be encouraged to. The resiliency subelement would be required for all jurisdictions planning under the GMA and encouraged for others. These required updates would have to be part of the 2024 planning cycle.

The Department of Commerce, in collaboration with various other agencies, would publish guidelines specifying a set of measures counties and cities could take through updates to their comprehensive plans and development regulations that have a demonstrated ability to increase housing capacity within urban growth areas, reduce emissions, or reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled, allowing for consideration of the emissions reductions achieved through the adoption of statewide programs, and prioritizing reductions in overburdened communities. The bill would exempt from SEPA appeals the adoption of ordinances, amendments to comprehensive plans or development regulations, and other nonproject actions taken to implement measures for reducing emissions or per capita miles traveled that were in the department’s guidelines.

The emissions reduction subelement and related development regulations would have to identify the actions the jurisdiction will take, in accordance with Commerce’s guidelines, to:
1) Reduce transportation and land use emissions within the jurisdiction without increasing them elsewhere in the state;
2) Reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled within the jurisdiction without increasing emissions elsewhere in the state; and,
3) Prioritize reductions in overburdened communities to maximize the combined benefits of reduced air pollution and environmental justice.
Actions that weren’t specifically identified in the guidelines could only be considered to be consistent with them if they were projected to achieve reductions in emissions or per capita vehicle miles traveled equivalent to what would be required under the guidelines, and if they were supported by scientifically credible projections. Jurisdictions would not be allowed to restrict population growth or limit population allocation to achieve the requirements. The guidelines could not include road usage charges, or regulations and taxes on transportation service providers, delivery vehicles, or passenger vehicles.

The resiliency subelement would be required to equitably enhance resiliency to climate change in human communities and ecological systems, and avoid or substantially reduce its adverse impacts through goals, policies, and programs consistent with the best available science and scientifically credible climate projections. It would have to prioritize actions in overburdened communities that will disproportionately suffer from environmental impacts and be most impacted by natural hazards due to climate change. Its goals, policies, and programs would have to include those designed to:
1) Identify, protect, and enhance natural areas and areas of vital habitat for safe passage and species migration to foster resiliency to climate impacts;
2) Identify, protect, and enhance community resiliency to impacts, including social, economic, and built factors that support adaptation consistent with environmental justice; and,
3) Address natural hazards created or aggravated by climate change, including sea level rise, landslides, flooding, drought, heat, smoke, wildfire, and other effects of changes to temperature and precipitation.
Jurisdictions might adopt an existing natural hazard mitigation plan by reference if it met the bill’s requirements, or modify one to do that, and might apply to the Department for an extension of the deadlines to do that. In collaboration with tribes and various agencies, the department would develop a model climate change and resiliency element that could be used by jurisdictions in developing the required plans and policies.

The bill includes provisions for public comment on these subelements, for review and approval of them by the department, and for appeals. The bill would add the presence of overburdened communities to the department’s priorities for providing planning assistance, and require it to establish funding levels for grants to community-based organizations to advance participation of vulnerable populations and overburdened communities in planning.

The bill would require the Department of Ecology to update its guidelines to require shoreline master programs to address the impact of sea level rise and increased storm severity on people, property, shoreline natural resources, and the environment. It would require flood control management plans to include consideration of climate change impacts, including the impacts of sea level rise and increased storm severity.

SB5039

SB5039 – Requires utility planning for wildfire risks and identification of best management practices.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Rolfes (D; 23rd District; Kitsap County)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology January 11th. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee February 7th. Referred to Ways and Means, and scheduled for a hearing there at 1:30 PM on Wednesday February 22nd.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB1032 is a companion bill in the House.

Summary –
Requires each electric utility to create a wildfire management plan by October 31, 2024 and update it every three years. An independent consultant selected by the State Energy Office after consultation with stakeholders and the public would develop the format for the plans and a list of recommended actions to be included in them, including best practice guidance for those actions. Each utility’s plan would include a review of its specific circumstances and incorporate the appropriate identified actions from the list; abutting utilities could develop collaborative plans. Private utilities’ plans would be reviewed by the Utilities and Transportation Commission and public utilities’ would be reviewed by their governing boards, in consultation with various other agencies. Reviewers would provide feedback to the utilities, but as I read the bill, it doesn’t quite require their approval of the plans. (They’re to “confirm” whether it contains the appropriate recommended actions.)  The bill also disclaims any State responsibility for subsequent problems.)

The consultant’s list is to include actions related to:
(a) Vegetation management along transmission and distribution lines and near associated equipment;
(b) Infrastructure inspection and maintenance repair activities, schedules, and record keeping;
(c) Modifications or upgrades to facilities and construction of new facilities to incorporate cost-effective measures to minimize fire risk;
(d) Preventative programs, including adoption of new technologies to harden utility infrastructure;
(e) Operational procedures;
(f) Identification of appropriate widths for vegetation management and rights-of-way, including the consideration of fire-resistant vegetation alternatives;
(g) Protocols for disabling reclosers and deenergizing portions of the electric system along with associated communication plans for impacted parties and the public, including highly impacted communities, vulnerable populations, and persons reliant on electricity to maintain necessary life functions; and
(h) Public and interested parties’ engagement and communication plans addressing wildfire safety and risk mitigation.

Each electric utility’s protocols have to include plans for mitigating the public safety impacts of deenergizing portions of the system, considering the impacts on critical first responders, local and tribal governments, health and communication infrastructure, and those populations at increased risk. Decisions about whether or not to shut down parts of the system are reserved to the utilities.