Economist offers warning for region

Seattle author and economic analyst Alan Durning has some words of caution for Inland Northwest residents basking in last year’s economic good news.

Durning, the executive director of Seattle-based nonprofit research group Northwest Environment Watch, said urban sprawl has taken firm root in Spokane County. And across the region, residents are burning fuel and consuming energy like it’s 1999.

Durning’s group has just finished publishing its second-annual Cascadia Scorecard, which looks at seven indicators: regional health, population, the economy, urban sprawl, forests, pollution and energy consumption. It tracks those trends throughout a region called Cascadia, which NEW defines as Idaho, Washington, Oregon and British Columbia.

NEW is a sustainable-economy, pro-“green” group, Durning said. But its goal in compiling the score card is to help communities look at the big picture.

“Our society is obsessed with measurements,” he said in an interview. “Our approach is to look at the things that residents will be caring about in 100 years.”

The 2005 score card — which can be found at ww.northwestwatch.org/scorecard — puts its largest focus on energy and energy consumption.

The chief conclusion — that the region needs to adopt smarter, more efficient energy use — doesn’t apply to one location more than others, Durning said.

“Spending on petroleum and natural gas drained an estimated $17 million per day from Washington’s economy,” Durning pointed out. “That’s a big drain on our area’s economic vitality.”

Where Spokane was viewed more closely in this year’s score card, the result was a next-to-bottom grade in the category of urban sprawl.

Of seven metropolitan areas located in Cascadia, Spokane is second-to-worst when it comes to sprawl, according to NEW. “The worst is Boise,” said Durning. “Those two are the leading examples of sprawl,” he said.

The best cities in Cascadia, based on protecting rural land from encroached development, were Vancouver, B.C. and Portland, he said.

While the Northwest generally scored well in comparison with the rest of the county, its economy is another area of concern, Durning said.

The Cascadia Scorecard doesn’t include economic data more recent than 2003, when the regional economy was still limping.

Even so, Durning contends that the recession between 2001 and 2003 left Cascadia residents reeling.

“What the score card shows is the recession in our region has wiped out gains of the 1990s for ordinary residents,” he said. In effect, most people are earning about what they did 10 years ago, he said.