Olympia Plans for Sea Level Rise

Above: Community concerns regarding the City of Olympia's plan to address sea level rise are written on yellow sticky notes, reduced to the length of a tweet, at a community meeting Tuesday night. 

By Janine Gates

Little Hollywood

http://www.janineslittlehollywood.blogspot.com

The City of Olympia is about to embark upon a very traditional planning process to address the most critical environmental issue threatening the city's very existence: sea level rise.

At a community meeting at the Olympia Community Center Tuesday evening, the city revealed a schedule of activities spearheaded by the city, the Port of Olympia, and the LOTT Clean Water Alliance. 

The process is expected to take 18 months.

Omnipresent yellow sticky notes were made available to capture and reduce community concerns to soundbites.

City staff also encouraged the public to place little colored coded stickers on a map of downtown Olympia to indicate answers to typical softball questions: “Where have you seen coastal flooding in Olympia in the past?” and “What are your favorite shoreline areas?” and “What features do you like?”

About 40 people were in attendance.

Andy Haub, director of water resources for the City of Olympia, began his presentation with an explanation of how, in 2010, the Olympia city council committed to protect downtown and its infrastructure.

Most notably, this includes the Budd Inlet Treatment Plant, located in downtown Olympia, which treats the region’s 12 million gallons of wastewater per day. Valued at $500 million, relocating the plant would cost an estimated $1.2 billion.

Built on fill about 100 years ago, the area of the Port of Olympia, the seventh largest marina in the state, is also expected to be dramatically impacted by just one foot of sea level rise.

“The time is now, and we’re vulnerable….The future doesn’t feel that far away anymore,” said Haub. 

Susan Clark, project manager for the city’s sea level rise plan, outlined how the plan will be developed and engages the public.

The city has hired an international engineering firm, AECOM, to help implement the plan.

“At $250,000, the planning process reflects the next step. It is not the end point of sea level rise planning….We want to get this right. It’s too important not to,” said Clark.

She said that over 20 internal working groups are working to develop a framework for the plan. The groups include staff from many departments, including parks, transportation and emergency management, along with elected officials.

An inventory of assets will be conducted, including open space, from the Fourth Avenue Bridge and the isthmus to East Bay and Marine Drive. Private property on East Bay and West Bay will not be included. Then, a vulnerability assessment on those assets will be conducted.

The final step will develop adaptation strategies such as tide gates and retrofits to existing buildings.

The city says it will conduct focus groups with the business community and others, including three workshops, the first to be held in October. The idea is to wrap up the plan by December 2018.

The city has a new electronic newsletter addressing sea level rise planning issues.  Community members can self-subscribe to it at olympiawa.gov/subscribe

Above: The city is looking to cutting edge sea level rise planning efforts currently underway around the country. It is particularly looking for guidance from the San Francisco Sea Level Rise Action Plan and the Marin Shoreline Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment. The draft Marin Ocean Coast Sea Level Rise Adaptation Report is currently out for public review, said Susan Clark, project manager for the City of Olympia's sea level rise planning efforts.

Several audience members expressed their displeasure with the Port’s contract with Rainbow Ceramics and continued acceptance of ceramic proppants. Others wondered where the funding was going to come from to protect downtown.

Rueben Males was disappointed with the region’s approach to sea level rise planning, and said so at the meeting. He has started an organization called Jobs in Renewable Energy, a non-profit cooperative whose purpose is to incubate worker owned cooperatives.

He said he wants the Port of Olympia to be part of the climate solution, and not the problem, by initiating job creation to renewable energy and promoting the local sale of locally produced electricity.

He suggested that the Port of Olympia host the space necessary for a solar farm at the port district's airport property and/or for a solar farm at the port property on Budd Bay.

Community member Judy Bardin, along with several others, was disappointed that the city has apparently still not reached out to local environmental organizations for their assistance and guidance on sea level rise issues.

“Stakeholders are taxpayers,” she said. In April, after the last community meeting, Bardin provided the city a comprehensive list of local organizations to contact.

When asked what organizations the city has consulted with to date, Haub responded that he has met with the city’s Planning Commission and two Rotary groups, and the Coalition of Neighborhood Associations.

“We need to define what downtown means to us…We can’t capture it all, I’m sure. Give us suggestions and a venue and we’ll be there,” Haub responded.

Local attorney Charlie Roe, father of Olympia city councilmember Jeannine Roe, said that one of the requirements of stated law within the state's Shoreline Management Act is that one option needs to be no action. He asked if the possibility of no action on sea level rise has been ruled out.

“The state is providing some guidance on climate change and sea level rise but it is not a clear mandate. We see this as a local initiative...we have chosen to incorporate it into the city’s version of the Act, requiring setbacks along the shoreline…Unfortunately, to be candid, the guidance from federal and state government is very limited these days and we need to move forward,” responded Haub.

Little Hollywood has written extensively on downtown Olympia sea level rise issues, flooding incidents, the management of Capitol Lake, and current sea level rise projections for Olympia with maps and photos.

Recent articles include “Olympia Starts Sea Level Rise Planning” at http://janineslittlehollywood.blogspot.com/2017/04/olympia-starts-sea-level-rise-planning.html and “Olympia’s Sea Level Rise Plan Begins with Port, LOTT” at http://www.janineslittlehollywood.blogspot.com/2017/04/olympias-sea-level-rise-plan-begins.html

For more articles, go to Little Hollywood, http://www.janineslittlehollywood.blogspot.com and type key words into the search button.

Above: Former City of Olympia councilmember Karen Messmer was happy to express a few opinions about the city's sea level rise plan using several yellow sticky notes at Tuesday night's community meeting.

Olympia Sea Level Rise Website Coming Soon

Above: When it comes to sea level rise, downtown Olympia is running out of time. Here, the waters of Budd Inlet reach the floorboards of the Olympia Yacht Club office at high tide the morning of March 10, 2016. Luckily, favorable weather conditions created a tide lower than expected, peaking at about 17.4 feet.

Sea Level Rise Language Clarified for Views on 5^th Plans

By Janine Gates

www.janineslittlehollywood.blogspot.com

In light of a possible redevelopment of downtown Olympia’s nine story “Mistake on the Lake,” also known as the Capitol Center Building or Views on 5^th, Little Hollywood checked in earlier this week with City of Olympia's water resources director Andy Haub.

What progress has the Olympia City Council made about sea level rise issues since city staff dropped their sobering report about Olympia's vulnerabilities on the council last February?

The briefing by Haub and other staff last February was so frank, it caused one council member to throw into the conversation the consideration of abandoning downtown.

Council members have been updated on sea level rise issues informally since February, and adopted an ordinance on August 30 to raise finished floor elevations in downtown for new construction. 

Although the council’s Land Use and Environment committee hasn’t been updated on the topic since April, staff updated the city’s Utility Advisory Committee (UAC) on October 6. 

The UAC will be helping the city develop the scope of a sea level rise program plan. One goal will be to develop a formal community plan that prioritizes downtown investments. The city is working on establishing participation with the Port of Olympia and the LOTT Clean Water Alliance and looking at the sea level action plans of San Francisco and Vancouver, B.C.

“We continue to make progress in 2016 and the plan is on schedule to begin in early 2017,” said Haub.

Haub also said that an interactive sea level rise webpage on the city website is scheduled to be up later this week. 

The link will be: www.olympiawa.gov/SeaLevelRise.

“The webpage will include a map of downtown. Folks can select various levels of sea rise and see how it affects downtown, degree of inundation, buildings affected, street impacts, and so forth. It should be helpful,” said Haub.

Above: High tide at Percival Landing earlier this month, with the nine story Capitol Center Building, the proposed Views on 5th, in the background. 

Language Clarified for Views on 5^th Plans

The community is in need of a sea level rise primer specific to Olympia. 

Recent verbiage used by staff in a meeting to describe how the proposed Views on 5th project must be raised to 16 feet, for example, caused confusion for readers of Little Hollywood.  Admittedly, Little Hollywood didn’t do a good job of explaining that the reference didn't mean 16 feet above the street, and added a note of clarification to the story.

Developer Ken Brogan showed city staff his preliminary plans to redevelop the nine story building and a nearby one story building at last Wednesday’s Site Plan Review Committee meeting. The one story building would be converted to a three story building. 

The elevation reference was in relation to mean sea level, and in the case of the vacant nine story building bordered by 4th Avenue and 5th Avenue, and Simmons Street and Sylvester Street near the Heritage Park Fountain, the sidewalk is 12 feet above sea level. This means the project would need to accommodate a four foot sea level rise.

This analysis is in keeping with the city’s projection of about four to eight feet of sea level rise in downtown Olympia by 2100. 

“....The construction of the project must be designed so that the lowest occupied floor is raised to 16 feet elevation. Alternatively, the applicant can dry flood proof the exterior walls to ensure flood proofing is accomplished with barriers or panels that close entrances, should there be a flooding event,” said Tim Smith, principal planner for the City of Olympia, in an email to Little Hollywood.

The 16 foot elevation is an incremental step toward preparing the city for sea level rise and adds one foot to the minimum finished floor elevation required by the current flood prevention ordinance for properties within Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) mapped flood hazard areas. This would be two feet above FEMA’s coastal flood elevation, 14 feet, for downtown.

Parking is proposed under the new one story building, but not three stories. Smith says there is about a six foot differential shown on Brogan’s preliminary plans with regard to the lowest parking floor elevation.

“Staff believes it is very possible to design a foundation or other structure so that it is impermeable to water intrusion and the effects of buoyancy. The design for these considerations will be addressed and calculations performed by the soils and structural engineers based on the conditions and as these elements come together,” said Smith earlier this week.

“If water were to infiltrate or seep into the area, pumps could be used to remove the water. We see this often on a much smaller scale when we have a sump pump in a basement or subterranean garage with a hillside condition that may have a water infiltration issue.”

Above: The Oyster House restaurant prepared for the high tide on March 10, 2016 with a wooden barrier and a few sandbags.

Downtown Strategy

Many other downtown issues are ongoing through processes that have separate timelines and decision tracks.

Another city sponsored Downtown Strategy open house will be held on Saturday, October 29, from 10:00 a.m. to noon, at the Olympia Center at 222 Columbia Street NW in downtown Olympia.

The public can review proposed actions related to housing, transportation, business, and urban design. Staff will ask participants about their priorities for what should be the most immediate actions the city should take within the six year implementation period.

A final draft report will be released later this year, leading to its adoption by the city council by the end of 2016.

“As we mapped and evaluated the downtown land uses, we were struck by how much critical infrastructure and how many emergency transportation corridors are encompassed by our relatively small downtown. 

“We all concluded that downtown needed to be protected in its entirety, or not at all. It’s all or nothing,” explains a descriptive flyer produced by the city for the Downtown Strategy process.

For more photos and information about the staff report to council in February, sea level rise, king tides, and flooding issues in downtown Olympia, Andy Haub, the Downtown Strategy, and more, go to Little Hollywood, www.janineslittlehollywood.blogspot.com and type key words into the search engine.

For more information about the Downtown Strategy, contact Amy Buckler, Senior Planner, City of Olympia, at (360) 570-5847 or dts@ci.olympia.wa.us. 

A full description of the Dowtown Strategy goals and process can be found at http://olympiawa.gov/community/downtown-olympia/downtown-strategy

Above: Ryan Kang, general manager of The Governor Hotel, speaks with his tablemates at a Downtown Strategy meeting for developers and businesses on April 28, 2016 in city council chambers. Other businesses at his table represented the Port of Olympia, Ron Thomas Architects, Big Rock Capital, Olympia Federal Savings, Petworks, Prime Locations, Rants Group, and Adroit Contractors.