Southeast King County is a key to Cascade Agenda implementation

Seattle Times Op-Ed piece on the situation in the region.

Ground zero in the battle to preserve quality of life

The Cascade Land Conservancy has been working in Southeast King County for years. An early Conservancy project helped preserve the Duwamish Riverbend Hill, now a wonderful site for education, ecological stewardship and the spiritual value with which tribes hold this sacred ground. In a more recent project, we worked to conserve critical working forestland just east of Black Diamond.

The Conservancy has seen much change, especially around the Maple Valley-Black Diamond area near Lake Sawyer. But despite that long knowledge of the region, it is sometimes good to look through new eyes.

The Conservancy recently organized a tour through Southeast King County. On display was how the Conservancy's projects illustrate the issues facing this region. Seeing the region again through a new lens brought home to us how important our work continues to be.

We came away from the morning-long tour with the stark realization that Southeast King County is ground zero in our battle to conserve our region's quality of life for generations to come. The issues are all there — rapid growth, residential (and commercial) development, rich farmland at risk, large-lot development, working forests threatened with conversion, sprawl and a growing population.

It was a sobering surprise, even for an organization that helped make the 90,000-acre Snoqualmie Tree Farm project a reality and has worked in places like Black Diamond, and along the Raging River almost since its inception in 1989.

We came away with the realization that we must make a difference in Southeast King County if we are to have any success at all. The best time to start the work on achieving the goals of The Cascade Agenda — our blueprint for conserving great land and creating great communities for our children and grandchildren — was yesterday. The next-best time is today.

The region is changing radically. Boeing and Microsoft lead a knowledge-based economy that is drawing people here at an increasing rate. When putting together The Cascade Agenda two years ago, we estimated a doubling of the population by 2100. That is likely on the low side; the state gained 500,000 people since the 2000 census.

We must keep up with these changes. That is one reason why the Conservancy and its many partners began The Cascade Agenda. It started with the woods and the audacious goal of conserving 1.3 million acres. But it soon added a regional view that sees vibrant communities as important elements in conservation. You cannot have one without the other.

There is urgency in our work. We must lead change or the region will be consumed by it. When we launched The Cascade Agenda in May 2005, we looked 50 years into the future and foresaw the "Cedar County Freeway" and a nightly traffic jam at the Black Diamond exit. It does not have to be that way.

That tour through Southeast King County gave us a glimpse of both the possible and the reality of what is happening on the ground. We saw how a place like Algona had changed from truck farms to warehouses in the space of 30 years. We saw farmland preserved through a bond vote in the 1980s. We passed through Black Diamond where an initiative the Conservancy helped craft last year showed how wise growth and conservation can occur. We passed areas like Maple Valley that have experienced rapid growth.

The Cascade Land Conservancy has been at work in Southeast King County for some time now, working to make The Cascade Agenda the key to conservation there. We have been involved with projects as small as conserving an acre along I-5 near Tukwila to thousands of acres in the Raging River area. Our message is really about steering change rather than being consumed by it.

Our motto is conserving great lands, creating great communities. Southeast King County is where that motto has to become concrete action.