At RE Sources, we delve into issues of complexity and nuance. This makes for more profound and lasting impacts, but it can make telling the stories of our work more difficult. It’s never easy to sum up a whole year, and the exercise can feel trite when you try. But 2024 feels particularly tricky to wrap up in a bow.
An election where anti-environment candidates won federally, yet Washington state bucked national trends. A new leadership model at RE Sources, moving from one executive director to three co-directors at the helm. A fully fledged stormwater pollution monitoring program, where the findings both confirm suspicions and surprise us at every turn.
As always — and especially right now — LOCAL advocacy is where we can make an outsized difference for protecting this place we love. Our deepest gratitude to all of you, who make this work possible every time you speak up at a public hearing, show up to a beach cleanup, or donate to RE Sources. Here are some wins you helped us secure this tumultuous year.
Major Milestones
- Soundly defeated ballot initiative 2117, an attempt to roll back Washington’s key climate law, the Climate Commitment Act. Our staff and volunteers reached 16,000 Whatcom County voters, and 65% of Whatcom voters rejected the initiative — a 3% higher margin than the rest of the state. Our community engagement specialist Seth Mangold mobilized local volunteers and knocked on more doors for the No 2117 campaign than any other individual in the state!
- Over 750 people on our Legislative Action Team list successfully advocated for the state legislature to pass several vital bills into law, such as funding zero-emission school buses, expediting plans to protect salmon from a toxic chemical found in tire dust, and securing $15 million of Climate Commitment Act funding for protecting mature forest acreage from logging. In February, 47 Washingtonians joined us and our partner orgs for Clean & Abundant Water Lobby Day, where they met with 18 legislators and staffers representing 12 districts to advocate for our water-related legislative priorities.
- Continued our leadership in monitoring Bellingham’s stormwater pollution and partnered to expand the program across Puget Sound. We released our Year 3 report (which sounded the alarm about fecal bacteria Taylor Dock) and supported the growth of the Salish Sea Stormwater Monitoring Program. Our model has been adopted by 7 cities in Northwest Washington. Now, we’re all harmonizing our data and results to start making a region-wide impact on the single largest source of pollutants entering Washington’s marine waters. If funding allows, we’re looking to add 2 more cities to the Program in 2025-26.
More ways you made a difference
Salish Sea Protection and Pollution Prevention
- 18 trained pollution monitoring volunteers and our staff took over 4,000 measurements of water quality parameters across 150 visits to stormwater outfalls in Bellingham, identifying problem spots for bacteria pollution and other contaminants. As a result of our monitoring, a new stormwater collaborative started meeting regularly, consisting of our staff and several public agencies, to continue tackling pollutants.
- With the help of 145 volunteers, we removed almost 1,200 pounds of trash from local beaches at our 9 beach cleanups.
- Spent about 50 hours on the water doing pollution patrols and hazardous algae sampling. These patrols help us identify potential contaminants going into the water so we can alert local agencies that can clean it up and, if necessary, close hazardous waters to recreation and fishing
- Hosted our annual Cherry Point Science Forum, where people got to hear from local scientists on their research about seagrasses, herring health, and invasive green crabs.
- Hosted two tours of Bellingham waterfront toxic cleanup sites (Model Toxics Control Act, or MTCA, sites) with over 120 attendees. These sites are being remediated for future use as public parks, business spaces, and residences — as well as better habitat for shoreline wildlife. Our tours offer folks a chance to connect with formerly off-limits sites along the industrial Bellingham Bay waterfront, and have their questions answered by officials and scientists directly involved with restoration.
Climate Action
- Launched advocacy for improving climate resilience in Skagit County as our region grows via two Comprehensive Plan update processes (to be continued in 2025), and presented at several community meetings about the processes underway. These processes are also the first time our counties and cities must plan for climate adaptation and mitigation. We’re continuing to work on three Comprehensive Plan updates: Skagit County, the City of Anacortes, and Whatcom County.
- Engaged as a stakeholder with the Department of Ecology in their rulemaking process for who should be financially responsible for oil spills. We also hosted a webinar to educate the public. The rule was adopted with some of our input taken, leading to increased oil company responsibility and closed loopholes.
- Following our advocacy and public engagement from 2017 to 2023 in partnership with the United Steelworkers labor union and BlueGreen Alliance, a new rule on Process Safety Management for oil refineries will go into effect on December 27, 2024.
Forest Protection and Watershed Health
- Hosted Governor Jay Inslee to visit the south end of Lake Whatcom, where 575 acres of forests were protected thanks to Climate Commitment Act funding this year, benefiting the drinking water source for more than 110,000 people. We chatted with Inslee about what the CCA means to this community, and he told us about awesome projects across the state it’s helping fund, such as electric school buses, heat pumps in nursing homes, and so much more.
- Community advocates rallied in January to show broad community support for a Whatcom County Council vote to officially accept protection of the 575 acres designated in 2023.
- Successfully urged Whatcom County Councilmembers to use their voice at the state level and ask the Dept. of Natural Resources to come up with a policy for protecting mature forests. For too long, we’ve had to oppose timber sales on a case-by-case basis, securing protections for some forests like Brokedown Palace but still losing forests like Little Lilly to logging. This is an ongoing process that we’re continuing — it can take several years for substantive change to long-standing policies! Most importantly, advocacy around addressing the conflict between school funding and timber revenue contributed to Whatcom County supporting K-12 funding as one of their legislative priorities in 2025.
- Led two community hikes in local forests aimed at connecting people with state-owned mature forests, the impacts of industrial logging, and how we can move toward a 21st century timber economy that allows us to harvest wood and still reap the benefits of intact older forests — like wildfire and drought resilience, flood reduction, carbon storage, and more.
- Convened and participated in monthly policy, outreach, and science sessions with 30+ Whatcom Forest Watch coalition members to coordinate forest advocacy at the local and state level.
Educating for the Environment
- Partnered with other local nonprofits and the Washington State ClimeTime program to equip 78 Whatcom County K-12 teachers with free professional development around incorporating climate change into the classroom (and outdoors!).
- Connected 31 high school students with avenues for local climate action through our Youth for the Environment & People (YEP!) program. Cohorts of students in Whatcom and Skagit counties implemented three semester-long projects in the community to address a different climate-related issue of the students’ choosing. In 2024, one cohort did an energy audit of a high school and proposed opportunities to the Bellingham Public School Board for saving money with more efficient lighting. Another cohort tackled mature forest protection and hosted an intergenerational letter-writing workshop, resulting in 43 handwritten messages to the Whatcom County Council.
- Three years of YEP! student participant surveys found that students on average are 34% more confident in their ability to make a positive impact on issues facing their community
- Created a lending library of fifteen take-home “kits” for teachers to integrate lessons and action projects on water quality and quantity and waste reduction in their classrooms.
- Conducted 11 waste assessments at schools across Whatcom County and provided each school with an action plan for reducing their waste, and resources and support for implementing it.
- Worked with Bellingham Public Schools to offer three professional development workshops for every first-grade teacher in the district. Teachers walked away with lessons and materials to teach streamside about watersheds and water quality.
Waste reduction at The RE Store
- Diverted 2,278,000 pounds of materials from the landfill through Salvage Services deconstruction jobs, store donations, and item pickups.
- Launched a Manufacturing Waste Diversion program partnership with Ferndale-based Samson Rope, one of the largest rope producers in the United States, where we take lengths of rope they can’t utilize and sell them in the Store. In its first year, we diverted almost 4,000 pounds of high-quality rope.
- 10 community members completed our Community Jobs Training Program, where people who encounter barriers to employment can get paid work experience at the Store. Over the last several years, 90% of our trainees got jobs or enrolled in local colleges after completing their terms.
Thank you for your ongoing support and advocacy during a challenging year for the nonprofit sector (and for many, many people in Northwest Washington). We are always impressed with the ways this community steps up to protect our home and make Washington state a beacon of hope and resilience.
To make sure we can keep building upon and defending our progress under attacks from the Trump administration, please consider making a year-end donation to RE Sources. All gifts are matched up to $10,000 until the end of 2024!