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THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2021
Cascadia mapping
shows climate inequities
By PETER FAIRLEY
InvestigateWest
R
esidents of 152 cities and towns
in the Pacifi c Northwest are
particularly vulnerable to cli-
mate-fueled wildfi res. Residents of 60
other communities are most susceptible
to fl oods. And people living in 75 towns
are most liable to suffer — maybe even
die — because of heat waves.
That’s according to a new analysis
released Wednesday by news agency
InvestigateWest and planning fi rm
Headwaters Economics. It drills down
to towns where, for example, sparse
tree canopies and older residents make
communities more susceptible to heat
waves than younger populations in leaf-
ier places.
The analysis looks at likely climate
disasters and examines factors such as
the number of people with disabilities,
how many live in poverty, the proportion
that rents their home and how many of
the vulnerable are Black, Indigenous or
people of color.
In short, the analysis pinpoints how
the human toll liable to be taken by cli-
mate change spreads far across the map,
especially into rural areas of Washing-
ton state and Oregon. It highlights where
circumstances such as income and race
will — without targeted action — place
communities at greater risk as climate
change advances.
It’s just the latest in a series of stud-
ies to create new data-driven methods
to identify and address unequal environ-
mental risks.
“You can have neighborhoods right
next to one another and one may be twice
as bad off during a fl ood. Not because
they’re more fl ooded. But because their
housing is worse,” said Michael Brauer,
a professor at the University of British
Columbia’s School of Population and
Public Health, whose team in August
2020 released a climate vulnerability
index looking at how socioeconomic
and other factors can affect vulnerability
to climate-fueled natural disasters.
These demographic maps are identi-
fying environmental unfairness, engag-
ing communities and beginning to spur
the redesign of government programs
to target limited government resources
where they can have the greatest impact.
InvestigateWest
commissioned
Headwaters to produce maps zeroing in
on communities whose characteristics
leave them most exposed. The work is
part of a yearlong reporting project, Get-
ting to Zero: Decarbonizing Cascadia.
Headwaters drew on data from the U.S.
Forest Service, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, the U.S. Census
Bureau and a group of federal agencies
called the Multi-Resolution Land Char-
acteristics Consortium.
The maps produced by Headwaters
for InvestigateWest display vulnerability
to fi re, fl oods and extreme heat.
One observation that jumps out of all
three maps: climate vulnerability is to be
found across Oregon and Washington. It
is widespread in rural areas.
While these climate vulnerability
maps allow rural residents and leaders to
see what a changing climate means for
their communities, that does not guaran-
tee they will believe that climate change
is responsible.
Take the t own of Grand Coulee, Wash-
ington, in the high desert of Washing-
ton’s Okanogan region. It is one of only
two communities that the InvestigateW-
est and Headwaters research shows to be
simultaneously extra susceptible to fi re,
fl ooding and extreme heat. (The other is
The Dalles, a small Oregon city in the
Columbia River Gorge that found itself
dangerously close to several destructive
fi res during Cascadia’s record-shattering
2020 wildfi re season.)
Grand Coulee Mayor Paul Townsend
told InvestigateWest he has “a hard
time” seeing the connection between cli-
mate change and natural disasters, such
as the wildfi res that threatened his com-
munity in 2020.
“I have mixed emotions about the
whole climate change issue,” Townsend
said.
Nor does better information guaran-
tee that action will follow. Townsend,
for one, acknowledges that Grand Cou-
lee has vulnerable residents. But he said
in the case of a disaster, better informa-
tion would be of little use without state
and federal support.
“Some people have no fi nancial
resources for any kind of shelter. And,
of course, our city revenues don’t have
any margin for helping with that,” said
Townsend.
Washington state offi cials are work-
ing to alert rural citizens to the threat.
Last month, a reporter from
Wenatchee asked the head of Washing-
ton’s Energy Policy Offi ce what help
the state’s newly released decarboniza-
tion plan offered to rural citizens, such
as farmers and ranchers who use a lot
of diesel fuel. Glenn Blackmon had a
specifi c answer, noting the plan’s call
for production of clean fuels, including
hydrogen likely to be generated by utili-
ties in eastern Washington.
But his fi rst response served as a
warning.
“If we’re not successful in address-
ing climate impacts, rural areas will be
among the hardest hit with things like
wildfi res,” Blackmon said.
See it to change it
What all of these new digital tools
share is an overlay of environmen-
tal and demographic data. They do not
merely reveal where, for example, the
air is most fouled by exhaust from die-
sel trucks, or where future heat waves
are likely to be most intense. This sort
of mapping adds information that tells
us who lives nearby, and how they live.
It identifi es communities where environ-
mental threats compound each other and
where they may cause the greatest harm.
Consider wildfi re vulnerability. Fire
risk predictions by U.S. Forest Ser-
vice scientists, developed for the agen-
cy’s Wildfi re Risk to Communities tool
launched last April, show that Washing-
ton and Oregon’s most intense wildfi res
are most likely to occur east of the Cas-
cade m ountains.
But the interactive Wildfi re Vulnera-
bility map plots more than just commu-
nities facing heightened fi re risk. It high-
lights those that confront higher risk as
well as above-average levels of poverty
and rental housing — including some
towns and small cities west of the Cas-
cades. Such as Fife, a Tacoma, Wash-
ington, suburb that’s at elevated fi re risk
and also has 61% rental housing, more
than double the average for Oregon and
Washington. Powers, a town in south-
west Oregon, makes the map because
of fi re risk and 21% of its roughly 1,000
residents lived in poverty, according to
2018 census data. That’s also double the
regional average.
The socioeconomic factors matter
because they limit residents’ ability to
prevent fi res by, for example, upgrading
to fi re-resistant roofi ng.
“Renters rarely have the autonomy
to make such changes to their home,
and families living in poverty may not
have the fi nancial means,” said Megan
Lawson, an economist with Headwaters
Economics.
Lawson said helping community
organizations and government target
limited resources was one of the key
goals for the Forest Service’s Wild-
fi re Risk to Communities program. “If
you’re just looking at physical exposure
to risk, it could lead to a misallocation to
places that are going to be able to rebuild
or pop back more easily,” she said.
Visualizations for fl ooding and
extreme heat commissioned by Inves-
tigateWest similarly combine different
socioeconomic factors to highlight com-
munities at heightened vulnerability. The
60 communities vulnerable to fl ood-
ing have above average fl ood risk plus
above average poverty and racial and
ethnic diversity. Poverty and systemic
racism such as redlining practices trap
families in low-lying areas, and Law-
son noted that recovering can be more
diffi cult because communities with low
property values are less likely to qualify
for federal grants.
The Heat Vulnerability map uses lack
of tree cover as a proxy for extreme heat
risk. The 75 communities with extreme
vulnerability to heat in Washington and
Oregon have above average rates of peo-
ple living in poverty, adults over 65 and
people with disabilities. Extreme heat
events disproportionately harm seniors
and people with disabilities, and those
who also live in poverty may have less
access to health care, have less insulated
housing and lack air conditioning — all
factors that dial up danger during heat
waves.
Other mapping efforts
target pollution
Washington state agencies are begin-
ning to use one of the fi rst statewide sys-
tems for mapping environmental ineq-
uity, developed in 2019 by Seattle-based
climate justice coalition Front and Cen-
tered and the University of Washington.
THE STATE TASK FORCE ALSO NOTED SOME
LIMITATIONS, INCLUDING THE FACT THAT
INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES WERE NOT
FORMALLY CONSULTED AND BUSINESS
INTERESTS WERE NOT REPRESENTED DURING
THE DISPARITIES MAP’S CREATION. FAILURE TO
CONSULT WITH INDIGENOUS PEOPLES FITS A
LARGER PATTERN: DESPITE OUTREACH BY STAFF
AND MEMBERS TO FIVE TRIBAL NATIONS, THE
STATE WAS UNABLE TO FILL A SEAT DESIGNATED
FOR A TRIBAL REPRESENTATIVE.
A child plays in the sand at Cannon Beach as Haystack Rock disappears in
smoke in early September as fi res blanketed the state in smoke.
Hailey Hoff man/The Astorian
Washington’s Department of Ecology
was an early adopter of the Washington
Environmental Health Disparities Map.
For example, the agency used the map to
parcel out some of the $141 million paid
to Washington from legal settlements
with Volkswagen after the automaker
tampered with its vehicles’ tailpipe pol-
lution controls. To date, more than $61
million has been directed to communi-
ties highly impacted by pollution to pur-
chase pollution-cutting equipment, such
as electric school and transit buses.
Steering those funds means those
communities are not being “left out”
as Washington transitions to cleaner
energy, according to Esther Min, who
led the interactive tool’s technical design
as part of her doctoral work at the Uni-
versity of Washington. “That’s how
these tools really come to life,” she said.
The disparities map draws data from
eight databases on 19 indicators of com-
munity health, including race and ethnic-
ity, poverty, toxic releases from facilities,
lead risk from housing, and low birth
rate. Weighting algorithms then weave
that data into 0 to 10 rankings of overall
environmental disparity for each census
tract in the state.
Min said that ranking makes the
maps easy to understand, by design.
“We wanted it to be trusted and evi-
dence-based, but also easily used and
thus widely applied,” said Min, who
now works at both the university and
Front and Centered.
Washington’s disparities map was
inspired by a forerunner created for
California, CalEnviroScreen, but adds
important regional customizations,
according to Min. For example, it
includes transportation costs, in addition
to housing costs, to assess each commu-
nity’s affordability. Min said that pro-
vides a more representative measure for
Washington’s rural areas.
Aurora Martin, co-executive director
at Front and Centered, says more agen-
cies are beginning to use the tool, includ-
ing Washington’s Department of Health
and Department of Natural Resources.
The advocacy group hopes to also spur
its use by affected communities to docu-
ment their lived experiences in the fi ght
for more equitable treatment.
“Communities of color can really use
it on the ground on a local level to effec-
tuate local and broader policy changes,”
Martin said.
A state environmental justice task
force recently affi rmed the map’s value,
but also highlighted a lack of partic-
ipation by Washington’s Indigenous
communities.
The task force issued a fi nal report
last month calling the tool “robust” and
its disparity rank “easy to understand”
and “powerful.” It called for “routine”
use of disparities rankings to assess how
agency programs may help or harm
highly impacted communities and to
set and track state goals for reducing
inequity.
However, the state task force also
noted some limitations, including the
fact that Indigenous communities were
not formally consulted and business
interests were not represented during
the disparities map’s creation. Failure
to consult with Indigenous peoples fi ts a
larger pattern: Despite outreach by staff
and members to fi ve Tribal nations, the
state was unable to fi ll a seat designated
for a Tribal representative.
The report notes that this deprived
the task force of “invaluable exper-
tise, historical perspective, and eco-
logical knowledge,” and decried the
ongoing failure as unacceptable: “State
government is accountable to repairing
the environmental harms done to Tribes
and Indigenous communities, and the
path towards healing that harm includes
meaningful and authentic relationships.”