King County’s redeveloped Bow Lake Recycling and Transfer Station was designed and built with sustainability in mind, and the U.S. Green Building Council has now certified Bow Lake with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification.

“Having a recycling and transfer station that is certified LEED platinum is an example of how our physical plants complement the work we do,” said Executive Dow Constantine. “We are more effective at protecting our environment when the facilities we operate are as sustainable as the services we provide.”

The new recycling and transfer station reopened to solid-waste collection in July 2012 after a multi-year rebuilding project on the site of an old landfill. Some of the sustainable design features that improve energy efficiency and help keep costs down include:

• Translucent skylights and window panels that allow natural daylight into the building
• Harvesting rainwater instead of purchasing water for use in washing down the transfer station floors; and
• More than 90 percent of the wood used was sustainably harvested through the Forest Stewardship Council.

The recycling and transfer station also includes recycled content building materials such as steel, asphalt and concrete, while landscaping with drought-tolerant plants cuts irrigation costs.

Bow Lake’s environmental benefits don’t end at the recycling and transfer station’s property line.

New and highly efficient garbage compactors are used to ensure transfer trailer loads are optimized. The result is a 30 percent reduction in transfer trailer trips to the County’s Cedar Hills Regional Landfill, which means lower fuel costs, and an estimated annual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of more than 172 metric tons.

The LEED Rating System is a voluntary, consensus-based national rating system for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. LEED addresses all building types and emphasizes state-of-the-art strategies in six areas: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials and resources selection, indoor environmental quality, and innovation and design.

Garbage disposal services were not disrupted during facility redevelopment. Bow Lake takes in roughly one-third of all the tonnage received by the County’s solid waste transfer system.

The station reflects modern trends in transfer stations featuring a wide array of recycling opportunities, including appliances, bicycles, textiles and shoes, along with standard recyclables such as cardboard, mixed paper, glass bottles and jars, and plastic bottles, tubs and jugs. Customers can even drop off home-generated medical sharps for safe disposal at the facility, which is located at 18800 Orillia Rd. S.

Recycling hours are Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 8p.m., and 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

King County’s Shoreline Recycling and Transfer Station, which was reopened to the public in 2008, was the nation’s first LEED Platinum transfer station.

On a blustery Saturday night last month, seven volunteers served a home-cooked meal to 150 homeless men and women at Operation Nightwatch, a ministry located in Seattle. The volunteers included stalwarts in the Department of Public Defense as well as their relatives – DPD Division Director Donald Madsen and his wife, Chief Justice Barbara Madsen, DPD Senior Staff Attorney Jonathan Newcomb and his daughter Natalie, DPD Seattle Municipal Court Supervisor Karen Murray and DPD financial controller Anne Dolan and her husband Cary.

As that night’s coordinator, Karen had checked the kitchen pantry a few days before to decide what donated food items would be used to prepare the night’s meal. The menu was simple: grilled cheese sandwiches, along with garden vegetable and chicken noodle soup. All told, more than 250 sandwiches were distributed that night.

This wasn’t the first time employees from the Associated Counsel for the Accused, now a division within the county’s Department of Public Defense, stepped up to serve meals to homeless residents. ACA began volunteering with Operation Nightwatch four years ago, part of a conscious effort to channel the firm’s volunteer efforts toward those activities that directly touched the lives of many of their clients.

Pam Pasion, ACA’s Assistant Drug Court Supervisor, brought Operation Nightwatch to ACA’s attention after she met with Nightwatch staff to discuss some of the unmet needs ACA volunteers could fulfill. She quickly saw that the populations Operation Nightwatch served were some of the same people who entered the criminal justice system due to ongoing issues of substance abuse, mental illness or physical and emotional abuse – a population that mostly goes unnoticed because they’re homeless. Operation Nightwatch is a nighttime ministry whose mission is to provide the homeless with shelter and food. Those in need are treated with respect and dignity by Nightwatch staff and volunteers, and, for a window of time, they become visible.

Karen Murray, left, checks the soup, while others make sandwiches. In the foreground at far right is Don Madsen.Photo Credit: Jonathan Newcomb.

Since Pam introduced ACA to Operation Nightwatch, ACA staff have volunteered 21 times, and they now know a thing or two about the needs of the organization’s clients. As a result, ACA volunteers handed out not only home-cooked meals on that rainy February night but also dry socks and toiletry kits – items donated by dozens of ACA employees.

These efforts are in keeping with the mission of ACA and now the Department of Public Defense, which seeks to provide high-quality legal representation to clients and to do so with a profound respect for their dignity and independence and an understanding of what’s driving their criminal behavior. Although the clients’ names change, the stories are often familiar, revealing histories of chemical abuse, physical abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, mental illness and sometimes homelessness. And ACA is not the only division that undertakes such efforts. DPD’s three other divisions – The Defender Association Division, Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons Division and the Northwest Defenders Division – have also embraced a range of volunteer activities, efforts that bring them closer to the needs of their clients.

The Department of Public Defense is increasingly focused on holistic defense – a kind of practice that recognizes clients have not only legal needs but also a wide range of social service needs. The goal is to provide excellent legal representation as well as seamless access to social supports, so that the client doesn’t quickly re-enter the legal system. And to do that well, a public defender needs to see the whole person and garner his or her trust. Experiences like those with Operation Nightwatch do both. They underscore what many in public defense know full well – that by meeting clients on their turf and in their communities, they’ll begin to establish relationships far stronger than those forged only in the courtroom.

(Article originally appeared in the Department of Public Defense’s For the Defense newsletter).

Employees from the King County Noxious Weed Program are helping to keep invasive weeds off local store shelves, with City People’s Garden Store in Seattle being the first to pledge to stop selling any of the invasive plants or noxious weeds that appear on King County’s Noxious Weed and Plants of Concern lists.

“These noxious weeds and invasive plants threaten our natural ecosystems by choking out native species,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine. “I commend City People’s for stepping up as the first store in King County to pledge not to sell these destructive plants to their customers.”

Employees with the King County Noxious Weed Program worked with City People’s Garden Store to develop details of the pledge, and now they are helping get the word out to customers about the hazards of noxious and invasive plants, including suggestions for native plant choices that are in harmony with the Pacific Northwest’s environment.

Pictured: Education Specialist Sasha Shaw helps businesses and residents understand the impact of noxious weeds on our environment

“Invasive plants such as English ivy, yellow archangel and butterfly bush are already overwhelming natural ecosystems in King County, so City People’s pledge not to sell these and other invasive plants is an important step toward reducing their impact to our area,” said Sasha Shaw, education specialist with the county’s noxious weed program.

New research into the relationship between climate change and invasive plants indicates their spread will only worsen in the Pacific Northwest because invasive plants are better able to capitalize on and respond to changing conditions.

“More rain and warmer temperatures are likely for King County and this will only increase the advantage of invasive plants,” Shaw said. “Stopping the further introduction of plants known to be invasive is an important first step to fighting the problems they cause.”

City People’s goal is to set a standard for other nurseries to follow and to raise awareness about invasive plants and how gardeners can make a difference by avoiding them in their gardens.

“We have always tried to be careful not to order plants that are invasive, but in working with King County, we found there were plants we hadn’t realized were a problem,” said City People’s co-owner Steve Magley. “Now the Garden Store can be more thorough in protecting our environment. We will lose a little money, but it’s the right thing to do.”

“We in the business community have to do our part, and we urge other garden stores, nurseries, and especially the big national chain stores to join us by ending the sale of these invasive plants,” Magley said.

Employees are invited to a lunch and learn to hear what a panel of their colleagues learned at the recent Governing for Racial Equity Conference in Portland, OR.

Several King County employees attended the third Governing for Racial Equity (GRE) Conference on March 25 and 26 to learn more about what other governments are doing to achieve racial equity and eliminate institutional and structural racism.

Join King County members of the GRE Planning Committee, conference presenters and other attendees as they share their learnings from the conference and help plan the next steps for our involvement.

• Tuesday, April 22, noon – 1:30 p.m. Chinook Building, Room 121-12
• Our panel: Paula Harris-White, Matias Valenzuela, Jo Anne Fox, Ericka Turley and Rebecca Spithill

Bring your lunch and get informed. No registration required.