For decades, Washington’s Growth Management Act has required cities and counties to plan thoughtfully for growth — protecting farmland, guiding development, and building communities where people can thrive. In 2023, with advocacy from Futurewise and partner organizations, the Legislature took a major step forward: with the passage of House Bill 1181, Washington became one of the first states to require that local comprehensive plans directly confront the climate crisis.

We are now at the first test of that commitment.

What HB 1181 Actually Requires

HB 1181 added a new climate goal to the GMA and required every fully planning jurisdiction in Washington to update its comprehensive plan to include a climate element.

For the eleven largest counties and the cities with more than 6,000 residents on April 1, 2021 in those counties, their climate element must include a greenhouse gas emissions reduction subelement This includes Benton, Clark, Franklin, King, Kitsap, Pierce, Skagit, Snohomish, Spokane, Thurston, and Whatcom counties. The plan must identify specific, measurable actions the jurisdiction will take during the planning cycle to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and land use. Channeling growth into compact urban areas is one of the most effective land use tools for reducing emissions. Sprawl and rural development work in the opposite direction — people living farther from jobs, services, and transit drive more, and those driving patterns persist for the entire lifespan of the homes and buildings constructed there. The law is explicit: these aren’t aspirations. They must result in real reductions, and they must prioritize benefits to overburdened communities who bear the heaviest burden of air pollution and climate impacts.

All of the fully planning counties and cities must adopt a climate resiliency subelement. It must equitably enhance resiliency to — and avoid or substantially reduce the adverse impacts of — climate change. That means specific goals, policies, and programs designed to address sea level rise, flooding, wildfire, drought, extreme heat, and the other hazards that climate change is intensifying. The statute requires that the resiliency subelement “address” those hazards — a word that means “to make right,” not to study, encourage, or defer.

The first deadline for some jurisdictions was December 31, 2025. The first major comprehensive plan periodic update cycle to include these requirements is now complete — or should be.

When Counties Fall Short, We Act

Thurston County is among the jurisdictions that were required to comply with both the GHG reduction subelement and the resiliency subelement. In December 2025, the County adopted Resolution No. 16574 and Ordinance No. 16575 — its updated comprehensive plan and development regulations. While we recognize that Thurston County undertook significant data gathering and analysis and adopted some genuinely strong policies, the adopted plan as a whole falls substantially short of what the law requires.

In May, Futurewise filed a prehearing brief with the Growth Management Hearings Board challenging the County’s update on three grounds.

On greenhouse gas emissions, the County adopted a target of 95 percent emissions reduction by 2050 — and then failed to include the measurable policies needed to get there. Strategy after strategy in the County’s own analysis went unaddressed or was reduced to vague encouragement: where the plan should have committed to electrifying new buildings, reducing vehicle miles traveled, and protecting tree canopy, it instead called for “promoting” and “monitoring” and “encouraging.” Tree loss alone accounts for 46 percent of the projected reductions in the County’s own emissions analysis, and the plan adopted no meaningful policy to address it.

On climate resiliency, the County’s own records document serious, present hazards: the entire Puget Sound shoreline of unincorporated Thurston County lies within the sea level rise inundation zone, the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge faces inundation with nowhere inland for habitats to migrate, and 18,500 structures are already in the wildland-urban interface. Yet the resiliency subelement responds with commitments to study, encourage, and seek rather than policies that actually address those hazards — and the Legislature’s word is “address,” which means “to make right. Further, the County adopted no development regulations to implement even its own policy commitments.

On groundwater protection, the County’s updated development regulations also failed to include any provisions limiting groundwater withdrawals from permit-exempt wells to the 5,000 gallons per day required by state law.

We are now finalizing our reply brief and preparing for the hearing on the merits — scheduled for July 8, 2026 — with a Final Decision and Order expected from the Board by August 17.

Deepening Our Expertise

Enforcing climate law credibly requires understanding climate science and planning deeply — not just the legal standards, but the data, projections, and practices that give those standards their meaning. Earlier this year, Deputy Legal Director Brooke Frickleton completed the Certificate in Climate Action Planning through Gonzaga University’s Institute for Climate, Water, and the Environment. The 18-week program covered greenhouse gas accounting, climate vulnerability assessment, community resilience strategies, equity and social justice, and implementation planning. It reflects Futurewise’s commitment to building the in-house expertise that this work demands.

What Comes Next

The July 8 hearing is the first test of HB 1181’s climate requirements before the Growth Management Hearings Board — and the outcome will matter well beyond Thurston County. Meanwhile, the next December 2026, periodic update deadline has brought a new wave of comprehensive plan adoptions statewide, and we are reviewing them carefully for the same patterns of aspirational language and missing development regulations.

The Legislature made a clear choice when it passed HB 1181: climate planning is not optional, and aspirational language is not enough. The legislature also invested millions of dollars to help counties and cities meet these requirements, $300,000 in Thurston County alone. Futurewise’s job is to make that choice and those dollars mean something.