Today is the fifth anniver­sary of the dev­as­tat­ing Oso mud­slide, which took the lives of forty-three peo­ple and destroyed forty-nine structures.

The Oso land­slide on March 22 result­ed in the damming of the Stil­laguamish Riv­er in Sno­homish Coun­ty. Mud cov­er­ing the area, includ­ing SR 530, is a mile wide. (Pho­to: Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Transportation)

In hon­or of those who per­ished that trag­ic day and on behalf of the more than sev­en mil­lion Wash­ing­to­ni­ans liv­ing with the risk of geo­log­ic haz­ards like land­slides, tsunamis, earth­quakes, and lahars, NPI is renew­ing its call for the Leg­is­la­ture to appro­pri­ate funds so these haz­ards can be researched and bet­ter under­stood by our Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources (DNR).

Wash­ing­ton is unques­tion­ably a beau­ti­ful and majes­tic place, but it’s also a dan­ger­ous place. This region we love is part of the very active Pacif­ic Ring of Fire.

Earth­quakes, tsunamis, lahars, and slides have shaped the his­to­ry of our region. All are haz­ards that we can expect to strike again, but we have not made study­ing and prepar­ing for them a true pri­or­i­ty. Gov­er­nor Inslee’s Resilient Wash­ing­ton sub­cab­i­net was and is a great idea, but we need to be doing more… a lot more.

It’s time for the Leg­is­la­ture to step up.

Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands Hillary Franz and the Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources have devel­oped three pro­pos­als that would pro­vide us with bad­ly need­ed data about geo­log­ic haz­ards, so we can make bet­ter deci­sions about our next steps. Col­lec­tive­ly, these pro­pos­als would cost only a few mil­lion dollars.

Yet only one was includ­ed in Gov­er­nor Inslee’s pro­posed bud­gets for the upcom­ing bien­ni­um… and even then, the full amount request­ed was­n’t pro­vid­ed. We call on the House and Sen­ate to fund each of these pro­pos­als in their entirety.

The three bud­get requests are as follows:

• FY 2019–2021 cap­i­tal bud­get request: $5 mil­lion for school seis­mic safe­ty (funds 3.3 FTEs to con­duct com­pre­hen­sive seis­mic and engi­neer­ing assess­ments on approx­i­mate­ly four hun­dred school build­ings in areas of Wash­ing­ton at high risk of earth­quake damage)
• FY 2019–2021 oper­at­ing bud­get request: $2.9 mil­lion for glacial land­slide research (funds a detailed study of the Stil­laguamish Val­ley to advance the under­stand­ing of how glacial geol­o­gy influ­ences the land­slides in this area and oth­er areas of Wash­ing­ton with sim­i­lar geology)
• FY 2019–2021 oper­at­ing bud­get request: $234,000 for post-wild­fire land­slide teams (funds over­time and trav­el costs for sci­en­tists to assem­ble, lead, and direct a team to inspect areas fol­low­ing wild­fires for post-fire envi­ron­men­tal haz­ards such as landslides)

Addi­tion­al­ly, DNR has pro­posed invest­ing $632,000 in the next bien­ni­um and $292,000 per year after that to explore renew­able ener­gy sources to pro­mote rur­al economies. Fund­ing would allow DNR to map high and low tem­per­a­ture geot­her­mal resources and drill wells to test poten­tial geot­her­mal sites. While this request does not per­tain to geo­log­ic haz­ards, we believe it should be fund­ed too.

Fund­ing these essen­tial pro­pos­als in full is one of NPI’s top leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties for this ses­sion. I have repeat­ed­ly tes­ti­fied before the House Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee and the Sen­ate Ways & Means Com­mit­tee in sup­port of increased fund­ing for geo­log­ic haz­ards research, and I plan to do so again on NPI’s behalf.

We urge Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans in the Leg­is­la­ture to join forces in sup­port of fund­ing geo­log­ic haz­ards research. We can’t keep putting this off.

Our state is grow­ing; more peo­ple con­tin­ue to move here and start busi­ness­es here. We all deserve a gov­ern­ment that is work­ing to under­stand the risks of the haz­ards around us and pre­pare for the worst.

We’ve seen what earth­quakes, tsunamis, slides, and lahars can do.

The Nisqually quake in 2001 was a wake-up call. So was the Oso slide five years ago. No more delay­ing; it’s time to act! We’re a wealthy state.

We have the resources. Let’s appro­pri­ate the mon­ey and empow­er DNR to gath­er the data that we need to make sound deci­sions for our future.