Spokane just experienced its hottest July ever, with recorded temperatures hitting higher than 90 degrees for 20 days in a row and seven days that were more than 100 degrees. While scorching, this heat wave hasn't had the worst impacts the region has experienced in recent history.
In June 2021, Spokane endured a four-day stretch of triple-digit temperatures, which rose to 109 degrees at the height of the heatwave and killed at least 19 people, according to the Gonzaga University Institute for Climate, Water and the Environment. In many places in the city, the temperatures were even higher than the official record, due to a lack of shade and the urban heat island effect. So far this year, three people have died due to the heat, according to the Spokane County Medical Examiner's Office.
In addition to sweltering heat, the Inland Northwest is often plagued by wildfire smoke in the summer months, causing the region's air quality to reach unhealthy levels of pollution. For example, as the Gray and Oregon road wildfires blazed through Spokane County last August the air quality got so bad that Mead, Spokane, Airway Heights, Spokane Valley and Cheney recorded some of the worst air quality in the world at the time.
Due to climate change, these extreme heat and unhealthy air quality events are expected to become harsher and more frequent, says Brian Henning, director of Gonzaga's Climate Institute. While climate scientists at Gonzaga can't prevent these events from happening, they can ensure that the region is equipped to handle them more effectively.
To do that, the institute's team plans to use a three-year $19.9 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reduce pollution and increase the city's ability to respond to climate changes, especially in neighborhoods that have been identified as disadvantaged.
The grant, which is the largest federal grant Gonzaga has ever received, was awarded at the end of July as part of the EPA's Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change Grant program, which was funded by the 2021 Inflation Reduction Act.
Overall, community change grants totalling $325 million were distributed to 21 different applicants nationwide, and Gonzaga was the only entity to receive one in Washington. However, more money could come to the region later, as nearly $2 billion was allocated for the program.
Using the grant money, Gonzaga's plan is to install electric heat pumps in low income homes, create a Community Climate Action Fund to help groups working on climate-resilience projects, and update community centers so they can provide support during extreme weather events, such as sweltering heat or polluting wildfire smoke.
HEAT PUMPS AND MORE
The funding Gonzaga's Climate Institute received will jumpstart the Spokane Climate Resilience Project, which Henning says will build up the city's infrastructure to help those most affected by extreme heat and wildfire smoke. To do so, the climate institute has partnered with the City of Spokane, Spokane Neighborhood Action Partners (SNAP), and the Carl Maxey Center.Of the $19.9 million grant, SNAP will receive $8 million to install electric heat pumps in at least 300 low-income homes in Spokane.
That may seem like a high cost for only 300 installations, but SNAP Director of Housing Services John Hoover says that's a pretty fair price (about $26,666 per heat pump) for this type of cutting-edge technology.
"Like anything else, prices have just skyrocketed, so it is expensive," Hoover says. "As [heat pumps] become more common practice, the cost will likely come down. We have to sort of get people to understand the importance of moving in this direction."
Electric heat pumps can both heat homes in the winter and cool them in the summer, while reducing greenhouse gas impacts by taking the place of natural gas appliances. To work, the pumps pull heat from the air or ground, pass it through coils, and pump it inside or outside a building, similar to how a refrigerator works.
While the EPA has provided a list of "disadvantaged communities" to place the heat pumps in, Hoover says he's not sure yet which neighborhoods may benefit. He says the heat pumps will all be placed in low-income single-family homes.
"If we can do more, we will do more," he says when asked about the possibility of installing heat pumps in multi-family units.
Currently, Hoover plans to have at least 100 heat pumps operational within a year.
The grant will also provide Gonzaga with $2.7 million to create a Community Climate Action Fund that will provide money to community organizations doing climate-resilience work. Additionally, the grant will enable the Climate Institute to provide scholarships to nine Spokane residents for Gonzaga's Climate Action Planning certificate.
Another $8 million from the grant will be given to the city to create a network of climate resilience hubs and the Carl Maxey Center will receive about $900,000 to add itself to that network.
RESILIENCE HUBS
You might be asking, "What the heck is a climate resilience hub?" The answer is a bit complicated.In the most basic sense, a resilience hub is a place where people can gather when the weather is extreme and their home doesn't provide adequate support, such as a lack of air conditioning in the summer or heating in the winter.
On a deeper level, the Climate Institute has created a three-tiered approach to establish a network of community resources that will be able to respond when extreme climate events hit the Inland Northwest — so there are three types of resilience hubs.
The first tier includes "engagement hubs." These are community centers that provide N95 masks and bottled water, alongside information on how to prepare for upcoming climate events, such as extreme heat or wildfire smoke. The grant will help establish 10 of these engagement hubs.
The second tier are called "relief hubs." These operate in all the same ways as the first tier, but include more responsibilities including: serving as a daytime heating and cooling center; serving as a cleaner-air center; connecting with both city and county emergency management; and the installation of solar panels, backup batteries and high-quality HVAC systems to provide assistance "off-grid" when extreme weather events occur and the power goes out. Five of these relief hubs will be created in Spokane with the EPA grant.
The third tier is "emergency hubs." These will operate similarly to relief hubs, but provide additional support as overnight emergency shelters with space for food storage and preparation. None of these will be built with this grant.
Henning says he doesn't know where the 10 engagement hubs will be created yet. But the five relief hubs will be established inside existing community centers and public libraries, including the West Central Community Center, the Northeast Community Center near Hillyard, the Central Library downtown, and the Carl Maxey Center and Liberty Park Library in East Central.
Four of those facilities are owned by the city, which is why nearly half of the EPA grant is being allocated to the city. Since the Carl Maxey Center is independently owned, it will be charged with turning itself into a relief hub.
HEAT ISLAND
Jillisa Winkler, executive director of the Carl Maxey Center, has always thought that Spokane's East Central neighborhood was much hotter than those surrounding it. It wasn't until she started working closely with Henning and the Climate Institute last year that she found out this was a verifiable fact."We always thought we knew that it's hotter [in East Central] than in other places in town, like up by Manito Park, or other places that have better tree coverage than we do," Winkler says. "It was amazing to see the actual data that told us it's actually 10 to 15 degrees hotter here and that can actually be mapped."
The Carl Maxey Center has been working to address the issues that face Spokane's Black community, especially in the historically Black East Central neighborhood, she says. When the opportunity to become a climate resiliency hub came up, Winkler jumped at the chance.
"It's always been our goal at the center to fill in the gaps our community faces," she says. "So, knowing that we're in a heat island and knowing that we have less tree canopy than the rest of the city, we want to make sure that the center is moving forward as eco-friendly as possible."
Currently, the center does what it can to assist the community. It provides water and allows folks to come inside the air-conditioned building to take a break from the heat. While the center offers these resources, it hasn't been advertised as a place to get relief from extreme climate events, so few community members have taken advantage of it, Winkler says.
Before the center uses the EPA funds to become a relief hub, it will use another $95,000 grant from the Washington Department of Health's Climate and Health Adaptation Initiative to install air quality monitors.
"This will be a first step to begin gathering more climate data that's specific to East Central," Winkler explains. "Then we can kind of build out a plan based on the data we're finding."
Assessing air quality in East Central is only the beginning. The next step involves community surveys about how people living in the neighborhood deal with extreme heat and wildfire smoke.
"You have to consider things like if people are elderly or if they have pets they can't leave at home," Winkler says.
To get the most complete answers, Winkler says that surveys will go out in four different languages and will be made available at community events held at the center. The surveys will likely go out in the late summer or early fall, she says.
Like the other selected relief hubs, the Carl Maxey Center will likely install solar panels and a backup battery to run during extreme climate events. But according to Winkler, since the center is still being built out (the east side of the building is not in use), exact plans aren't known yet.
"We've got a couple options for what will work for the center, but we haven't really decided yet," Winkler says. "We have to figure out what's going to work for the building and for our community." ♦
