Filtering Our Future
Just like the soil and plants in our urban environment, over the past year Shape Our Water has been busy with sifting and filtering.
We started 2025 with a wealth of inspiration: almost 1,000 ideas for future drainage and wastewater management solutions that could become part of the finished Shape Our Water Plan. These solutions were diverse and full of energy and creativity, but they were also unwieldy to consider implementing “as-is.”
Since we started this work in 2019, we’ve known that creating a plan for the next 50 years of Seattle’s water-resilient future would require lots of collaboration. Shape Our Water used working sessions to put our guiding principles to the test.
Working sessions were small group meetings to consider, refine, and rank solution ideas. Subject matter experts from across Seattle Public Utilities helped compare solution ideas to the Shape Our Water Community Vision and the project Planning Themes (that flowed from an analysis of our current drainage and wastewater systems). Considering how solution ideas aligned with the Vision and the Planning Themes allowed us to both improve and rank them, ultimately creating a smaller subset of refined solutions.
For example, one work session considered over 30 initial ideas around youth engagement programming. Subject matter experts from community and SPU built a solution that combined some of those initial ideas while brainstorming ways to include more of the Shape our Water Community Vision for community and environmental health and community-centered partnerships.
The work session used Community Vision goals to refine a consolidated solution: a program that would engage students in science and career-based learning from elementary through high school ages – with components of hands-on student projects led by community partner organizations (to bridge from the classroom to the communities where students live).
The collaborative teams in working sessions helped a fuzzy picture of possible future investments resolve into something clearer, tangible, and ready for stakeholders and community members to help us further develop the final Shape Our Water Plan in 2026.
