SAMP Draft EA: Our running list of questions

The one thing we hear over and over from community members re. the SAMP Draft EA is “What do I say?” “How do I get started?” We get it. One way we want to help is to provide some of our questions, which we’ll be updating frequently before submitting our full comment before the December 5th deadline. Think of this as STNI ‘thinking out loud’. We don’t want you to copy us (although you certainly are welcome to do so!) We just want you to get an idea of how we’re reading the document. Remember: this is not ‘homework’ you have to complete in one sitting. You can do what we’re doing: start an idea, then come back to it later.

Questions

1. This page is an excerpt from Appendix K: Socioeconomics, EnvironmentalJusticem and Childrens Health, which is itself taken from a 2018 Economic Impacts Study the Port did for all airport cities.

  • We question these numbers, especially for Des Moines and Burien, specifically the amount of ‘Local Taxes’, ‘GDP’, and living wage employees actually residing in communities like Burien and Des Moines.
  • This data is taken from 2018. Given the post-COVID reality, this in no way reflects the current state of local economies. In fact, only the Port of Seattle is in a healthy place economically.
  • From this excerpt, a major justification of the SAMP seems to be that the economic benefits of the airport, not merely to King County, but even to individual communities underneath the flight path, swamps any negative externalities.

2. Looking at Chapter 6, the list of preparers: https://seatacnoise.info/wp-content/uploads/Chapter-6-List-of-Preparers.pdf

…who was responsible for Appendix K Socioeconomics, Environmental Justice, and Children’s Health?

3. The Draft EA is dated October 2024. Yet Appendix K is dated 2018 (as are many companion documents in the Draft EA.) What work was done to bring those results up to the Draft EA publishing date? If such work was done, where in Appendix K are these updated results indicated?

 

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