Under a light patter of rain, Gov. Jay Inslee strolled along the west bank of the Green River through north Auburn’s Brannan Park on Monday afternoon, getting his first look at the recently-rebuilt Reddington levee.

As Inslee walked, King County Senior Ecologist Sarah McCarthy directed his gaze to key features of the project, describing to him the function of riprap at the river’s edge and that of the many new trees along the bank, planted, she said, to keep the waters cool for salmon restoration.

What Inslee saw he fitted into the larger issue of climate change, praising “visionary leaders” throughout the state “with the courage to do more than talk,” he said, leaders who “actively embrace the future” by planning for changes in the hydrological cycle and preparing for floods at different times of the year, owing to climate change.

“The bad news is that we are faced with these realities of climate change and the clear realities of the science. But we are responding to that with visionary leadership on the ground, where the rubber meets the road,” Inslee said, pointing to the levee project.

In 2013, as part of a larger overall flood management strategy for the lower Green, King County set the Reddington levee back along the west bank of the river, from the southern boundary of the Port of Seattle’s wetland mitigation project at 43rd Street Northeast to Brannan Park. The work replaced a sub-standard levee with a new levee that today protects nearly 600 properties worth $680 million from flooding.

The work, which created a wider corridor for moving flood flows and a wider riparian corridor with enhanced ecological benefits, was designed to reduce flood risks to residents, businesses and infrastructure within Auburn and the Green River Valley.

The new setback levee lets the river channel migrate side to side and form new channel patterns in this area.

Future work is expected to extend the setback levee from just north of the River Mobile Estates to 43rd Street Northeast.

“It’s one of the reasons I love local community leaders,” said Inslee, flanked by Muckleshoot Tribal Chair Virginia Cross, Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus, City Councilman Bill Peloza and others. “They aren’t wasting time arguing about this, they’re pitching in and rolling up their sleeves, and they’re doing something about it.”

The governor said he remains hopeful that lawmakers in Olympia will do their bit to reduce carbon pollution, which he said is what is causing the climate change problem in the first place.

“We’ve got to respond in two ways: we’ve got to respond to the climate change that’s occurring; and also stop it,” Inslee said.

Louie Ungaro, a member of the Muckleshoot Tribal Council and chairman of the tribe’s fish commission, described why projects like the Reddington levee matter so much to the tribe.

“Salmon have been the backbone of our people for thousands of years, and sustained our way of life in salmon villages up and down this river, in this watershed, up into the mountains, to the lower villages down below, when the White River connected to the Green River in the early 1900s,” Ungaro said.

“…This isn’t just a Green River thing, this is all of the estuaries around here that have been flooding. We’re going to have to work together. I hope and pray that we can take the lead on this system, which is so significant. Like your I-5 corridor, this has been our I-5 corridor for thousands of years, and it is connected to all these rivers and drainages together from the south to the north Sound,” Ungaro said.

Backus praised the partnerships that helped make the Reddington levee project possible, singling out Auburn’s partnership with the Muckleshoot Tribe.

“We co-exist, and we represent the same people, and we have the same needs and desires, and we care about our rivers,” she said. “The Reddington levee and all of the work that’s been done does have a huge economic impact. There are more than 600 businesses here with an estimated $680 million value, and if we didn’t do the work along the river, we could lose all that. And that would be almost impossible to recover from.”