Like many climate activists in Washington, I was dismayed when the legislature last year allowed the clock run out on HB 1099, a bill that would have updated the Growth Management Act to accommodate, among other things, the impacts of the climate crisis. The bill had wide support from environmental activists, housing reform advocates, and other organizations, including 350 Spokane. 

Almost a year later—after yet another blazing summer, abnormally warm autumn, and precipitous winter—a version of 1099 has been reintroduced in the form of HB 1181 in the House, SB 5203 in the Senate. 

Described in its title as a bill for “improving the state’s response to climate change by updating the state’s planning framework,” HB 1181 would tackle housing, climate resiliency, and greenhouse gas reduction simultaneously, through the lens of urban growth. As an update to the 1990 Growth Management Act, the bill is one more acknowledgement that our goals for a sustainable future need to balance two key factors: mitigating the damage climate change will cause, and reducing the emissions that will make climate change worse. 

The GMA requires “local governments in fast-growing and densely populated counties to develop and adopt comprehensive plans” to adequately provide infrastructure—housing, roads, retail development, and (ugh) parking—for growing populations. Through growth management services, this has the potential to be one of the most effective tools the state has for improving the quality of life in numerous sectors in Washington. 

The proposed update in HB 1181 would provide funding for counties and municipalities to meet specific goals for reducing pollution (including CO2 emissions) and adapting to extreme weather events, such as the heat dome Washington experienced in 2021 and the increased risk of flooding from heavier rainfall. 

Spokane stands to gain from increased funding for climate resiliency and the guidance of specific objectives related to climate change. We already know that resiliency will only become costlier if state planning fails to drastically reduce emissions in all sectors (transportation, construction, material production), and at the same time, we are no longer in a position to simply reduce emissions without planning for the extreme weather events that those emissions have already exacerbated. 

HB 1181 is a good model, then, for the type of legislation we need going forward, legislation that builds resiliency at the local level and mandates a reduction in CO2 emissions through tangible goals, localized goals, such as housing and development. 

Like its predecessor bill, this year’s proposed update has a broad coalition of support from the ground up. Like its predecessor, HB 1181 could make it very far in the legislature and die at the last minute. Much of the support last year rode the waves of Futurewise’s WACan’tWait campaign, and yet the legislature let Washington wait another year before trying to take this crucial step forward. 

Washington cannot wait another year. We simply do not have the capacity to handle the whiplash of heatwaves, failed harvests, road closures, power outages—the list goes on, and will get bigger. 

Right now, HB 1181 is scheduled for a public hearing in the House Committee on Local Government, on January 17 at 10:30 AM. This will hopefully be the first step in its quick progress to the governor’s desk. But, as we learned last year, we cannot rely on hope alone if we want this bill to pass. 

Once more, now is the time to provide public comment in favor of HB 1181. Now is the time to write your legislators and urge them not to make the same mistake they made last year, to tell them how much we lost in the year we waited. Write early, write often. Do what you can to keep your representatives’ offices flooded with messages, calls, postcards, letters, in support of climate resiliency in the Growth Management Act.