Video and Transcript from the July 18, 2026 event at Highline College
machine-generatedSpeakers
- Laura Schladetsky — moderator (Rep. Smith’s staff)
- Rep. Adam Smith — U.S. House, WA-09
- Sen. Tina Orwall — Washington State Senate, 33rd LD
- Commissioner Ryan Calkins — Port of Seattle Commission President
- Public commenters (named where they identified themselves)
Opening remarks
Laura Schladetsky: …an opportunity to talk about aviation-related policy and to discuss the impacts of aviation noise and emissions. You’ll hear from Congressman Adam Smith, Senator Tina Orwall of Washington’s 33rd Legislative District, and Port of Seattle Commission President Ryan Calkins. Thank you all for being here. Before we get into the Q&A portion this evening, I’d like to turn to Congressman Smith for opening remarks.
Rep. Adam Smith: Thank you all for being here, and thanks to Laura and my staff for helping organize this. It’s great to be here with Tina and Ryan — I appreciate their leadership.
There are several issues we’re working on. The overview is that as the Port goes through the SAMP process, it’s really important to strengthen the connections with the community. I was talking with somebody right before we started, and I do think we’ve made progress. Back in the ’80s, when I first started working on this issue, the cities and school districts were all fired up — there was all kinds of anger, and it was difficult to have a conversation. It’s a difficult issue. We need an airport. People fly all over the place; it’s critical to the economy. But having spent my entire life growing up in this area — they’re tough neighbors. It’s noisy. We’ve got pollution issues. There’s a lot of traffic. How do we manage that?
Step one is to have open lines of communication, and for too long — back in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s — that really wasn’t the case. I want to give a shout-out to Tina in particular, and to Karen Keiser before her. The two of them have really gone to bat to build a stronger relationship on these issues. It doesn’t resolve everything, but at least we have open lines of communication now.
In terms of priorities: noise, obviously — the noise mitigation process. One big thing we were able to do is carve out money for upgrading noise packages, because the issue is that once they build a barrier — whether it works or not, whether it’s in the right place or not — you can’t get money to fix it. So we worked through legislation to help with that, and we want to make sure the noise studies are consistent and actually show where the noise is, so they help people through the mitigation process.
Second is pollution. For a long time we ignored it completely. We now have studies going on at the federal level and at the University of Washington to figure out the impact of jet fuel particles falling on the community — and then figure out how to mitigate it, the same way we mitigate noise.
Next is trying to get to alternative fuel sources with less pollution impact. In an ideal world we’d have electric planes. There are complications, but it’s more possible for short flights. I don’t know the exact percentage of flights out of SEA that are within 250 miles or so, but it’s higher than you might think. So we keep developing electric planes and cleaner alternative fuels. Those are the overall priorities.
The last thing — a bit of a victory lap on North SeaTac Park. We finally got the Port to agree it’s going to be North SeaTac Park going forward; we’re working out some of the details in the legislation. And a thank-you to my colleague Rick Larsen, ranking member on the Transportation Committee, who worked a lot of these issues with me through FAA reauthorization. I appreciate him being open to working with our airport-impacted community. I look forward to your questions.
Sen. Tina Orwall: Good afternoon — Tina Orwall, state senator from the 33rd. Welcome to the 33rd; I know this is your home turf. First, thank you for your leadership. I hear from people all over the country worried about airport impacts, and you’re seen as one of our national leaders, so thank you to you and your staff. And thank you for being here, Commissioner — I’m glad we’re having this dialogue.
I can’t imagine there’s anyone in this room who doesn’t think that having one of the fastest-growing airports impacts our health and quality of life. Having raised my kids here, I remember when my son would come home with asthma, and I kept thinking it must be mold in the school — it never occurred to me that part of the impact was aviation. I think that’s where our knowledge has changed: from this being just about noise to this being about health impacts.
With what I call the trifecta — our community leaders, our universities, and government — we’ve really looked at ultrafine particles. We learned from the University of Washington that they’re heavily concentrated, and concentrated on landing, and it depends on where the fuel comes from. We know that in King County, children in our area are 57% more likely to seek care in an emergency department for asthma than in any other part of King County. There’s probably a complex set of reasons, but we know there are things we can do around air quality — mitigation, purifiers, making sure they’re in our schools and homes. We have an asthma intervention program — we spend about $600,000 a year — helping kids with purifiers, vacuums, and intervention. It’s a huge success, but it’s a small program. There was one young girl who passed away a week before she was supposed to start. We just know the need is so great.
When I think about the airport and the SAMP expansion, I think about more cargo, more international flights, which means more evening flights. Between the noise and the air pollution, our ask to the Port is that we want to be a partner. We’re glad you’re here and listening, but we need an action plan. What can we do around noise, especially evening noise? What can we do about air pollution? We have funding sources that I believe should be carving out a percentage of Port mitigation for this community, and too often that’s an afterthought. There’s so much we can do to make people’s lives better here, but it’s going to take [action].
Commissioner Ryan Calkins: Thank you for the opening remarks. I want to share some remarks I wrote ahead of time — I want to get the details right, because I know this is critically important to all of you and you think about it a lot, so bear with me as I read.
Thank you to Congressman Smith and Senator Orwall, and to the other elected officials here — Council Member Davis, and I think I just saw King County Council Member Fain arrive. Thank you for coming.
I want to talk about the work the Port has been doing with local communities, and the steps we can take collectively on these shared concerns. Concerns around aircraft emissions continue to be of concern to all of you and to community members around the airport. On emissions, as Congressman Smith mentioned, we’re doing everything we can to speed up implementation of sustainable aviation fuels, which produce less carbon and fewer air particulates, which — as Senator Orwall mentioned — could pose risks to human health.
On the noise side, the Port has been running its award-winning noise programs for decades. We’ve successfully insulated over 9,400 homes, along with multiple Highline public school buildings, and we continue to work on apartments, condominiums, and places of worship, with increased focus on delivering relief as quickly as possible. But I know insulation isn’t sufficient — buildings are one aspect, but we actually need to reduce the noise from our operations, not just mitigate it.
Reducing noise is one of the best ways we can be a good neighbor, and we’re pursuing that in two ways: operational changes that make an impact immediately, and longer-term policy changes that make a difference in the coming years. On the operational front, one of the biggest wins is the runway use agreement we have with the FAA. It’s still a voluntary program, but it asks air traffic controllers to avoid using the Third Runway — the one closest to your communities — between midnight and 5:00 a.m. The results have been significant: late-night operations on the Third Runway have dropped from an average of 12 late-night landings a night to less than one during routine operating conditions. We’ve also instituted new guidelines for pilots, discouraging reverse thrust on landing and encouraging continuous taxi to takeoff, which reduces the need to power up at the runway end before takeoff. Both changes came out of the ground noise study our stakeholder advisory round table — StART — developed. We’ve also developed programs that incentivize airlines to operate the most modern, quiet aircraft at SEA, including our Fly Quiet program, which honors three airlines each year for their efforts.
Our focus on policy change matters because the Port is extremely limited in its ability to directly affect aircraft noise and emissions, which are regulated exclusively by the EPA and the FAA. Beyond voluntary guidelines and our noise insulation program, we need federal partnerships to provide new tools, authorities, resources, approaches, and FAA engagement that can make a tangible difference. Through StART, we’re proud to have developed a list of federal policies jointly supported by the Port and the airport cities, several of which have been achieved thanks to Congressman Smith’s efforts in D.C. The Sound Insulation Treatment and Replacement Program Act passed in 2025 and created an FAA pilot program to repair or replace previously installed sound insulation packages — a big win for the community, and an example of working together on shared priorities.
Many of you know that SEA can only do noise insulation for homes where noise exposure is above the FAA’s currently prescribed average of 65 DNL over a year. The FAA — again with Congressman Smith’s support — is developing an updated noise policy and initiating an aircraft noise advisory committee, and one focus area is re-examining whether 65 DNL is the right measurement tool and exposure level to address noise annoyance. We strongly supported this work and are excited the FAA is taking it on and including airport-community stakeholders. The Port has been advocating for community stakeholders to be included in the decision-making process, and we anticipate SEA will be a key part of that conversation.
On the FAA in particular — as a commissioner carrying on the legacy of others who’ve worked on these issues — it can be quite frustrating how limited our ability to make decisions really is. We don’t get to set noise or emission limits. We don’t get to institute an evening curfew. We don’t get to limit the number of aircraft coming in or out. We don’t control which aircraft the airlines use or whether they switch to quieter engines. I’m not saying it’s not the Port’s responsibility, but it’s important to understand where the power over these issues resides, and why efforts like StART have been the most effective at driving change at the federal level.
I’ll close by saying that a big part of being the best neighbor possible is not only reducing the negatives of living near an airport, but increasing the positives — from our South King County and Port Communities Fund making direct investments, to our workforce development programs that give local residents skills and access to the opportunities the Port creates. We want SEA to be a net positive for your communities, and I look forward to continuing to work toward that. Thank you again to Representative Smith for bringing us together.
Q&A
Laura Schladetsky: Thank you to all our panelists. We’ll now transition to Q&A. If you’d like to ask a question, line up along this wall and my colleague will bring you a microphone. To start, we received some pre-submitted questions, so I’ll ask one to get us going.
[Extended microphone/AV troubleshooting omitted.]
Laura Schladetsky: Apologies for the technical difficulties. The pre-submitted question is: what will you do to defend and protect the environment and quality of life for airport communities and the region?
Rep. Adam Smith: I outlined some of that around noise and air pollution. More generally — air and water quality — I’m deeply concerned about what the federal government is not doing right now under the Trump administration’s EPA. We need to renew our commitment to the environment, and yes, climate change is part of that. We need to aggressively enforce regulations to protect the environment generally, but particularly around the airport: noise mitigation, and the air pollution issue, which is huge — identifying it, shifting to alternative fuel sources, and figuring out ways to protect the community from the impact. That’s at the top of the priority list.
Sen. Tina Orwall: I agree with everything Adam said, and I’d add that some of the priorities I strongly support — cleaner fuels and a lot of the environmental work — are years off, because the pollution is really about where the fuel [burns/lands]. So I want to make sure we’re also doing short-term strategies: the HEPA purifiers, more indoor spaces than other areas have, and the noise packages. The federal government is running pilots, but it may take years before they change the 65 DNL standard — and that doesn’t mean there aren’t local resources that can do this work now. So it’s short-term investment alongside the longer-term partnerships.
Commissioner Ryan Calkins: I’m a Port commissioner part-time; my full-time day job is as an energy policy advisor for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. My 40-hour-a-week job is figuring out how to use energy more effectively. We have a mantra: whenever you approach a question like this — whether the goal is reducing greenhouse gas emissions, local particulate emissions, or just energy use because it costs money — there’s a three-step process.
You start with efficiency: using less energy overall. Some of the most effective initiatives at SEA are in how we run the airport, and our plans over the next 15 years are about increasing efficiency so we can accommodate the same relative amount of operations while using less energy and fuel, and therefore emitting less noise and air pollution.
Second is electrification: electrifying everything we can — our facilities, and eventually, ideally, our planes.
Third is alternatives: what can we use other than fossil fuel, which is the worst for both greenhouse gases and local particulates? We’re walking and chewing gum at the same time — doing efficiency and electrification while being the national leader on sustainable aviation fuel among nearly any other large hub airport. We do that by supporting the science to develop these fuels and figuring out the logistics and infrastructure to bring them to SEA and displace the most polluting fossil fuels. So we’re thinking about both environmental and local air-pollution impacts through those three lenses.
Commenter (Des Moines resident, unnamed): My neighbors asked me to be here — everybody’s out of town today. We’ve owned in Des Moines since ’07, before the Third Runway. We want to know: when will our neighbors in Redondo, Woodmont, Saltwater State Park, and Zenith — we’re all getting together because we’re all finding black stuff on everything — when will someone step up and stop Delta? Several times a day, at least a dozen, when they’re landing over us. Over Saltwater State Park. Air Canada once a day, lowering wheels over us — since [CO?] shut down, approximately in 2026, 64 times we’ve recorded flights over Redondo, Woodmont, Saltwater State Park, and Marine View Drive. We’ve submitted complaints. Mr. [sp?] at the Port has been so nice.
I have photographs of what the gear-oil deposits look like — they used to be big globs. My cat used to love laying on the deck. He got oil on him, licked himself, was poisoned, and died. A neighbor, Ms. [Edris? sp?], somehow has a contact at Delta, and they started flying higher coming in — over a thousand feet — and now it comes down as a spray. I have photographs of what it looks like now versus before. It sprays over the furniture, the deck. We used to plant tomatoes and fruit; we can’t anymore. Neighbors are finding that black stuff everywhere. About 50 people commented on a thread [in a local group].
Sen. Tina Orwall: Is this something that just started after COVID shut down? What are they doing differently?
Commenter: They’re lowering wheels over us. Saltwater State Park is like their marker or something. That black stuff is everywhere, and we have samples. My neighbor next door — his [gutters? sp?] are covered. My son cleaned the deck cover last Saturday and I took pictures right after: oil everywhere, spray everywhere. And the planes are bigger. We even have a new owner who just purchased in March — he came to me at the mailboxes and asked, “Do you know what that black stuff is all over Skyline?” I said, “I have news for you.”
Commissioner Ryan Calkins: I don’t know anything about this — that’s the first I’ve heard of it. This is excellent input in terms of me getting [informed]. I’m going to get your name afterward and follow up to see if there’s an operational change we can encourage pilots to make.
Commenter: Amazon and FedEx come in only a minute away over Federal Way, much higher. That’s where they lower — they come in with wheels already lowered. All other airlines — European, China, all of them — come in with wheels already lowered. And I live in that community, and our windowsills are covered with black.
Commissioner Ryan Calkins: I’d love to be part of looking at that. We’re taking notes — thank you.
Jim (homeowner): My name is Jim. I’m a homeowner that almost lives at Sea-Tac. I love riding my bike at North SeaTac Park, so I appreciate that. I also appreciate the efforts to mitigate a situation that probably isn’t going to change — we know it’s going to get 30% worse, and then the good news is it’s done. But I have a couple of questions about mitigation.
One is personal mitigation. I’ve taken advantage of the Port package, and I appreciate it — it made a difference. But if there are other things the Port could help me with — keeping my air cleaner, maintaining my equipment every year, keeping my windows and doors sealed, keeping my house insulated — I’d suggest that could be done two ways: individual grants to homeowners, or mitigating the property tax we pay to the Port.
I’m also interested in larger mitigation — sound barriers and so on. What can we do to get a bigger piece of the pie? Because we’re obviously not getting what we deserve. As a group or as individuals, what would help — letter-writing, anything else? Those are my two questions.
Commissioner Ryan Calkins: Thank you — that was very [thoughtful]. Your comments reflect some of what we heard at the public hearing a couple of weeks ago around compensation. You’ve introduced two new ideas I want to research: ongoing support for things like replacing air filters, and tax mitigation. On the tax side — that’s more Tina’s book of business — the way property taxes are levied in Washington, there are a couple of carve-outs, for example for low-income seniors, and a family and veterans credit. There might be an angle where the state could grant authority to do something like that, and that would be an opportunity for the Port and the cities to advocate together.
Sen. Tina Orwall: You raise excellent points. There are property taxes that are local and some that are state, and I’d hope we’d look at both — a large percentage of the property tax levied by the Port goes for other purposes, not mitigation for our community. As the weather gets warmer, one priority is the failed packages that haven’t been fixed. But people also can’t open their windows the way other areas can, so we need to look at heat pumps and cooling systems. The needs around mitigation are growing as the weather changes and we get more flights — in the evening it’s like every 40 seconds on the Third Runway during peak hours. It’s very heavy and pretty relentless, so we really need our windows closed and our air quality addressed.
Rep. Adam Smith: This is primarily local. We tried to pump as much money as we could into the FAA for noise mitigation, but there are a lot of airport communities in the country, and we’re out there scrambling to get as much as we can. We were able to get that pilot project — because once a barrier was built, that was it; there was no federal money available to fix it. So we need a pilot for a few airports, including SEA, where they can come in and spend more to do more. I’ll continue to pursue that aggressively.
Brian Davis (vice chair, airport committee): Brian Davis, vice chair of the airport committee. Thank you for this opportunity. The 65 DNL standard — it’s a joke. It’s based on outdated, archaic science imposed in 1979, and contemporary science tells us we’ve learned an awful lot in 50 years. Even if you stick with the day-night average, 65 is way too high. The EPA sets 55 as the protective standard; the World Health Organization says 40 is the threshold for harm. And the DNL standard doesn’t consider cumulative impact. Under the SAMP, if we get where we think we’re going, there’ll be 1,500 takeoffs and landings every day — and DNL gives that the same weight as, say, 100 takeoffs and landings a day at any field, ever. It doesn’t make sense. The people in Boulevard Park and Cedarhurst under the flight path are getting pounded, and there’s no recognition of that in the law.
I know the last reauthorization bill was supposed to include a complete review of the FAA standards, but President Trump has to appoint a committee, and we’re probably not going to see that happen — so we’re talking years before there’s any relief. The question becomes: in that interim, what do we do for the people paying the disproportionate price for the airport’s necessary growth? Same applies to sustainable aviation fuel — it’s decades from widespread viability. We’re not trying to stop anything, but we’re looking for proper compensation for people who pay a disproportionate price. That noise standard is a tricky one. What would you suggest?
Rep. Adam Smith: On the noise standard, all we can do is study it, reach a different conclusion — which is what we put in the bill. You’re right that it takes too long. But the first step is getting a conclusive study that allows for mitigation at a lower decibel level. That’s the step we took. On the other piece — we’ve been arguing for decades that people around the airport should get compensation for having an airport. Tax breaks on property taxes would be the place.
Sen. Tina Orwall: What I’d add on the 65 DNL — which we all agree is inadequate — is that there’s nothing that says when we use non-federal sources we have to hold to that threshold. When we used state dollars in our bills, we said any failed packages regardless of the 65 DNL. And when they did the Part 150 and changed the routing, there are people with no noise packages at all. So there are dollars — our local property taxes, aviation fuel taxes — that would be a good nexus for some of that money to come back to our community, for mitigation and air quality, without changes at the federal level, as long as we’re not tapping federal funds.
Rep. Adam Smith: I totally agree, Brian. You’re an incredible advocate, and I hope you’ll join us back in D.C. This has been our top priority on noise, and you’re a great storyteller — personal and technical. We’ve had some successful D.C. fly-ins all together, and we should keep doing that, because that’s how we move it quicker.
Commissioner Ryan Calkins: On funding, yes — it’s a conversation between local and state government to find new sources. From the Port’s standpoint, we recognize the need to use what we have to create the biggest impact for communities. We regularly have conversations about competing needs — we’ve got a Superfund [site] we’re going to be funding, questions around airport-to-community connections, vessels at Fishermen’s Terminal. These aren’t apples-to-apples comparisons, but we’re trying to do our best with the resources we have.
William Kelly (King County International Airport Community Coalition, KCIACC): My name is William Kelly, and I’m a correspondent [representative?] of the King County International Airport Community Coalition — KCIACC. We organize against leaded aviation fuel. We’ve been told the planes flying overhead are contaminating our communities with lead. It breaks all our hearts knowing it’s not only this place — it’s environmental injustice. Let’s not be reluctant; let’s build outrage for social change. We need to educate people about this recreational hobby putting lead in our bodies. What will you say to them? How will you take action?
It’s the last remaining transportation fuel that contains lead. I’ve watched — it’s the single-piston planes. I haven’t done the survey, but I understand some of it is flight school and a lot of it is recreational flights. No amount of lead is safe, and it’s very bad for childhood development. So my question: is there a plan to phase it out? Environmental injustice is clear — people flying recreationally, who are more privileged, are putting lead on the people below, because people who live closer to industry tend to have cheaper rent. Is there any mitigation, any plan for phasing it out, or research to give people air filters or anything along those lines — mitigation for lead exposure, especially around Auburn Airport and King County International Airport?
Commissioner Ryan Calkins: So, to clarify — the smaller planes still have leaded fuel?
William Kelly: Yes, single-engine planes.
Rep. Adam Smith: In my ignorance, I wasn’t aware of that, but yes — I’ll need to be educated on it, and we’ll see what we can do.
Sen. Tina Orwall: I know more details. Representative [Doglio? sp?], who serves the 22nd LD, introduced legislation to require removing lead from fuels for smaller aircraft. I’ll have to go back and check whether it passed — I think it had a target date to allow engines to transition — but I can check for you. And I agree: there’s no safe level of lead. We should absolutely mandate getting rid of lead in all fuels — we did it with [gasoline].
Commissioner Ryan Calkins: Just a note on SEA — we do not have leaded fuel in our facilities. There might be a small emergency instance, but we don’t [use it].
Laura Schladetsky: I think we should probably keep moving — but you raised a really important point.
Katherine Caffrey (Des Moines City Manager): Thank you all for holding this today. I’m Katherine Caffrey, city manager for the City of Des Moines. Des Moines, Burien, and SeaTac city governments are working together, as you know, Commissioner, to appeal what’s going on right now with the SAMP. What I want to highlight is that we’re hearing a lot about mitigation, and I’ve heard behind the scenes that the commission isn’t clear on what the cities are asking for. So I want you to be aware that the cities have provided a 17-page document — not as long and painful to read as 17 pages sounds — clearly identifying very specific items.
We’re looking for things like a recurring community impact fund. You mentioned the South King County grants, and we appreciate them — Des Moines has benefited — but they’re one-time, and candidly, a tiny amount of money in the scheme of what the SAMP projects are going to cost. So a recurring community impact fund is on the list. We’ve also put down that when cities are forced to take on costs to meet regulatory requirements because we’re close to the airport, those are real costs the cities bear — that seems like low-hanging fruit the Port should be covering.
My request is: if you’re not aware of this 17-page document, with numbered items — probably a dozen — we’ve provided it to Port staff and Port counsel, and I don’t always have full confidence the commission sees it. As the real decision-makers, if you haven’t seen a copy, I’d really ask that you request it from staff, because it tells you what at least these three cities collectively are looking for. Thank you.
Commissioner Ryan Calkins: If you send it to my email, I’ll read it — calkins@portseattle.org [sp?]. And I have seen your [document]; it was not tough to consume. Quite honestly, they sent it to me directly, so thank you.
Barbara McMichael (co-founder, Defenders of Highline Forest): Good afternoon. My name is Barbara. I’m one of the many co-founders of Defenders of Highline Forest. I’m a cancer survivor so far, and I live directly underneath the approach to the [second runway? sp?]. We bought our house because we’re starving artists and could afford it 28 years ago. At that time there were fewer flights, and it had a relatively new Port package, which is now failing us.
My question — I heard you talk about our fast-paced world and walking and chewing gum at the same time, trying to solve all these problems, putting out fires that are literally happening all around us with climate change. And I heard Congressman Smith talk about renewing our commitment to the environment. So this is a 30,000-foot, holistic question, asking you as leaders to consider your role as you serve our communities while also dealing with that larger existential threat. When I hear it, I hear an oxymoron: how does airport expansion renew our commitment to the environment? The SAMP and SEA say the only impacts are traffic — and clearly there are lots of people here pointing out many other impacts. So I’d love to hear from each of you three electeds: on a high level, how does the SAMP renew a commitment to the environment?
Rep. Adam Smith: The SAMP doesn’t renew our commitment to the environment. What renews our commitment is figuring out how to accommodate the needs of people in a more environmentally friendly way. If all we cared about was the environment, we’d get rid of all automobiles across the world — there are all kinds of things we’d get rid of. But what we’re trying to balance is that humans have to live. I’m in favor of civil society. So how do we make this work?
I’ll be honest — this is going to be a bit of a rant, because I’m frustrated. It’s a very simple thing: digging fossil fuels out of the ground and burning them is bad for life — bad for air quality, bad for water quality. We get into this esoteric debate about climate change, people arguing it’s hot, it’s cold. It’s simple: digging up fossil fuels and burning them is bad for life, and if we keep doing it, life isn’t going to be able to survive. So I don’t want to see conservatives doing this deep dive of “the science is wrong.” Let’s just admit we need to get off fossil fuels.
The frustrating part is threefold. One, we can do it — the technology is developing. Twenty-five years ago, when you talked about wind and solar, people said it was way more expensive, it’ll never work. Now it’s cheaper. It doesn’t solve the entire problem, but think of how much energy we now generate from wind and solar because we made the investment. Nuclear power — we’ve figured out ways to make it safer and more effective. Fusion, believe it or not, is close: Helion, a company up here, is going to be powering Microsoft’s campus in 2028 through fusion. If you unlock fusion, that gets you far. Airplanes are a particular challenge because they can’t break down — you need to make sure they work — but even there, alternative fuels and electric planes can be developed. And if we have fusion, nuclear, and other sources, plus energy efficiencies, we can get the same use out of less energy.
We have the ability to make amazing breakthroughs to get after the core problem, which is relying on fossil fuels. The gas at the airport — it’s terrible. What if all the vehicles on the roads around you were electric? That portion alone would be an incredible advancement, and we have the ability to do it.
Here’s where I get into politics, which I hate. There’s no magic ideology that’s going to solve all this — people have looked for hundreds of years and it never works. So work within our system and go fix it. The two sides that frustrate me most: on the right, in the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain and Sarah Palin had climate change as an issue they wanted to address. But then Barack Obama won and decided to do something about it, and conservatives decided it had to be the worst thing in the world. And then on our side — the moral superiority, looking down on anyone who disagrees, is a real problem. Screaming at somebody driving a car, telling them they’re awful, horrible people who want to destroy the environment, does not grow your support.
I don’t know where we got the idea that the first thing you do to persuade people is establish your moral superiority — act as sanctimonious as possible, make sure anyone who disagrees knows they’re a terrible human being, and then everyone will agree with you. That’s not how it works. People have legitimate concerns. You go into a community where 95% of their fuel comes from fossil fuels and say “we’re going to get rid of all of that,” and they ask, “How am I going to get to work?” There are answers to those questions, but you have to be patient enough to listen and bring them along. Some environmental groups are doing this — the climate action group organized around here has gone into conservative communities and had honest conversations about how we get there. That’s what I mean by renewing our commitment: right now the right wing has decided it’s irrelevant, and the left wing has decided the right is awful, and we’ve got to do better than that. So no — the SAMP doesn’t stand for that, but we need air travel; we just need to do it safer, cleaner, and better, and make the investment in new technologies to protect people. That’s how we need to start thinking about the environment in a way that gets us to a better place.
Sen. Tina Orwall: Back to the SAMP — I don’t think it does any mitigation around human or environmental impacts. There are exciting things in the future — I can see electric hoppers moving people on short flights, cleaner energy. But there’s so much overwhelm and suffering in our community right now around the short term. It’s hard when we have a large entity with — I don’t know, a $1.2 billion budget — and so little gets invested back into our community, where a lot of your employees and partners live. There are really exciting things off in the future we should all be working on, but let’s not forget what we can do now to reduce the harm.
Commissioner Ryan Calkins: If I hadn’t gotten a chance to answer this, I was going to be upset. This is why I got into politics eight and a half years ago — because I believe we’re at an inflection point, making the transition from a fossil economy to a new energy economy, and I think we’re closer than you think. There will be tipping-point moments — no thanks to the current federal administration, which set us back a number of years — but we can see it happening in other pockets, on both the science/technology side and the infrastructure side. We’re going to start to see it bridge the gap between the cost of fossil jet fuel and SAF, and it will make an enormous impact.
Just as a stopped clock is right twice a day — this administration does get one thing right about energy: energy affordability has had enormous net benefits over the 20th century. It’s driven down poverty. It makes your food cheaper, through fertilizer and transportation; your housing; your utilities. Energy is the indispensable ingredient in every economic transaction, so making it cheaper is a net good for almost all of us. The problem is their method: “damn the rules, don’t worry about the consequences, dig up all the dirty fossil fuels and burn as much as possible,” instead of pumping money into the research and development we need for solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear fusion and fission, and the battery energy storage systems we need to get to the point where we can fly large electric planes. We can do this, and I think it can happen in a relatively short time — I want to see big electric planes before I die.
How does an airport like SEA support that work? We can have a real impact on pulling SAF to SEA first, and we’re putting time and money into getting it here ahead of other interested airports. We face losses because of the federal administration, but we aren’t giving up. One of my favorite expressions is “there’s nothing like the guillotine to sharpen the mind” — a convoluted way of saying deadlines work. So we set a deadline: 10% SAF at SEA by 2028. The clock is ticking. About four years ago, our brilliant expert on SAF came to us and said, “We’re doing everything we can, but the infrastructure around us is delayed. However, I have a proposal: our goal is GHG reduction, so if we don’t meet the 10% SAF target, can we put a number on what that means in GHG reduction and get there other ways?” We said yes — that’ll help us benchmark, and we’re not going to give up on SAF. So they enacted a program of other GHG reductions, including counseling pilots on how to turn off their auxiliary power units — a diesel generator at the back of the plane — and plug into airport electricity instead. “Use our electricity instead of your diesel.” We’ve changed our HVAC and done other smaller things that added up to a larger GHG reduction than we’d anticipated from SAF alone. So it’s a both/and — we set a metric and we’re going for it. I’m a perennial optimist, and I’m close to the science on this. It’s going to take resources, and we’re having to spread them, but a major focus for me is getting SAF into SEA first, and eventually reaching 50% and higher.
Laura Schladetsky: Thank you, panelists. We have about five minutes left, so we might take one more question. If you have follow-up questions, please find one of our staff and we’ll do our best to answer afterward.
Katie Kresly (Highline Journal [sp?]): Thank you for being here and answering questions. My name is Katie Kresly, with the Highline Journal. I live in SeaTac. Fortunately, my husband was smart enough that airplanes don’t fly over us — we’re perpendicular. But I know a lot of people, and I look at the number of schools below the flight path where it gets loud and dirty.
I pay attention to the Highline schools — I ran for school board because kids can’t speak for themselves. What I noticed is that about 25 years ago, at least $100 million was earmarked for noise mitigation. I don’t know if any of that had to do with what we’re learning now about air quality, or if it includes purifiers. And $100 million 25 years ago doesn’t go as far now. They’ve only done 11 of the 15 schools, according to Port data. So I’m curious what kind of pressure can be put on to get those completed. I know it seems like they’re waiting for bonds to come through for rebuilds, but maybe there’s some noise and air-quality mitigation that could be done in the meantime. What can the Highline schools and you all do — and does the Port have any more money from the FAA?
Sen. Tina Orwall: Great question. My daughter’s a teacher in the Highline School District — one of the landing paths is right at Parkside, and you can almost overlay the kids going to the emergency department with that landing path. One thing I worked on with Senator Keiser was getting funding for HEPA filters. A lot of our Highline schools — not all — have gotten the freestanding purifiers, and those are the ones the University of Washington says are effective at removing 75 to 80% of ultrafine particles. Even the newer schools with HVAC systems, even at MERV 13, aren’t that effective at removing ultrafine particles. So one of our goals should be to get more purifiers into classrooms, along with filter replacements.
Commissioner Ryan Calkins: Maybe Congressman Smith can share more, but in that 2024 reauthorization, we finally got a study to understand [the health impacts]. As the Congressman mentioned, the first step is getting the science and benchmarks so we can understand how to address it. That’s in process — not moving as fast, but a huge step forward, so kudos to Congressman Smith. There are also already-passed capital budget allowances for the state to implement some of these programs. I don’t have exact numbers, but there are some funds out there. On whether we can help the school districts accelerate adoption — let me know if we can acknowledge or help in any way.
Sen. Tina Orwall: I do want to respond on the studies. The University of Washington is one of the top institutions in the country, and there have been studies done. Do we want to keep building on them? Sure. But they’ve pretty well documented a lot of this work already, and our Department of Health is looking at health impacts — they’ve studied Boston and LAX. So I just hate for us to stall on mitigation waiting for more research when we have one of the top institutions in the country supporting this work.
Katie Kresly: That’s exactly the question I wanted to ask — thank you.
Commenter (follow-up): I understand about the schools, but what about when the kids are at home and playing outside? Do we have any programs for that? Kids are coming to school with chronic [conditions]…
Sen. Tina Orwall: Good point. We’ve been looking at whether we could use funding together to do more indoor recreation areas and drop-in centers for kids. There was a new soccer facility in Tukwila we helped fund, and greenhouses — there have been sponsored gardens, but then they find the soil is toxic, so we probably need other interventions that make more sense for our airport communities. Thank you.
Laura Schladetsky: That concludes the forum — that’s the time we had today. In case any panelists have final things to say, you’re welcome to, but that should be the end. Thank you all for coming, and if you have follow-up questions, please find [our staff].
1This is a machine-generated transcript generated on the fly by Google/Youtube/AI. Accuracy totally not guaranteed. Provided only as a convenience and to help people with disabilities. Caveat lector!