Seattle City Light's
Green Line
By David Bayard, Seattle City
Light Vegetation Management and
Fleets Manager and Rory Denovan,
Seattle City Light Restoration
Ecologist and Strategic Advisor
With nearly 450,000 metered users, Seattle City Light
(SCL) is one of the largest publicly owned utilities in
the U.S. As a power generator, transmitter, and dis-
tributor, SCL operates six hydroelectric generation
dams, 1,700 circuit miles (2736 km) of transmission,
and roughly 2,300 circuit miles (3701 km) of dis-
tribution lines serving the metro-Seattle region.
Seattle City Light has always had a strong environ-
mental focus. From its humble beginnings in 1905
powering Seattle's streetlights with clean hydro-
electric power, to supporting the longest continually
running energy conservation program in the USA
(since 1977!), SCL has always worn its green
urban-forestry.com 23
credentials proudly. In 2005, SCL became the coun-
try's first greenhouse-gas-neutral utility. Maybe it's
due to its location in the "Emerald City," but what-
ever it is, environmental stewardship is literally a
part of SCL's mission, vision, and values statements
and an intrinsic part of SCL's operating culture.
Enter the Green Line
Continuing in that tradition, in 2012 SCL initiated
its Stewardship Strategy for the Creston-Duwamish
"Green Line" to explore more holistic approaches
to vegetation management (VM) along select
portions of its transmission rights-of-way
(ROW). The Green Line Strategy seeks to:
• Maintain operational reliability and compliance
• Improve equity and environmental impacts
(i.e., health impacts to residents from pol-
lution and lack of ecosystem services)
• Create solutions with the flexibility to address
multiple ecosystem and community-service
needs based on community feedback >>
A researcher collects bees as part of a baseline pollinator
inventory on the Creston-Duwamish Green Line.
