Northwest News

The immediate impact of levee setbacks in Pierce County

By Lauren Gallup
The Orville Road Setback Revetment was completed in 2022, to set a levee back from the Puyallup River in Pierce County. (Credit: Lauren Gallup / NWPB)
In the foothills of Mt. Rainier runs the Carbon, the Puyallup and the White Rivers, meandering through towns and cities, along roadways and near homes, the paint strokes of the natural environment now surrounded by a human-built ecosystem. Once tightly restricted by levees, these rivers are beginning to again flow closer to how they would have, not adhering to the confines Read More

Controversial Tacoma warehouse proposal moves forward

By Lauren Gallup
The currently vacant site that developer Bridge Industrial is seeking to use for an industrial warehouse in South Tacoma. / Courtesy of Michelle Mood.
The City of Tacoma hearing examiner has upheld the city’s decision to issue a development permit for a mega-warehouse in South Tacoma. The permit decision was appealed by Seattle nonprofit EarthJustice, on behalf of the South Tacoma Neighborhood Council and 350 Tacoma, which argued that the city and developer hadn’t adequately analyzed the environmental impacts of the Read More

Paddle to Muckleshoot: An epic canoe journey returns

By Lauren Gallup
A canoe family paddles onto shore at Alki Beach Sunday, July 30. // CREDIT: Tracci Dial, NWPB
There was a breeze, clouds and humidity in the air in West Seattle that hadn’t been there for days on the morning of July 30, as visitors to Alki Beach found seats or meandered down to the shore, waiting. A little after 11 a.m., as the sun began to break through the gray, the tip of a canoe and its passengers’ paddles could just be seen cutting across the water, the Read More

Rethinking levees to reduce flood risk

By Lauren Gallup
The Calistoga Reach Levee Set Back in Pierce County is an engineered levee set back to help the river flow in a more natural way. The project was part of a larger Floodplains by Design grant. // Courtesy the Washington State Department of Ecology
Washington Rep. Steve Tharinger of the 24th district became intimately acquainted with levee setbacks when he discovered the levee protecting his house on the lower Dungeness River was not only not protecting his house, but harming the ecosystem too. “I sold my house and the five acres in a barn we had, so that we'd have more room to move that levee back and give the Read More

The increasing risk of flooding

By Lauren Gallup
Aerial photo of flooding on the Skagit River in Nov. 2021. // Courtesy Brandon Parsons, with aerial support by LightHawk.
Jason Vander Kooy said the potential for flooding weighs on his mind every November. Vander Kooy is a dairy farmer — one of many in northwestern Washington. Two years ago, some farmers there dealt with flooding that killed livestock, damaged fields, and overtopped manure lagoons — meaning the basins that store cow waste filled with water and, like a bathtub too full, Read More

Seven fires burning in Olympic National Park; one evidence of what could come with climate change

By Lauren Gallup
Smoke plume from Delabarre Fire on Sept. 16, 2023. (Courtesy: InciWeb)
Visible from the smoke they’re emitting, seven fires are burning within the wilderness of Olympic National Park on the Olympic Peninsula. Lightning strikes ignited the fires Aug. 28 and all were burning relatively small until this past weekend, when the Delabarre fire took advantage of hot, dry conditions and took off like a bandit, growing to over 3,500 acres. Read More
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