Washington’s 2023 legislative session starts January 9, and continues for 105 days.

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John,

Washington’s 2023 legislative session starts January 9, and continues for 105 days. With this longer working period that occurs in odd-numbered years, the Environmental Priorities Coalition has even more time to continue fighting for people and the environment. This year, our coalition of more than 26 statewide organizations will prioritize climate action, land use, salmon recovery, and waste reduction.

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The work we do together this year will move Washington closer to a future in which both communities and ecosystems thrive. With the mounting impacts of climate change, salmon on the brink of extinction, land use planning underway, and plastic littering our environment, we need bold action during the upcoming legislative session.

To meet the moment, the Environmental Priorities Coalition’s four priorities for 2023 are:

Investing in Climate Action

The climate crisis means we need to cut pollution fast and while investing wisely to expand clean energy solutions as quickly as possible. In early 2023, Washington State will begin generating revenue from The Climate Commitment Act, our comprehensive, economy-wide carbon reduction program. Our Legislature must make smart investments in climate solutions that cut pollution and transition communities to a clean and equitable economy at the speed and the scale required to align with climate science. This session, the Legislature will start making the largest investments in clean energy, air quality, natural resource resiliency, and benefits to tribal nations and overburdened communities in state history. It is critical for our legislators to invest these funds equitably and strategically to provide the greatest benefits to all Washington residents.

Investing in Salmon Habitat

Salmon runs continue to dwindle throughout the state – across the Columbia Basin, throughout southwest Washington, and around the Puget Sound region. Fortunately, experts know what it takes to protect and improve habitat for salmon: preserving streamside vegetation to keep water cool, decreasing stormwater and sewage pollution, removing or avoiding fish passage barriers like dams and culverts, maintaining healthy nearshore and estuarine areas. However, every year, lack of funding stalls most locally-vetted, and regionally-prioritized, salmon recovery projects. For the past several budget cycles, only 15 percent of the need has been funded. Now is the time to right-size salmon investments for the future.

Planning for a Climate Friendly Future

Planning for a Climate Friendly Future requires the largest and fastest-growing counties and cities within them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled through land use planning. It requires all counties planning under the Growth Management Act (GMA) to plan for resilience and to address the impacts of climate change in land use plans. In addition, it updates the transportation element of the GMA by incorporating transit and bike/pedestrian planning.

The Washington Recycling And Packaging Act

(The WRAP Act)

In this state, more than 50 percent of our consumer packaging and paper goes to landfills, rather than being recycled. Across the planet, plastic waste litters our shorelines and open spaces. It is time to modernize our recycling system, to reduce packaging and to decrease plastic pollution. The WRAP Act tackles these problems by creating a set of graduated fees on packaging manufacturers based on the recyclability/sustainability of their packaging. The funding generated from this fee will then be used to fund our recycling system in Washington, including improvements in infrastructure, uniform access to recycling for residents across the state, and a harmonized list of what people can recycle. Recycling and reuse targets will be set. This bill will have the added benefit of shifting the costs for the recycling system from ratepayers to the manufacturers that have created the problem.

You will get more information on opportunities to take action in support of these priorities in the next few weeks. We’ve got lots to do in the coming months. Join in these important efforts by clicking here. [[link removed]]

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Onward,

-Darcy Nonemacher

Government Affairs Director

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