Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Climate And Sustainability topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Mercer Island staff review progress on climate action plan, highlight gaps for 2030 targets
Summary
City sustainability staff reviewed the city's 2023 Climate Action Plan implementation, reporting modest community emissions reductions, growth in heat-pump installations and waste-diversion pilots, and planned work on EV charging and municipal electrification.
Sustainability staff updated the Mercer Island City Council on the city's Climate Action Plan implementation and the new biennial Sustainability Work Program during a study session Tuesday evening.
The presentation summarized achieved and ongoing items, noting the city's community greenhouse gas inventory shows a 7% drop from the 2007 baseline but only about a 1% decrease versus the 2022 report. "We still have about 43% to go to reach our 2030 goal," Sustainability Program Analyst Elena Deregatas said, adding that municipal operations emissions fell about 18% compared with 2022 after improved municipal solid-waste tracking.
The nut graf: the council heard that several city efforts are advancing but that the largest gaps remain in community transportation and building emissions. Staff emphasized that many near-term actions depend on regional programs and grants and that the city will pursue a multi-year implementation strategy focused on municipal electrification, waste diversion, and charging infrastructure.
Key implementation highlights and near-term work
- Heat-pump installations: Mercer Island participates in the Energy Smart Eastside program. Deregatas said the city logged more than 20 heat-pump installs in 2024 through the program, and most of those installs were grant-funded. "The vast majority of all of these installs were funded by grants," she said.
- Waste and organics: A consultant contacted 49 commercial and multifamily properties as part of compliance work for the state's organics-management law. Staff reported a 2023 community residential diversion rate near 70% for residential waste but commercial and multifamily diversion remained near 30%. The consultant's early outreach had diverted "over 3 additional tons" of food waste to composting at pilot sites.
- Ridwell pickups: The city partnered with Ridwell for two curbside collection events for plastic film and expanded EPS ("styrofoam") collection and reported collecting about 36,100 pounds across both events.
- Electric landscaping equipment pilot: Parks operations piloted five backpack electric leaf blowers and four handheld units. Staff reported mixed results: several units failed within a year, some batteries lasted only about 40 minutes in regular use, and the electric units cost more and weigh more than gas equivalents. The pilot remains active; councilmembers asked staff to monitor reliability and neighboring-city bans before any local regulation.
- Tree planting and open-space monitoring: The city has issued 51 tree-voucher incentives to homeowners and contracted a forest-health assessment of city open spaces; staff said the consultant's report is due at month-end and will inform when sites shift from restoration to long-term monitoring and maintenance.
- Green power and solar campaigns: Staff said they will run a Green Power sign-up campaign with local utilities targeting 100 new enrollments this calendar year (current sign-ups roughly 1,400'1,500) and a regional "Solarized Eastside" residential solar enrollment effort launching in late February.
- EV charging infrastructure plan: The city received a Department of Commerce Climate Planning grant to deliver an EV-charging plan in two phases. Staff will begin a municipal-phase plan (including fleet electrification and conduit-ready design for a planned public-safety and maintenance building) to meet a June grant deliverable, followed by a communitywide phase later in the biennium.
Council discussion and next steps
Councilmembers asked for more precise tree-canopy baseline data (staff said a new tree-canopy assessment is planned this year), clarification on how organics rules apply to shared dumpsters and multi-tenant buildings, and follow-up on coordination with the Mercer Island School District on EV charging sites. Staff recommended adopting interim steps in the work program and returning with cost estimates and implementation schedules for council review.
Staff emphasized the need to align grant-funded regional initiatives with local investments to close the remaining emissions gap by 2030. The council did not take formal action during the study session; staff will return with implementation milestones and (where required) budget requests during the biennium.
