How We Choose What We Work On

“So, what are you even working on right now?”
“Why isn’t RE Sources taking on [insert development proposal here]?”
“I don’t get why you’re working on issue X when you should be working on project Y!”

The great thing about being a regionally-based advocacy organization is that we get to engage with our community on a daily basis. Inevitably, we hear variations of the questions above. They’re fair and vital questions and they help keep us accountable to the communities we serve.

We’ve made a deliberate choice to advocate for environmental protections across a specific geography and on a broad spectrum of issues — namely the protecting the Salish Sea, healthy forests and watersheds, slashing pollution and waste, and climate change and clean energy. The resulting challenge is that across those issues, there’s no shortage of emerging developments with the potential to grow into major threats to Northwest Washington’s lands, waters and communities.

Given that we — like most local environmental and climate advocacy groups — have finite financial resources, we focus on policy solutions that, if enacted, can prevent big, fraught, ill-conceived development proposals from ever seeing the light of day. It’s similar to focusing on preventative medicine rather than waiting for an emergency and then treating one symptom at a time. For grassroots advocacy, preventive care looks like consistent participation and collaboration. We have staff and allies regularly attend county and city council meetings, and serve on a variety of advisory committees, task forces, and coalitions, all so we can advance science-backed, environmentally conscious, equitable approaches to local issues raised and counter harmful proposals before they can pick up steam.

Try as we might, we can’t be on top of everything, everywhere, all at once, and our input doesn’t always win the day. That’s where collaboration comes in. When a project proposal emerges and impacts are acutely felt in a specific community or neighborhood, we’re glad to see when community groups sprout up to raise the issue’s profile. If a community group’s work is proving effective and is aligned with our mission and goals, we prefer to add support and expertise where it’s helpful and leverage our relationships and communications platforms to amplify the voices of that community. It’s not always the best use of our capacity to duplicate leadership efforts.

Of course, each project or development proposal that arises can illuminate cracks in our current community plans, zoning rules and policy frameworks, which is why we still pay close attention. We can, and do, submit letters requesting environmental impact statements for a wide array of proposals. When that’s insufficient, we activate our list of 12,000 local community members with opportunities to petition, contact decision makers, testify at hearings, phone bank and attend rallies.

A lens for evaluating emerging issues

Mobilization takes time and resources, so we do our best every day to walk the line between being responsive and reactive. To keep our focus and impact sharp, we evaluate emerging issues along key criteria:

Most of the time, when a community member expresses concern that we’re not engaging on an issue, a short conversation reveals that we’re indeed involved and making progress. That said, there are times when we don’t communicate our efforts and educate folks sufficiently. There are also times community inquiries alert us to major issues we wouldn’t have known about otherwise. That’s why we’ll keep showing up, listening, and responding both in watershed moments and in seemingly mundane Tuesday evening committee meetings.

If you’d like to see more being done on certain issues, don’t hesitate to contact us. We want to hear from you. If you have the means, please also consider supporting our work in any way you can. The best way to ensure we can stop more environmentally damaging proposals and advance more solutions is to support our local advocacy consistently, in quiet times as well as momentous ones. After all, we don’t fund firefighters only on days that a fire breaks out. Now more than ever, local advocates are some of the only lines of defense polluters face with real consequences. As long as we’re around, we’ll make sure environmental interests are represented in decisions about how to best build a thriving, just and healthy Northwest Washington.

Regional Meetings

Bellingham City Council Meetings
Bellingham City Planning Commission meetings
Whatcom County Council Meetings
Whatcom County Planning Commission meetings
Public Utility District #1 Commissioner meetings
Port of Bellingham Commissioner meetings

Committees

WRIA 1 Watershed Planning Unit
City of Bellingham’s Water Resources Advisory Board
Whatcom County Climate Impact Advisory Committee
Cherry Point and Fidalgo Bay Aquatic Reserve Citizen Stewardship Committees

Coalitions

See our Partners page for a list of community partners and coalitions.

1. It’s worth noting that part of the reason we haven’t had another major fossil fuel battle like the Gateway Pacific Terminal is that we persisted for a decade to pass code amendments in 2021 prohibiting projects like it from ever being built in Whatcom County. ↩︎