King County prepares to face extreme heat as climate warming worsens

As the summer winds down, the weather cools and overcast clouds creep in once again, King County’s Executive Climate Office (ECO) has a new focus: combating extreme heat. The office unveiled its five-year extreme heat mitigation plan at a press conference on July 18 at Glendale Forest, a new urban green space in unincorporated North Highline. The creators and implementers of the plan intend to work year-round to ensure communities in King County are better equipped to face extreme heat as it becomes an increasingly frequent reality for summers in the Pacific Northwest.

The plan includes 20 actions under six categories, ranging from designing cities and buildings for heat to increasing urban tree canopy cover. It specifically focuses on lower-income communities, as King County data showed that temperatures in these neighborhoods can reach 20 degrees higher than other parts of the county on the same day.

In determining which actions to include in the plan, the ECO organized a wide-ranging community engagement effort to understand the needs of King County residents in relation to extreme heat. The actions in the plan are variable, something Danniya Iyaz, heat mitigation strategy specialist for the ECO, said reflects the diverse set of needs voiced through the office’s community engagement.

“That’s one thing we quickly found out about extreme heat, and honestly, just climate in general: It really is not a one-size-fits-all solution,” Iyaz said. “And we also recognize that communities are coming from different places. Not everybody has the same starting point, so a big part of our actions is to provide … this portfolio of solutions that people can engage with where they’re interested.”

Ben Jones, digital and communications director of 350 Seattle, spoke to the strength of having a countywide approach as opposed to responsibility resting solely on municipalities.

“Many people who work in Seattle live outside of the city limits in greater King County, and so a whole-county approach … allows for partnerships between municipalities, and it allows [the county] to leverage more of those resources toward the infrastructure that’s closer to the scale of what we need to address extreme heat,” Jones said.

When it comes to unhoused communities, the plan includes an action to work with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) and local service providers to increase and sustain funding for the distribution of cool kits during extreme heat events. Other relevant actions include improving access to and the quality of cooling centers. The plan also includes language about working with communities to create cooling spaces in places people already frequent, such as schools and religious institutions.

While Jones agrees that cool kits are important resources, he believes the plan falls short in providing permanent solutions.

“Yes, you can have kits for our unhoused population, and that shows a humane response, [but] you could have houses,” Jones said. “Community resilience is like an ecosystem in that it takes time. It takes people who want to stay in one place being able to do that for generations, and housing is a huge part of that. And so while I understand that’s outside of the scope of [the plan], I think as an aspirational goal, having housing more central as part of the solution to extreme heat was a missed opportunity.”

Tony Machacha, who is the community capacity manager at KCRHA and was involved in the community engagement phase of the plan, explained that, given both the scope of the plan and the perspectives voiced by people experiencing homelessness, the actions aimed to cover what would have the most immediate impact for people spending most of their time outside.

“In the time we had and for the objectives we were focusing on, I think we were really put to the task of focusing on how to mitigate the effects of extreme heat in the immediate term and in the long term where people were, in the environment they were in,” Machacha said. “So we dug a lot more into that, which is why we talked a lot about the cool kits. Get the water, get the ice, get the cooling towels out there right now.”

For longer-term solutions to extreme heat, the plan includes actions to address the design and resilience of cities in the face of climate change. This includes increasing access to and affordability of air conditioning, integrating passive cooling into building design and creating playgrounds and parks that can serve as oases during heat events. Iyaz noted no solution is perfect, which is why the plan aims to include many different types of actions that can work together to create climate-resilient communities.

“Air conditioning is a lifesaving measure, and it is really important to get those to people that need them. … But I think one thing people are recognizing, too, is that balance where, while it is really important to get air conditioning to people, it also is furthering greenhouse gas emissions,” Iyaz said. “Which is why it’s important to pair it with other things, like when we talk about cool kits … or when we’re talking about building codes or energy codes.”

Jones also pointed out the plan’s lack of addressing fossil fuel reliance, which is something he believes is a root cause of extreme heat.

“There’s no way that we get out of climate change until we are sunsetting fossil fuels [and] the fossil fuel economy,” Jones said. “And so we are not on the path toward addressing the root cause of extreme heat if we are not also addressing fossil fuel consumption.”

Iyaz hopes the actions laid out in the plan will have ripple effects leading to more, unintended positive change.

“A lot of actions that focus around equity and climate, I feel like they have these co-benefits that feed off each other, in the sense that if we work on some of these around extreme heat, like increasing access to green spaces … I feel like there are some co-benefits that come with public health,” Iyaz said. “So I think all this exists within the larger ecosystem, and I’m hoping that as we develop this implementation plan, that’s something that we can coordinate with and really make climate planning a lot more holistic.”

The ECO is currently creating its implementation plan to determine what specific steps need to be taken to complete the 20 actions within five years. While it is early in the process, Machacha is hopeful for the collective effort that this plan will inevitably be.

“We’ve been working on severe weather in the last three years, and everybody in the county is very collaborative and cooperative,” Machacha said. “All the jurisdictions have been coming to us saying, ‘What can we do to work together to get people into safety, to get people out of harm’s way?’ I don’t think that’s going to change.”