The Seattle Times
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The key environmental vote is in your own back yard

By Jim Rioux
Special to The Seattle Times

Monday, October 16, 2000

In November, citizens concerned about the water that we drink, the air that we breathe and the natural legacy we leave future generations must get their message out. They must vote for clean water and clean air throughout the ballot - from the president to state senator and county commissioner.

The importance of strong environmental leadership at the national level cannot be overstated. However, in the current political climate, where federal programs are under constant attack, the selections made at the local level are possibly even more critical. Voting for the environment at the local level will accomplish the following;

• Leaders will be elected who will protect your tax dollars by minimizing environmental impacts and ensuring developers and industries pay their fair share of environmental costs;
• Seats of government will be filled by individuals who will enforce the existing regulations and fill the voids left by years of the assault on measures to protect the environment, and
• People will be put in charge who will be guided by principle to protect the health of our families, our communities and the ecosystems upon which we all depend.

Local environmentally-minded leaders will protect the financial strength of local communities.

The myth that environmental protection is too costly is so fully accepted that it seems ludicrous to suggest that environmentalists are good for the bottom line. As a planner for the state Department of Health, working with local communities, I have witnessed a different reality. Leaders with a strong environmental ethic can protect limited budgets in several ways. First, their commitment to the environment is infectious and integrated into all their undertakings. This allows them to gain and maintain public support for ensuring that environmental protections are efficiently integrated into all business conducted by gov-ernment. Second, such leaders ensure that developers and industries comply with all environmental regulations and pay their fair share of environmental costs. Compliance is chosen instead of waivers and variances, and in this way the environmental impact is minimized and the burden of environmental mitigation is not passed on to the taxpayers.

From another perspective, the financial standing of local governments is frequently impacted by their ability to attract federal and state aid. Whether it is developing a new source of drinking water, upgrading an aging waste-treatment plant or building a safe solid-waste disposal facility, local communities are constantly facing budget-breaking expenditures. Shrinking budgets and a demand from the general public for results are causing lending and grant agencies to demand quantifiable assurances that they are directing their resources wisely. Communities that can demonstrate effective environmental management and full regulatory compliance will be in the best position to receive much-needed aid.

Local environmental leadership is needed to bolster weakened federal protections.

Though strong environmental legislation passed in the '70s remains largely intact, the opposition has been extremely effective at weakening protection by starving agencies and programs of the resources they need to be effective. Local leadership in this context is critical. Cash-strapped local governments are constantly under pressure from predatory industries and developers that coerce weak leaders into tax breaks and ordinance exemptions in exchange for ephemeral promises of bountiful tax bases and jobs that rarely materialize. Officials at the local government level must have the leadership and commitment to resist these seductions, enforce existing regulations and pass stronger measures to meet the challenges of the future.

Local leaders most directly affect your lives.

Finally, and possibly most importantly, voters must realize that environmental protection is not only about saving Amazon rain forests and protecting the ozone layer. It is about children who can go to school without packing an asthma inhaler in their lunchbox. It is about seniors drinking water that does not tax their bodies with contamination or heavy doses of treatment chemicals. It is about refreshing our souls in open and wild places in those precious few moments we spend away from our jobs, and it is about going to our workplaces without the fear that we will be exposed to conditions that send us to the hospital.

The decisions that most directly impact our lives and the health of the people and things we care most about are being made down the street, not in Washington, D.C.

It would be easy to become discouraged by the second-class status that environmental issues are receiving at the national podium. In November, however, voters have an opportunity to change this with their local vote. Contact your local environmental organizations. Identify the candidates that share your concerns and put them in office. The message will ring loud and clear.