PORT TOWNSEND — The city of Port Townsend continued to refine its plan for resilience in the face of mounting climate risks in a council workshop this week.
“Seasonal drought, increasing fire risk, wildfire smoke from surrounding areas, more intense rainstorms, and occasional flooding are becoming more frequent and severe,” the draft climate resilience element of this year’s comprehensive plan reads. “Its coastal setting also exposes Port Townsend to a range of climate-related hazards, including coastal erosion, storm surges, and sea level rise. Seasonal temperature variations, dependence on mountain snowpack for water, the city’s limited access routes for moving people and goods, and geographic isolation as a peninsula at the end of a peninsula, also play significant roles in shaping its climate risk profile.”
In August, the Climate Action Committee (CAC) passed the draft to go before the city planning commission and eventually the city council.
The CAC is a joint committee between the city of Port Townsend and Jefferson County. It is composed of representatives from each, along with representatives from Jefferson Transit, Jefferson Healthcare, Port Townsend Paper Company, the Port of Port Townsend, Jefferson County PUD and the community at large.
The comprehensive plan, set to finalize before the end of the year, will cast the vision of Port Townsend and provide a roadmap for policy decisions over the next 20 years.
“Throughout the entire (comprehensive plan) engagement process, climate resilience has been probably the most consistent thing we’ve heard about,” said Adrian Smith, the city’s long-range planner who presented draft revisions Monday. “People don’t always agree on how we want to become a resilient community, but everyone knows that it’s one of their top priorities.”
Washington state’s House Bill 1181, passed in 2023, mandates the inclusion of a climate resilience element for jurisdictions planning under the Growth Management Act (GMA).
Port Townsend, which plans under GMA, is required to identify and plan for climate-exacerbated natural hazards, conduct a climate vulnerability assessment to evaluate how people, infrastructure and ecosystems are affected, and adopt climate resilience goals, policies and strategies to increase resiliency and reduce risk, according to the draft.
The city also is required to do so in a way that takes equity into consideration and involves the insight of communities most vulnerable to climate change in planning processes.
The draft notes that state guidance makes a distinction between climate resilience and climate mitigation. Resilience is focused on adaptation whereas mitigation is focused on prevention or minimization, according to the draft.
“Port Townsend alone cannot change the course of climate change,” the draft reads. “The Comprehensive Plan still has climate policy directing the city to lessen or control the extent to which Port Townsend’s activities and investments contribute to climate change.”
Port Townsend isn’t a large enough jurisdiction to have a devoted greenhouse gas emissions element, per state population requirements and funding, Smith said.
“That puts communities in Port Townsend size in a little bit of a difficult situation, because we’re not scoped or funded to have a climate greenhouse gas emissions reduction element,” Smith said.
Still, Port Townsend will continue having emission reduction goals in its implementation element, Smith said.
“That’s been the case since the ’90s,” Smith said. “Port Townsend was ahead of the curve on that. We’re actually updating them to reflect the latest emission reductions that were set by the (CAC) and then adopted by both Jefferson County and the city of Port Townsend.”
The draft outlines steps for the city, including reducing or managing vehicle miles traveled, encouraging non-motorized transportation, and increasing its urban tree canopy to mitigate heat island impacts.
The introduction to the draft has been rewritten based on feedback from the planning commission, underlining a need to express the urgency of climate change, Smith said.
“To really try to connect not just to the vision of Port Townsend as a beautiful place in the future but as a place that survives,” Smith said.
To read the draft climate resilience element, go to tinyurl.com/dx47m2ca.
________
Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.
