Jennifer Godfrey sat within the viewers at Benaroya Corridor watching two younger ladies she had coached play classical bass. Whereas the strains of Copland, Mozart and Haydn stuffed the corridor that day in February 2025, she was distracted and troubled.
On her telephone, she furiously checked incoming environmental appeals contesting the largest proposed reshaping of Seattle within the metropolis’s fashionable historical past.
A musician with the Seattle Symphony, Godfrey is a self-described science nerd. And what she learn within the tons of of paperwork ready for the One Seattle Complete Plan left her anxious about the way forward for bushes, streams, salmon and orca.
And so, on the final minute — on her telephone — she appealed the Last Environmental Influence Assertion to town listening to examiner final 12 months. Along with her telephone dying, she then known as the Listening to Examiner’s Workplace to ensure she correctly paid the required $85 payment.
“It was like throwing spaghetti on the wall. I simply thought, ‘What phrases do I must put in in order that no less than I get the proper issues on the desk?’ Actually, I assumed I might simply stroll away and anyone else goes to file a greater enchantment than me. I can simply peace out and the individuals who know what they’re doing can be fantastic.”
What occurred subsequent highlights some darkish truths concerning the present state of environmentalism round right here.
As a substitute of Seattle as a sort of ecotopia, metropolis leaders and state legislators successfully rendered it a spot the place the issues that made it nice within the first place — bushes, water, birds and fish, to be shared and loved by all — are devalued.
Attorneys for Seattle not too long ago argued in courtroom that constructing new housing trumps all different issues and impacts. Within the metropolis’s view, nobody has the flexibility to even query whether or not environmental critiques adequately seize the true impacts of constructing exponentially extra housing — on the setting, gentrification or anything.
That argument relies on measures handed by the Legislature in recent times to filter challenges to constructing tasks. Whether or not that standpoint wins the day can be decided by the state Courtroom of Appeals, which is at present contemplating Godfrey’s case.
However irrespective of the courtroom’s determination, the story doesn’t finish there. And in relation to the stability between new housing and bushes, salmon and orca, it possible received’t finish properly.
Let’s start this story in 2005 with the itemizing of the southern resident killer whale as an endangered species, a transfer unsuccessfully challenged by the Constructing Business Affiliation of Washington.
The orcas are threatened by an absence of salmon, vessel noise and toxin runoff sloughed off from shore. Stormwater air pollution, together with tire particles and pesticides, poses a direct menace to each the whales and their salmon prey.
What helps clear polluted water? Timber, the bigger the higher.
Which brings us to a quickly altering Seattle.
In January 2025, town Workplace of Planning & Neighborhood Improvement launched the final environmental review on then-Mayor Bruce Harrell’s One Seattle Complete Plan, a progress technique touted as accommodating greater than 330,000 new properties.
On the final day of a two-week enchantment interval, whereas watching her college students carry out at Benaroya Corridor, Godfrey tapped out her objections.
The evaluation didn’t adequately think about the southern resident killer whales or observe the federal authorities’s restoration efforts, she contended.
“There is no such thing as a plan to guard and retain probably the most highly effective bio-remediators and bio-retainers, giant bushes, from growth, and there’s no different listed that may adequately substitute the polluted stormwater filtration at present carried out by giant bushes,” she wrote.
Godfrey may appear an odd individual to be the protagonist in such a authorized combat. She is just not well-known in environmental circles. The truth is, she recalled, it was by likelihood that somebody she knew within the symphony related her with a famous whale professional who talked about the notion of an enchantment.
On the time, the native environmental group was drained and demoralized and divided. Nobody wished to tackle the complete metropolis authorities, to not point out incurring the moment catcalls as a NIMBY.
“That has been stated quite a lot of occasions,” Godfrey advised me, rejecting the assertion. “What is sweet for orcas is sweet for folks. Clear water advantages all people.”
On April 11 final 12 months, town listening to examiner tossed out Godfrey’s enchantment, citing legal guidelines handed by the Legislature in recent times to stave off challenges to new housing.
With the assistance of legal professional Toby Thaler — who’s working “low bono,” she says — Godfrey went to the state Courtroom of Appeals. Alongside the best way she was joined by different environmental teams: Birds Join Seattle, Orca Conservancy, Thornton Creek Alliance and Plant Amnesty, amongst others.
“Considered one of Godfrey’s primary issues is the pointless enhance in impervious surfaces ensuing from the elimination of huge bushes to accommodate greater density housing,” the group wrote in courtroom paperwork. “(We) are very aware of this concern and consider the Metropolis has did not replace its tree ordinance to truly ‘defend bushes.’”
Environmental hurt consists of growing arduous surfaces on new infill growth, equivalent to permitting 80% or extra lot protection. “The upper share of impervious floor allowed, the harder it’s to mitigate for the numerous adversarial impacts of poisonous laden stormwater runoff,” they wrote.
On the Courtroom of Appeals, an legal professional representing Seattle centered on the Legislature’s actions in recent times to streamline extra housing as the perfect motive to reject Godfrey’s case.
“The intent of the statutes is to stop these precise sorts of SEPA (State Environmental Coverage Act) appeals and as an alternative promote housing building,” a lawyer for Seattle advised the courtroom. “They (legislators) created SEPA and the GMA (Progress Administration Act) and so they created the appeals course of after which they determined to take these appeals processes away for housing laws like this.”
What’s extra, the Seattle Metropolis Legal professional’s Workplace makes the case in courtroom paperwork that different environmental legal guidelines defend town’s inexperienced house, such because the Tree Safety Ordinance in 2023.
This is similar measure that was roundly criticized for permitting builders to take down too many giant bushes, prompting many tons of of letters asking Metropolis Corridor to pause. On the time, town’s personal City Forestry Fee stated the measure failed to guard bushes and inexperienced house by “introducing ambiguity and favoring growth.”
The council voted 8-1 to cross it.
A cynic may argue this was all a part of a grasp plan on behalf of the constructing business: push for passage of a flawed tree safety measure, which is then cited in different environmental paperwork that enable runaway progress. The sentiment behind difficult the endangered species itemizing for the orca greater than 20 years in the past hasn’t modified.
The Courtroom of Appeals is anticipated to concern a choice within the coming weeks. In the meantime, Godfrey filed a separate petition with the Progress Administration Listening to Board, elevating related points and including issues about displacement of native residents with low incomes.
However right here’s the factor. None of it might make a distinction.
If Godfrey wins, the Courtroom of Appeals would ship the difficulty again to town listening to examiner. The listening to examiner will then take info from competing specialists to find out whether or not the environmental evaluation was enough.
If the listening to examiner decides in Godfrey’s favor, metropolis officers ought to need to give you measures to mitigate the implications of fast growth.
However finally, the Seattle Metropolis Council might select to easily ignore all of it.
That’s proper — even when Godfrey wins all alongside the best way, the council might take the place that dense housing will increase vitality effectivity and reduces carbon emissions and sprawl, and that outweighs any potential downsides.
In the meantime, Land Use Committee Chair Eddie Lin dropped legislation in Seattle Metropolis Council final Wednesday that might remove all environmental appeals of Complete Plan amendments and growth rules to the Seattle listening to examiner.
Ecotopia, Seattle is just not.
That’s the ethical of the story. But it surely doesn’t need to be this manner. Within the hundreds of coverage selections, there’s a means to supply wins to those that need extra housing in addition to these looking for to guard what makes this metropolis nice and stop Seattle from turning into a scorching, cramped, treeless biohazard.
For the second, Godfrey and her allies proceed to drag no matter authorized levers they’ll to combat what looks like an inexorable march to a way forward for remorse.
Mentioned Godfrey: “I really feel like individuals are going to in all probability notice it when it’s too late.”
