Resilience on Seattle's Waterfront

Executive Director of the Duwamish River Community Coalition (aka the River Queen)

South Park community members and others who know Paulina López affectionately call her the River Queen because of her long history of successful advocacy for the Duwamish River and its adjacent neighborhoods—South Park and Georgetown. 

But Paulina didn’t always live in South Park. Originally, she came from Ecuador. When she moved to Seattle, she lived in a neighborhood farther north. “I was very, very depressed when I first moved to Seattle,” said Paulina. “I lived a couple years in isolation and sadness.” People would say they wanted to spend time together, and it wouldn’t happen. “For a long time, I didn’t feel like we belonged to any community.” 

Paulina first saw South Park while house hunting with her husband and decided right away it was where she wanted to live. “I saw South Park as a beautiful neighborhood. At that point, I was growing my family, and I wanted my kids to grow in a culture like mine. I saw a lot of people speaking Spanish. I saw a beautiful river, and everything gave me a sense of community.” 

It’s that sense of community that Paulina loves most about living in South Park. She said: “Many people, especially within the Latino community, are very tight. We know each other’s names, and there’s a sense of solidarity in terms of supporting each other through tough times. We also have a library and a community center close by where the staff know all the kids’ names. I love that. That makes me feel safe. You can go to restaurants and see neighbors. Just this last year, we celebrated New Year’s with our neighbors, and that felt good. I don’t know anywhere else you can go in Seattle where you’re celebrating holidays with neighbors.” 

“Also,” says Paulina, “the diversity that South Park brings is what I always wanted for my kids-- to show them the world is big and there are many cultures present and we need to be respectful of that.” She also likes how people speak their minds and mean what they say.

Finally, she loves the affordability of South Park and having accessibility to the river. “It was like win, win, win, win, win,” she explains, about moving to the neighborhood. 

Paulina serves as executive director for  DRCC , which advocates for the Duwamish Valley, oversees youth leadership programs, pushes for higher cleanup standards for the Duwamish River, co-leads research with academic institutions and agencies, and helps build and improve the area’s green infrastructure, among other things. 

Her vision for the climate resilience hub is investment in an infrastructure that will help families thrive. This might mean building more community-centered and -owned spaces, youth centers, multipurpose buildings, and high schools. For example, she would like to see Maritime High School brought to the area from its current location in Des Moines. 

She also hopes that better legislation will be passed to regulate pollutants. In the future, she envisions people in South Park and Georgetown living in a healthy environment, with a level of affordability that can bring back the people who have already been displaced. She’d like to see youth growing up in a more just environment with more constructive activities and fewer gangs. 

If you ask Paulina about the biggest environmental threats to the Duwamish Valley, she will list many: air pollution, water pollution, crime, flooding, and gentrification. “They’re all related,” she explains. “It gives people a lot of anxiety as we wonder whether it’s the same South Park as we used to enjoy.” 

Development and Advocacy Manager for the Duwamish River Community Coalition and volunteer with countless other local organizations

“My time at DRCC has helped me figure out the hierarchy of city departments, so I often know who to call if there’s an issue or question,“ said Robin. “That’s my favorite part of the job—when someone says ‘I don’t know who to call,’ and I can say ‘I know just the person.’”

“I also attend a bunch of community meetings among lots of groups and organizations in South Park and Georgetown with the hopes that I’ll hear what folks are talking about and how DRCC can support their priorities,” said Robin. 

Robin also works with the South Park Neighborhood Association, the Concord International Elementary School Parent Teacher Association, Greening Concord, the Duwamish Waterway Park Steering Committee, the Georgetown Community Council, and the Duwamish Valley Affordable Housing Coalition, among other groups.

One of the most pressing issues Robin hears about from community members is affordability—the reason that Robin and her husband moved to South Park years ago. “We were house hunting in 2006 and couldn’t afford anything in Seattle until we found South Park. We both grew up in Seattle, but I don’t think either of us had ever heard of South Park. This was the one house we could afford.” 

“It turns out this is a really great place to raise a family,” said Robin. “There’s a sense that you can lean on people and that we’re all in the same thing together. I never had that in Capitol Hill, where I grew up.”

Robin’s backyard is currently set up with a big tent over a couch and chairs. It was for the pandemic, she explains, so she and her husband could still safely host neighbors. “We had a lot of fun out there for sure,” said Robin.    

Now the neighborhood is coping with the aftermath of a different threat. 

Robin’s block is lined with storage pods paid for by the city to store belongings salvaged from flooded homes. Robin’s house was the only one on the block not flooded with up to 3 feet of flood water in the basement during the severe flooding event of December 2022. She and her husband installed a system of sump pumps after they experienced flooding years ago.

Flooding didn’t top the list of community members’ priorities in the fall of 2022 when the SASPER survey was conducted, but it has risen in priority since. There is no agreement on a strategy to protect homes from future flooding. Changes to infrastructure, such as building a protective wall, must be weighed against costs to the salmon habitat that community members have worked so hard to restore. Robin and Paulina Lopez (see accompanying profile) both hope that any future decisions will be based on sound science and community input.

There’s also the question of affordability. Once investments are made in a community, property values tend to go up. To combat this, Robin would like to see more affordable units built; engagement with community members at risk of being displaced; and a stronger career pipeline so that youth can get jobs with livable wages in local industries. 

Both Robin and Paulina emphasize that there is no one top concern for the Duwamish Valley, but that all the issues faced by the community are interconnected. 

Senior at Chief Sealth International High School

Early in the morning of December 27, 2022, the Duwamish River overtopped its banks and began flooding South Park. “I woke up to my mom yelling upstairs because the river had just come into our backyard and was starting to come in our house. I jumped out of bed in shorts real quick and started moving stuff upstairs before water could get to it,” said Oscar Haney. Eventually, the level of water in his basement reached a foot and a half.

Oscar Haney is a 17-year-old student at Chief Sealth International High School. He’s lived in South Park since he was three.

Oscar and his younger brother, Henry, were sleeping in their basement bedrooms when the flood began. Afterward, they had to throw out all their furniture—their beds, mattresses, dressers, washer, dryer, couch and coffee table were all ruined by the water. They were able to save their clothes and some pictures. Other pictures were lost, along with an irreplaceable accordion that belonged to their great-grandmother. 

The flood was of a magnitude not expected in the Duwamish Valley for another 30 years, according to climate models. It occurred due to a combination of factors, including higher-than-average tides, rain runoff, and melting snow. 

In total, more than two dozen households evacuated. In the immediate aftermath, neighbors and community organizations sprang up to help. One neighbor loaned Oscar’s family a pump to remove water from their basement. It took 12 hours, according to Oscar. His family’s own pump had stopped working when it became submerged.

More help came from DRCC, a group that supports the well-being of communities in the Duwamish Valley. The sense of community in South Park is the feature that Oscar says he likes best about his neighborhood. “I really got to see it after the flooding when people like Carmen [Martinez] and DRCC came down to help as soon as it happened and gave us free food and resources to help with the cleanup."

After seeing DRCC in action, Oscar joined the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps, a group formed by DRCC to provide community service and job development opportunities to youth in the Duwamish Valley. “After that, I got to be on the other side, and it helped me to feel like I’m more a part of my community.” 

Months after the flooding, Oscar and his brother couldn’t move back home. The basement was gutted—walls gone, floor gone. The City housed them temporarily in a house in West Seattle and a hotel downtown. They also stayed with their dad, who lives in a different neighborhood. 

Oscar’s family knew that the flood was a possibility and had come home early from a trip because of it, but it still came as a shock. It was scary. “It was like experiencing a major impact of climate change. That was one of the first things I thought. This is the climate crisis right here, and I’m living it.”

Oscar says that his mom thinks she’ll leave South Park in the next five years, when his brother is done with high school. “I don’t think we’ll live in South Park after that.”

Duwamish Valley Advisor to the City of Seattle and a world leader building Seattle’s resilience and equity

When Alberto J. Rodríguez started working with the City of Seattle in 2016, a large part of his job involved helping to develop a joint City and community strategy for South Park and Georgetown, known as the  Duwamish Valley Action Plan . Alberto knew these communities well after working for DRCC for the previous five years. 

Alberto describes the plan, which was released in June 2018, as a “comprehensive environmental justice, equitable development, and anti-displacement strategy.” Responsible implementation will be critical. “If approached individually or without alignment to racial equity outcomes, the very injustices and inequities we are trying to address could be perpetuated.”

The City committed to implementing a big portion of the plan from 2018 to 2023. “I’m super proud to say that we have been at it,” said Alberto, “Not without challenges or delays—for example, two years of the pandemic. But we’re in a very decent place as far as midterm opportunities are concerned.”

The work of Alberto’s team helped position the City of Seattle to get one of six grants from the Center for Community Investment (CCI) to support efforts to build climate change adaptation, comprehensive climate resilience and community resilience in Seattle. 

The CCI grant allowed Alberto, colleagues from the City, Duwamish Valley community partners, and a member of a local philanthropic group to travel to other cities across the US to share and receive technical support and coaching and to support other teams designing solutions to challenges identified by each city or region. 

“It was serendipitous! By the time CCI wrapped up, there was a global call for proposals from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. To my knowledge, for the first time ever, they were looking to fund projects at the intersection of climate change, health, and equity. We thought it was a stretch, but we decided to put our name in the hat,” said Alberto. His team competed with teams from all over the world. 

“Our project to actually implement the Resilience District vision that we co-designed with community and philanthropy was one of the six projects chosen. I’m super proud to say that we were the only one funded at the maximum level they were offering,” said Alberto. “This support will allow us to establish the Duwamish Valley Resilience District.”

The  Resilience District  initiative for Seattle has three main components:

1. Testing the hypothesis that some kind of physical infrastructure is needed to protect communities from sea level rise. This could be sea wall; a multipurpose berm with a trail, salmon habitat, and other benefits to the community; floodable open space; or a temporary barrier. 
2. Figuring out how to pay for the physical infrastructure while ensuring that the benefits are distributed equitably to all affected parties, including community members and industry. For example, is it possible to capture some value from public investment and use it to fund other priorities such as affordable housing?
3. Deciding what the role of the community in decision-making should be. This means identifying, supporting, or creating a community group or coalition of groups with the capacity to participate in deal-making and capital investments.   

As far as SASPER goes, “the timing was perfect,” according to Alberto. SASPER provided two things that were particularly helpful to the City’s climate and community resilience efforts.

The first was help spreading the word about the City’s efforts. “We needed to tell people, ‘We’re embarking on this journey, and we need your help, we need your feedback, we need your support,’” said Alberto. “Honestly, in the seven years I’ve been at the City, I don’t think we’ve ever had the capacity to go door-knocking and conduct such an extensive campaign of spreading the word about our work.”      

The second benefit of SASPER was confirmation from community members that they would support planned resilience efforts, including by using the resilience hubs that the City plans to establish in these neighborhoods. Resilience hubs are community spaces that would provide basic services in times of emergency. For example, they might provide clean air, heat, cooling, water, showers, and other essentials. 

At the same time, many of the SASPER results confirmed what the City already knew from years of soliciting community input. At this point, “a lot of the homework has been done,” according to Alberto. “The communities have provided feedback. Now we just need to bring it to life.”

Former Master’s Student in the University of Washington Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences

Sam Lovell says she went into the SASPER project with no expectations. “I’ve never participated in a project like this, and didn’t know what to expect,” she said. It was a good fit though, because, as she put it, “I like to do community-engaged research to inform policy, not just research for research’s sake, and this was the ultimate community-engaged project.”

Sam was most surprised by the size of the project and the amount of effort it took to pull off. She hadn’t participated in a door-to-door survey before, and it was a lot to organize. “It was an incredible experience and amazing that it all worked out so well.”

The survey methods for SASPER were based on the CASPER strategy developed by the CDC. CASPER is a flexible tool based on epidemiological methods and designed to quickly assess the needs, strengths, and priorities of a community to aid in planning, crisis response, and resource distribution. It can be used either before or after a disaster.

Before the SASPER team began its surveys, Amy Schnall from the CDC trained the student and staff surveyors. She also provided training for youth from the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps who would help lead the survey effort. 

On survey days, teams showed up early and were given folders with introductory scripts, paper surveys, guidance documents, gift cards for participants, forms to track gift cards, snacks, and drinks—more logistics than any one surveyor could realistically manage alone. When a community member did not speak English or any of the languages spoken by the survey team members, translators were available by phone to assist.   

When it came time to draft the final report, Sam ushered her draft through many rounds of revision with all partners, including the Duwamish River Community Coalition, the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps, the City of Seattle, Public Health — Seattle & King County, King County, Washington State Department of Health, and University of Washington (UW) researchers, including those affiliated with the UW Interdisciplinary Center for Exposures, Diseases, Genomics & Environment.

Principal & Director of Community Partnerships for Dirt Corps

If you drive along 8th Avenue toward the Duwamish River in Georgetown, you’ll pass industrial sites on both sides. There’s Markey Machine Company, Provisioners Warehouse and Transportation Services, and a Recology Waste Zero Operations facility. Big trucks line the street, and graffiti covers the fences.

At the end of the road, however, you’ll find something different: giant poplar trees over 40 years old and native plants like vine maple, wild rose, and Oregon grape beginning to establish. You might see a person fishing for salmon or catch a glimpse of Mount Rainier.

If you're lucky, you’ll see Andrew Schiffer teaching a group of youth to restore the ecological health of the park while providing them with job training.  

Andrew co-leads Dirt Corps, an organization that gives people of all kinds a way to do something about our current environmental crisis. “Right now, there are many folks who want to do something to address climate change, and Dirt Corps offers paid training to youth and adults who want to get involved with the plants, rivers, and soil. However, the environmental movement at large is trying to figure out how to make a whole lot more people care enough to generate the massive changes that are needed."

"We’re saying, ‘No, seriously though, we’re not just being hyperbolic, this is an actual emergency. We’re driving off the cliff right now, and we are very close to the edge.’” He laughed, but it was clear he was serious.  

Andrew, a transgender man, has a long history of activism for queer and trans rights, but it was only after moving to Georgetown that his activism became place-based rather than identity-based. “This is a very different kind of activism,” said Andrew, “because I meet all different kinds of people and have all different kinds of conversations, and caring about this neighborhood and the Duwamish River brings us together across many other differences.”

The thing that Andrew loves most about living in Georgetown is contributing to the community. “I don’t know how else to say this, but I am a person here. I know who a lot of people in the community are. They know who I am. I’m involved in a lot of different aspects of things. I know what’s going on.”

Things were different when Andrew lived on Capitol Hill. “I knew my bartenders (a common sentiment on Capitol Hill at that time), but I didn’t know my neighbors,” he said. Now almost every time he comes to the park on 8th Avenue, he runs into someone he knows. 

According to Andrew, Georgetown is different from South Park in some important ways. In his experience, fewer languages are spoken in Georgetown. There’s a more visible immigrant population in South Park. Georgetown is more gentrified—it has more of an arts culture with some affordable lofts and studio spaces. South Park has more people overall and more families. In his experience, South Park has more BIPOC people in roles of leadership within community organizations.

While both Georgetown and South Park are changing rapidly in response to the need for affordable housing, things are tricky. As older single-family homes come down to make way for townhomes, trees and gardens get lost. “This is not a place that can afford the loss of those trees and those gardens from an air pollution and human health perspective. I also recognize the benefits of urban density. No one’s good or bad in this situation. It’s just that there’s some stickiness,” said Andrew.

Complicating the issues further is the fact that the pollution in the Duwamish Valley is one reason its neighborhoods are affordable. “There’s a game: what’s that smell?” said Andrew. “If you go on the neighborhood Facebook page, you can see that at least once a week, someone’s posting ‘Does anyone smell that? Does anyone know what that is?’” Many new community members don’t understand the health impacts of the environmental threats in the neighborhood, including noise pollution from jets and road traffic.

“This is a place where you see the costs of being a major city,” said Andrew. “It can be shocking, at least for people like me who grew up in a middle-class neighborhood where the industrial aspects of our society, and their associated costs, were located elsewhere.” There’s industry. There’s pollution. There’s crime.

Negotiating needed infrastructure upgrades with the City also complicates the necessary growth. According to Andrew, some changes have been “very much a person with a pencil and plans, and they did whatever they wanted.” 

In contrast, Andrew says Alberto is doing a good job building the resilience district because he’s being careful to educate community members about what’s helpful and functional in a disaster before asking for input on the plans. The SASPER project itself has been an important way to let people know about the City’s efforts to build a resilience district and to provide information about what that might mean. The goal is for everyone to contribute to a shared vision for the future of the Duwamish Valley.

Andrew’s vision for Georgetown ten years from now is that it’s “a really engaging mix of arts, industry, and affordable living for all. People come down to the river all the time to play, swim, fish, boat, birdwatch, or just hang out. The 8th Avenue Park has been massively redone by the city and port and community in partnership, and it’s an excellent spot to gather with friends, host events, or sit quietly by the river. Green infrastructure overlays everything in the area with industry still present and functioning, so there’s that mix. Lots more trees planted. Affordable housing. Green stormwater infrastructure. Rent control for artists and everyone.”

It's clear that he can go on and will—both with his vision and with his activism. 

Coordinator of Community Outreach at Villa Comunitaria

Just days after the Duwamish River topped its banks in December 2022, Villa Comunitaria received a call from Paulina Lopez of DRCC (see accompanying profile) saying South Park community members needed help.

As coordinator of community outreach at Villa Comunitaria, Maribel Pastor was not experienced in emergency response, but she knew how to build relationships and overcome systemic barriers—especially for communities of Spanish-speaking immigrants like those in many of the homes directly impacted by the flooding. 

“We help the immigrant community navigate the system,” said Maribel of Villa Comunitaria. “We help with everything from offering English as a second language and computer classes to applying for citizenship, getting a driver’s license, health insurance, finding a job and housing, building credit, buying a home, connecting to health resources, or learning about how to help kids at school starting in the earliest learning stages. Villa Comunitaria doesn’t just help with basic resources. We bring support during all the stages of assimilation as an immigrant.” 

When Maribel and her team showed up after the flood, she found trailers offering free showers and laundry services, and many City of Seattle and Seattle Public Utilities teams offering provisions in a sort of “organized chaos,” as she put it. “There was so much to be briefed on—the cause of the flooding, the scope of the damage, the environmental impacts, temporary housing for neighbors, culturally appropriate food for impacted residents, cleaning, and especially the scope of work and responsibilities for each department.” Because sewage had backed up into homes during the flood, the brunt of the responsibility fell on Seattle Public Utilities, the agency responsible for maintaining sewage lines.

“I think everybody was trying their best, but I don’t think the City of Seattle was prepared. A lot of departments were very involved, but at the same time you could see that there was not a preventive emergency or communications plan in place,” said Maribel.

“We became quick learners of pretty much every issue discussed,” said Maribel. “We started developing relationships with the neighbors, while delivering the food other nonprofits had provided. Every day, we would have a morning meeting and an evening debrief where we gave the feedback from the neighbors and we got answers from the City.”

One of the biggest challenges was finding ways to efficiently communicate with residents. Some agencies were very bureaucratic. “We ended up texting the residents one by one using our phones to communicate every new development, like, ‘Okay, the laundry is not working, or tomorrow, the meals are going to get delivered between 1 and 2 pm. You can come here, or we will deliver them to you.’”

Maribel’s team was made up of only three specialists: herself, Manuel, and Diana. In the beginning, they were working without a clear contract with the city and ignoring the huge workload that the flooding had created for the community-based organizations offering support. “You don’t really question if you want to support or not, you do it because the community needs it,” said Maribel.

More challenges arose when families needed to find short-term housing options or relocate more permanently. At first, families were moved to hotels. “But that can be a nightmare when you have kids,” said Maribel. Some had multigenerational families or rented with people they wanted to continue to live with. Some families wanted short-term solutions, some wanted long-term solutions, some changed their minds repeatedly, and some moved back into houses that hadn’t been renovated yet, despite health issues. “Neighbors were desperate,” said Maribel.

“We live in a culture that’s so individualistic that we don’t think of an individual as part of a community. This is a neighborhood that integrates different cultures, each with a different way of looking at things. They live in a system that is new for them, they need a place where they can be helped. A lot of community-based organizations try to become that cultural anchor. It would be great if we could just have the infrastructure and support to offer the neighbors that safe space,” said Maribel. 

“Up to this day, the assistance for the impacted families is keeping us very busy, but we are happy to help. We have built a relationship with the people impacted. We learned who they are, what they like, what colors they wanted for their new towels or bedding. It is about dignity and respect,” said Maribel. “You want them to feel like ‘We’re here. We care for you. We’re going to do our best. You’re not alone.’”

Now Villa Comunitaria is beginning to work with Seattle Public Utilities on flood resilience. “We already have the relationships we need so we think it’s going to be easier,” said Maribel.

One thing that surprised Maribel during the flood response is that, as critical as the work of community-based organizations was for emergency recovery or to support underserved communities, few were aware of the need for sustained investments in maintaining or building the capacity of local non-profits to assist in disaster response. “Everybody thanks us and says what a great job we’ve done, but there is not an urgency in supporting our efforts or for much-needed infrastructure so we can offer the community a place to use for emergencies or for everyday activities,” said Maribel.

Villa Comunitaria employs about 25 people, but it shares limited office space with four other nonprofit organizations in South Park.

While resilience planning to date has focused on physical infrastructure, SASPER has also shown clearly that community members prioritize building the capacity of community-based organizations like Villa Comunitaria.