Take Action
The Port of Seattle owns the land where North SeaTac Park and surrounding forest are sited and has published recommendations to replace an estimated 110 acres of forested land in the community near the airport with industrial development.
Next Port meeting - in person or by video link: TUESDAY, May 14, 2024
We Can Move Public Policy
Reach Out to Port Commissioners To write Commissioners, see info below. To speak or send public comment to a meeting, Sign up by 9AM on the day of the meeting by emailing commission-public-records@portseattle.org with your topic and date. Indicate if you wish to speak and a meeting link will be sent. Sign in to speak by 11:30.
Reach out to other elected officials: Contact info and meeting times HERE.
Sign up for Port Notices: A Draft Environmental Assessment of the Port’s Sustainable Airport Master Plan, which contains proposals for mass tree removal in this community, is expected in late 2024. Public input will be critical. Sign up here for notice when that comment window opens and for alerts to other government meetings including the Highline Forum and SeaTac Stakeholders Advisory Roundtable.
Sign the Community Forest Consensus: Join more than 3,600 other community members in signing the Consensus HERE.
Join us to reach out to others. Write info@defendersofhighlineforest.org to connect with us on ways you can help bring needed change.
Members of Defenders of Highline Forest, Tree Action Seattle, Seattle Needs Trees, The Last 6,000 and Extinction Rebellion met at the Port of Seattle Commission’s December 12 meeting to critique the Port’s proposed Land Stewardship Plan and Tree Replacement Program. Photo: Katie Kresly and Sandy Shettler.
Featured message to Port Commissioners
April 2024
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Two methods of contact:
Sending an email in time for a meeting? Deadline is 9AM on the day of. Include your full name and topic. Use email address commission-public-records@portseattle.org. See more info/links above.
Sending at any other time, you can use Commissioners’ direct email addresses: calkins.r@portseattle.org, cho.s@portseattle.org, felleman.f@portseattle.org, hasegawa.t@portseattle.org, mohamed.h@portseattle.org
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Dear Commission President Cho, Vice President Hasegawa, and Commissioners Calkins, Felleman, and Mohamed,
People in SeaTac’s Riverton Heights neighborhood live directly under the flight paths of SeaTac Airport and are surrounded by highways. They also face the likelihood that the Port will replace 26 acres of in their neighborhood with two huge new warehouses and all the noisy and polluting truck and other traffic that will bring - just a few feet of houses and half a mile of daycare centers, a public school, and places of business and worship.
Riverton Heights is one of only several neighborhoods facing this kind of swap-out of trees for polluting structures under the Port’s Sustainable Airport Master Plan and Real Estate Strategic Plan. The Port’s recent Land Stewardship Plan touts your agency’s care for people near the airport and the green spaces that protect them. But its maps give no indication that the Port has any intention to withdraw its recommendations for extensive deforestation where trees are needed most to protect residents.
In the densely-populated neighborhoods near SeaTac Airport, where tree canopy is among the sparsest in the county, where levels of pollution, industrial heat, and noise are among the highest, where a significant portion of King County’s people of color and people of lower income live, and where health departments find severe levels of environmental health disparities, there simply is no place where you can replace large areas of tree canopy with polluting industrial sources without harming human health.
Featured message to SeaTac Councilmembers
April, 2024
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jsimpson@seatacwa.gov, snegusse@seatacwa.gov, megal@seatacwa.gov,iguzman@seatacwa.gov, pkwon@seatacwa.gov, jlovell@setacwa.gov, jvinson@seatacwa.gov
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Dear Mayor Egal, Deputy Mayor Negusse, and Councilmembers Guzman, Kwon, Lovell, Simpson, and Vinson,
The City of SeaTac leases most of North SeaTac Park’s 220 acres from Port until 2070 or 2041. However, the lease agreement for the park was amended in 2002 to allow the Port to vacate 55-acres of the park “at any time” in order to allow for commercial development including warehouses, office space, parking lots, and other aviation-supportive uses.
City of SeaTac Resolution 2002-02 and Port of Seattle Resolution 3485, signed in April 9, 2002, authorized both governments to enter into this Agreement. Although the text of the resolutions and the Agreement correctly reference the land as being inside the park, their titles reference the property in question as being “adjacent” to North SeaTac Park.
Due to these errors, the public was not given adequate and proper notice of the true nature of what was at stake at the time.
As you know, this park was created to compensate area residents from cumulative airport impacts, impacts that have only increased since then. It is on land set aside for open community use. It should not be developed for airport expansion. The fact that notice to the public on this matter contained inaccurate information on the very nature of what was being decided should invalidate the agreement that followed and that puts this area of the park at risk.
I thank you for your established history of protecting North SeaTac Park and urge you to work with the Port of Seattle to withdraw this Agreement that was entered into on the basis of inaccurate information provided to the public.
