Skagit County commissioners can count on the advice of a new group of local experts and stakeholders when planning solutions to climate change.

The Skagit County Climate Impact Advisory Committee was established on Dec. 15 with the goal of bringing together scientific, Indigenous and local knowledge and experience.

The committee comprises nine members so far, including Jason Vander Kooy, a farmer who owns Harmony Dairy near La Conner and is a commissioner for Dike District 1.

Vander Kooy, who also sits on the board of the Skagit Dike Partnership and serves on the Puget Sound Partnership’s Salmon Recovery Council, said he looks forward to the conversation getting started. So far, he said, a schedule of the meetings has yet to be released.

Serving on the committee will give him an opportunity to share his thoughts from the perspective of a local who has dealt with multiple floods as a farmer, dike district commissioner and volunteer firefighter for the McLean Road Fire Department in Mount Vernon.

Vander Kooy acknowledged that climate change is an issue, but finds that predictions have often been overexaggerated, such as December’s flooding event.

“There’s a lot of things that we can do to help us with these different changes, whether it’s drainage, flood control, irrigation,” he said.

At the same time, he expects to learn a lot from the other experts serving on the committee, and vice versa.

The committee will comprise a total of 15 members, with some yet to be appointed by their respective entities. These include Skagit’s four federally recognized tribes (including Swinomish), as well the county’s drainage districts and other dike districts, according to a press release from the county.

So far, the board selected Jon Riedel, an expert on North Cascades glaciers who retired from the National Park Service; Don McMoran, an agricultural science professor and the director of Washington State University’s Skagit extension; Patsy Martin, the Port of Skagit’s former executive director; Joel Dryden, a forester and the general manager of Pilchuk Tree Farm in Arlington; Robert Pavia, former scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a professor at the University of Washington School of Marine Affairs; Bob Carey, a floodplains expert and the director of the Nature Conservancy’s Columbia Basin program; Mark Radka, the former Chief of United Nations Environment Programme’s Energy, Climate and Technology Branch; Betty Carteret, a climate advocate from Skagit’s Citizens’ Climate Education.

“It’s just local people here in Skagit County helping commissioners make the right, informed decisions,” Vander Kooy said.

Luisa Loi is a general assignment reporter for La Conner Community News.