Stacy Willoughby

I live in a part of Washington served by Chelan County PUD, and rural communities in the 12th District are already being approached to host data centers. That is where my thinking starts. The demand is real and growing fast. Left unmanaged, it can crowd out farms and families on the same grid and push everyone’s rates up.

I support requiring large new users like data centers to show a credible clean energy supply before they connect. They should not lean on the clean power Washington already built while adding stress to the grid. I want ratepayer protections so existing homes and small businesses do not pay for the infrastructure that serves an industrial load. And I want transparency, so regulators and the public can see demand, water use, and rate impacts in real time.

The evidence that shaped this is close to home: utility load data from the PUD, the water and land tradeoffs communities are being asked to accept, and the people who would carry the cost. Any community weighing a data center deserves clear, enforceable standards on energy, water, and rates, written with them at the table.

My top funding priority is wildfire and forest health. Prevention work like forest thinning, prescribed burns, and defensible space costs far less than fighting the next megafire, and it keeps rural people working. That is where I would put money first.

Second is water. The Cascades snowpack feeds the rivers, the lakes, and the orchards and farms that hold the 12th District together. I would fund snowpack and water supply planning, water storage, and agricultural conservation so growers are not left guessing.

Third is monitoring and data. Communities cannot adapt to what they cannot measure. I would fund the state’s climate and environmental monitoring systems so local decisions rest on real information.

Fund the work that protects the people who bear the cost when we get it wrong. In this district, that is farmworkers, growers, and families living next to fire-prone forest. I would bring scientists, Tribal Nations, and local communities to the table early, and let the evidence and the people closest to the risk shape where the dollars go.

What I know about rural schools I learned from families in Chelan, Wenatchee, and the smaller towns of the 12th District, and from my brother, his wife, and my daughter-in-law, who all teach.

Here is what I believe. Science literacy starts with schools that are actually funded. When districts scramble every year for special education dollars, and rural schools run on less technology and weaker internet than their urban neighbors, science education is the first thing squeezed. I would fully fund K-12, close the rural connectivity gap so a student can finish a lab or homework at home, and protect the staff who keep science classrooms running.

On standards themselves, I want to hear from the educators who teach this every day before I claim to know the fix. Good standards build curiosity and the habit of following evidence, and they reach every kid, including students of color, students with disabilities, and English language learners.

I live in the mountains above Lake Chelan, in a district that has lived through some of the worst fire seasons in Washington history. The Carlton Complex, the Chelan fires of 2015, and the long smoky seasons since. The Bear Gulch Fire on the Olympic Peninsula is one more reminder that no corner of this state is out of reach.

My approach is prevention first. I would fund forest health work, prescribed burns, and defensible space programs in high-risk communities. Prevention costs a fraction of fighting a megafire, and it puts rural people to work. I would make sure that money reaches communities before the next fire, not just after it.

I would also fund the smoke response side. Air quality closures cost farmworkers their wages and keep kids inside for weeks. Small businesses that rely on tourism struggle. That is a public health problem, not only a forestry one.

Wildfire is one issue where real bipartisan support exists, because every community in the 12th District has been burned or choked by smoke. I would build that coalition and treat prevention funding as the investment it is.

Puget Sound and the coast are changing fast, and the Southern Resident orcas are the clearest warning. Their decline tracks the collapse of Chinook salmon. Salmon recovery is the single most direct thing we can do for them, and it matters for Tribal Nations whose treaty rights and traditional practices are tied to these fish.

I would fund the science first. Monitoring of water temperature, acidification, and fish populations, so policy rests on data instead of on whoever pushes hardest. I would prioritize habitat and cold-water refuge work in the rivers that feed the Sound, because you cannot rebuild a salmon run without the water and habitat it depends on.

Where the data supports it, I would support targeted, science-driven restrictions on specific high-impact fishing methods and seasons, built with Tribal Nations and fishing communities at the table, not handed down over their objections.

Communities that depend on these waters need help adapting too. I would back state investment that helps fishing families and coastal towns weather the shifts already underway. Get the science right, keep the Tribes central, and fund the work.