It’s with huge sorrow that the Thornton Creek Alliance announces the sudden passing of longtime board member and past President John Lombard on August 28, 2024.  He was key to TCA, leaving behind a track record of success for our watershed and for the greater community.

He leaves behind his siblings; two young-adult children, Forrest and Summer; and his former wife, Jenny Haykin.  We grieve with them.  

John always strove to be well-informed and was keen on networking and outreach.  As his 2006  book, Saving Puget Sound, amply demonstrated, he understood not only the technical aspects of conservation, but also its policy and legislative frameworks.  This combination of traits made him quite effective as he worked with public officials and community leaders.

To highlight a few of John’s community accomplishments:

• He helped launch a Seattle Department of Neighborhoods grant effort to gather public input to begin addressing a suite of issues along 8^th Ave. NE in Seattle’s Northgate neighborhood, including Beaver Pond Natural Area and the south fork of Thornton Creek.  To implement the grant, he co-chaired the dedicated nonprofit Beaver Pond Friends and Neighbors, managing the public outreach alongside the consultant hired for this task. 
• John spearheaded and helped manage the Noxious Weeds Knockout partnership for the Thornton Creek watershed, comprising King County, the City of Seattle, the City of Shoreline, TCA, Forterra, and EarthCorps.  This began a very active knotweed eradication effort along Thornton Creek and tributaries.
• He helped spark the Seattle Parks Department’s purchase of Lake City Floodplain Park on NE 125^th St., with the intent of adding public land to restore floodplain and upland area along Thornton Creek’s north fork.  He worked with Indigenous representatives to seek a name based in native heritage that the Parks Department might permanently give to the park.
• He served as Green Seattle Partnership Forest Steward for Beaver Pond Natural Area near Northgate.
• He worked with the Seattle Parks Department to finally name several Thornton Creek natural areas which for decades had been known only as Park One, Park Six, etc., the names used when they were purchased. That helped raise those natural areas in the consciousness of the public, which in turn helps their stewardship.

John worked in the office of the mayor of St. Louis, Missouri, before returning to his hometown of Seattle.  He then served as a legislative analyst for the Metropolitan King County Council on utility issues.  Following that, he served as King County’s Lake Washington Watershed Coordinator.  He was senior policy analyst in the director’s office of the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks. He worked as a senior policy analyst at AMEC Earth & Environmental/Steward and Associates/Sustainable Fisheries Foundation, and helped local governments develop conservation-related policy and legislation.  It was during his tenure with Steward that he wrote his book.  At the University of Washington School of Oceanography, he acted as liaison for user groups of the Puget Sound Regional Synthesis Model, and taught a course on the Puget Sound ecosystem.  He also had his own consulting business, Lombard Consulting LLC, to serve local governments and other clients on environmental issues related to land use.  Later he became a real estate broker at Windermere Real Estate in Seattle, where he specialized in creekside properties.  His professional newsletters always included information about the Thornton Creek watershed and how residents could best take care of it.  In 2019 he ran unsuccessfully for Seattle City Council.  

John’s energy and dedication to conservation, and his drive to help shape how it gets done, will serve as lasting examples.  We recognize the progress he spurred and will continue the work on his unfinished projects.  We valued his ideas and advice because we respected his abilities and insights, and he has left large shoes for us to fill.  He was a good human being, friend, and colleague.  We will miss him tremendously.  

John’s family has posted a page for people to share reminiscences and pictures: 

https://neptunesociety.com/obituaries/lynnwood-wa/john-lombard-11983839.

1 Saving Puget Sound:  A Conservation Strategy For the 21^st Century (American Fisheries Society and University of Washington Press)