Tag Archives: earth day

Along streets, sidewalks, and planting strips — planting the seeds of more gardening space on Capitol Hill

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(Image: Capitol Hill EcoDistrict)

(Image: Capitol Hill EcoDistrict)

By Shira Zur, UW News Lab/Special to CHS

Community leaders got together this week for the second annual Earth month celebration Plant Sale & Seed Exchange and highlighted ways for Capitol Hill residents to get involved with gardening, growing native plants, and involving underrepresented voices in growing food in urban areas.

Co-hosted by the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict and Seattle Audubon, the event earlier this week emphasized the need for gardening in Capitol Hill and the importance of shopping native plants. The sale continued its partnership with Black Star Farmers, the Black Farmers Collective, and the University of Washington’s Society for Ecological Restoration Nursery.

“This is the soft-launch of our effort to get people into the planting strips along the corridor and to really identify places where people can garden,” Erin Fried, the EcoDistrict Deputy Director, said.

But the sale was only a small part of the opportunities around Central Seattle for people to help make the area green and growing.

While Capitol Hill is home to around 40,000 people, there are only a few handfuls of community gardens, according to Fried. These community gardens are highly sought-after — the wait times to join can range from half a month to two years.

To address the issue, Ecodistrict, in collaboration with Seattle Audubon and Seattle Bird Conservation Partnership, introduced the Nature of your Neighborhood website. The online guide provides Capitol Hill residents information on where they can plant a garden, apply for a gardening permit, and contribute to the biodiversity of the neighborhood. Continue reading →

Governor says new solar microgrid for emergency energy at Capitol Hill community center first of ‘hundreds’ across state

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Seattle City Light Energy Innovation and Resources Officer Emeka Anywanwu led a tour with the governor Thursday

Capitol Hill’s Miller Community Center is not solar powered but its $3.3 million microgrid installation including storage batteries and 132 solar panels on its rooftop produce enough energy to power the 19th Ave E Seattle Parks facility and gymnasium through a major emergency.

Thursday, Gov. Jay Inslee and Mayor Bruce Harrell were on hand for a pre-Earth Day ceremony to celebrate the project installed during the pandemic but not yet fully celebrated by the community.

Calling the project the “beginning of a revolution,” Inslee celebrated “free photons from the sun” and said there will soon be “hundreds” of projects like the Miller microgrid on community centers across the state. Continue reading →

Here’s why Route 48 across the Central District and Capitol Hill won’t be electric for Earth Day 2022

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(Image: King County Metro)

By Elizabeth Turnbull

This week as Seattle prepares to host President Joe Biden for Earth Day, one of the city’s most slam dunkable green infrastructure projects remains on the drawing board as diesel-spewing buses — joined by thousands of exhaust spewing, single occupancy vehicles, of course — continue to run up and down 23rd Ave despite a completed multimillion dollar overhaul of the corridor.

CHS first reported on plans to electrify Route 48 in 2016 as Metro was planning the upgrades to coincide with the Seattle Department of Transportation’s road diet, more pedestrian friendly overhaul of 23rd Ave across the Central District, Capitol Hill, and Montlake.

Officials now say that the 48 Route electrification project was put behind other projects due to COVID-19-related financial issues and staffing issues. The Seattle Transit Blog just reported the project is now slated to be completed by 2026.

“We kind of got into financial pinches of COVID, there was a pinch on dollars across the system,” Justin Umagat, a capital project manager at King County Metro tells CHS. “We had to prioritize which projects were going to receive funding and resources at the time, and unfortunately, this particular project was slightly deprioritized over other larger projects in our portfolio.” Continue reading →

Seattle’s March for Science will start on Capitol Hill

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A message from January's Womxn's March (Image: CHS)

A message from January’s Womxn’s March (Image: CHS)

Cal Anderson’s role as a center of protest against the Trump administration will continue and Earth Day 2017 will take on even greater meaning as the Seattle component of the nationwide March for Science will start in the Capitol Hill park:

March For Science – Seattle

The march will gather in Cal Anderson on Earth Day morning April 22nd before stepping off for a journey to the Seattle Center’s International Fountain.

“Science is the best method we have for understanding the world. It should be an open process, used to serve all people,” organizers write. “If you wish to support those aims, please join us and march to support it.”

Seattle has been an enthusiastic participant in a series of marches and protests coordinated to demonstrate resistance to the social and economic policies pursued by President Trump. In January, the massive Womxn’s March stretched from the Central District to the Seattle Center and included more than 120,000 people in its ranks. Also that month, an immigration rights protest marched across Capitol Hill. In February, Cal Anderson hosted an LGBTQ solidarity rally. More spontaneous protests in the wake of the election have also crossed the Hill. In March, Black Lives Matter marchers crossed the Central District. In the midst of it all, victories — here and there — have been struck in the courts and some have been inspired to step forward into new roles to help build resistance.

Now, for Earth Day and in response to Trump policies seeking to erode progress on slowing climate change, Seattle will take a scientific approach to speaking up for the environment.

 

Positive 2015 results — and a couple bad data points — in Capitol Hill EcoDistrict Index

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Roof Garden

In advance of Earth Day 2016, the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict — a neighborhood sustainability and community development project led by Capitol Hill Housing — has released its EcoDistrict Index update of neighborhood sustainability based on data from the previous year. Overall, the update bears mostly good news for the area around Capitol Hill with a smidgen of bad.

One of the more surprising measurements? When it comes to usage of Metro buses, the update showed a negative trend, with a small decrease of use as measured by the index in 2015 compared to 2014, judging from Metro’s route and stop specific ridership data.

“Originally, when we were looking at those numbers, it was puzzling,” said EcoDistrict senior planner at Capitol Hill Housing, Alex Brennan. “More people are walking and biking … but then we looked at the actual use data for Metro — that’s going down a bit.”

But the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict team are attributing this to the cuts. updates, and optimizations to Metro service (like the 47), that kicked into gear in 2014. Brennan said that they looked at Metro ridership data from February through May of 2015, a timeframe that fell just short of when cut routes were restored in the summer and fall of the same year.

“If we had gone another month or two we’d probably seen different kinds of numbers,” said Brennan, adding that with the cut Metro routes restored and the opening and heavy usage of the Capitol Hill light rail station, next year’s Index update will be both more representative of transit usage and promise.

(Image: Capitol Hill EcoDistrict)

(Image: Capitol Hill EcoDistrict)

The Index, which uses a set of metrics and data from various sources to judge the neighborhood’s progress in achieving sustainability targets (like achieving zero annual traffic collision related fatalities and reducing the rate of car commuting), showed positive trends in both neighborhood transportation modal choices, street safety, and usage of the local farmers market held outside Seattle Central College on Broadway.

The green Hill loves the local farmers market, which, according to annual individual transaction totals, showed a 23% increase in shoppers in 2015 from 2014. And a quarter of these shoppers used EBT and WIC food assistance money to purchase goods via the market’s Fresh Bucks Program. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | What a naturalist suggests for Earth Day (look for Capitol Hill daffodils, for example)

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Daffodils may not be native but they’re well worth knowing and enjoying. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

Now, I’d be the last person to speak ill of Earth Day. In it’s 45th year, with tons of opportunities for action throughout the city including the first ever Climate Action Festival at Seattle Central, this is a focused and benevolent movement, not another of the ridiculous panoply of “official days,” As much as I intend to do my part on Earth Day and participate in events that bolster community around the environment, I’d like to suggest another activity for the day. Knowing a slice of your environment.

There are many things that confuse our ability to protect the planet we live on. We over-consume daily, we muck up or pave over wild spaces, we massage the hubris that we can control everything or solve problems solely with technology. A pessimistic part of me looks at how humans on the whole behave, and suggests that we learn as much from our history and past generations as say fruit flies (averaging 10 days per). We can’t expect one lone day to change everything, and yes, most people don’t expect it to, but I can’t help but feel we could do more. Continue reading →