Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife 2/16/2024 Amendment 1

Page 2 of 13 OVERVIEW This project will engage urban property owners at the headwaters of Lake Washington (Sammamish River Watershed) to increase vegetation in riparian management zones in two city of Everett basins, Swamp and North creek thereby improving water quality and watershed resilience to climate change. These basins were evaluated using a prioritization tool called FutureShed, which ranks each basin, from most impaired due to im pervious area to least impaired by impervious area. The analysis showed both basins have the highest impairment levels and best potential for improvement through developing underutilized lands and road retrofits. The City's PROS (Parks, Recreation and Open Space) plan also identified Swamp and North creek as having less than twenty-five percent tree canopy and higher contingents of vulnerable populations that need resources, opportunity and investment to help connect them to green and natural spaces. The WRIA 8 Chinook Salmon Conservation Plan (2005) and the WRIA 8 10-Year Update of the Salmon Conservation Plan (2017) identified riparian planting and streamside landowner outreach and education about riparian stewardship and BMP implementation as key implementation strategies needed to protect and increase watershed resilience to climate change. This project will design and implement an urban stream regreen campaign, working with individual property owners in riparian management zones to increase plantings. The initial phase will identify and solicit input from property owners and local stakeholders to ascertain the barriers, benefits, and motivators to adopting this practice, which will then inform the campaign's design elements. After the initial pilot is evaluated, a year 2 launch will work to increase reach and larger contiguous clusters (or regreen clusters) in areas where property owners initially took advantage of the pilot. Under the Land Development & Cover habitat implementation strategy to reduce barriers to infill and redevelopment in UGAs, there is a key opportunity in the Action Agenda to “improve the well-being of people living in high-growth areas by clearly defining needs for and increasing access to green spaces”. This project makes progress towards this outcome by increasing people's connection to nature, plants, trees, and water in their own backyards. Environmental justice priorities are addressed by targeting two specific basins within the city of Everett that have been shown to have the following combined environmental and demographic indicators: • High population density • High density of People of Color • Low median income • Little to no immediate access to a park or a trail • Prevalence of “heat islands” or areas with high impervious surfaces, coupled with a lack of tree canopy • Close proximity to heavy traffic roads which impact local air quality and other environmental health factors • Less than twenty percent tree canopy Given that this is a behavior change campaign, time will be spent on outreach and stakeholder questionnaires to identify the barriers, challenges and opportunities this community (or audience) has to this specific behavior. Information collection through questionnaires will not be funded through this subaward (i.e. will be conducted with non-EPA funds). Once these barriers are identified, social marketing principles will be engaged to design an incentivized approach that addresses, or all together removes, some of the possible barriers to action. By utilizing private property owners who live within riparian management zones, we hope to provide the first of many solutions that can start to make a difference to some of the environmental factors or disparities within North and Swamp creek - to take a step towards working collaboratively to build healthy, sustainable communities. DocuSign Envelope ID: 7BA4B790-188B-429E-8F80-A1F358A7EDAF