Washington County finalizes first Climate Action Plan, outlines community-driven steps

Washington County public health staff presented the county’s first Climate Action Plan to the SPHER board, saying the plan unifies existing departmental efforts, identifies scalable actions and will be published as a PDF by the end of the calendar year.

County public health leaders said the plan grew from two years of consultant-supported work and community engagement and is intended to guide climate mitigation and adaptation work across county departments. "So, our Washington County's first climate action plan, is a modest step towards unifying our existing and planned department climate work under shared goals, creating scalable actions," said Kathleen Johnson, senior program coordinator in the county’s environmental health branch.

The plan’s development included 50 unique engagement opportunities and about 750 participants, according to presenters, who described listening sessions, focus groups, interviews and an online survey used to reach communities that are often more affected by climate hazards. The team listed outreach to Latinx, Chinese, Vietnamese, African American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, Russian and Ukrainian, Arabic-, Somali- and Pashto-speaking communities, and populations including youth, older adults, rural residents, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, people experiencing homelessness and people facing food insecurity.

Presenters said the Climate Action Plan is funded in part through the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) via a state program element identified in the presentation and through a Department of Energy Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant to support mitigation activities. The plan includes sample actions such as integrating adaptation and mitigation into county operations, increasing community education and capacity building, monitoring and reporting climate impacts, improving building energy efficiency, supporting alternative fuels and electric vehicles, and expanding multimodal transportation options.

Erin Jolley, public health program supervisor and the county’s modernization lead, said county staff across departments have formed an internal collaborative to coordinate implementation. "We held the first meeting in late October, and a next step is to develop a charter and roles and responsibilities for the group," Jolley said. The presenters said the collaborative will track actions in an internal matrix that records department leads and progress, and will provide memos or presentations to the board; officials expect a fall 2025 update and said they may offer a memo or work session in fall 2026.

Board members praised the outreach and breadth of the plan. One commissioner said staff had "done a phenomenal job" assembling the work and outreach and voiced confidence in the plan’s direction. Kathleen Johnson credited colleagues by name for support on the project, singling out Hyland Edelman for assistance in the planning process.

The county’s next steps are operationalizing the collaborative, drafting a charter, and beginning the tracking and reporting cadence described to the board. The county said the final plan document will be made available in PDF format by the end of the calendar year.