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Street Roots • March 11-17, 2016
DEQ dropped the ball.
Now what?
BY EMILY GREEN
STAFF WRITER
ews that two local glass manufacturers
spewed toxic pollution into the air while
Oregon Department of Environmental
Quality did nothing elicited shock and outrage
among unsuspecting Portlanders.
It led city, Multnomah County and state politicians
and community groups to demand regional air
pollution be reined in.
But area activists have long known Portland’s air is
a health hazard - in large part due to diesel exhaust
Whether additional testing around the glass
manufacturers shows they pose an increased cancer
risk to residents or not aggregate area pollution from
other sources is, and activists don’t want this
opportunity for meaningful improvements to air
pollution regulation to go up in smoke.
This was the topic of a meeting in Old Town on
March 3. Statewide environmental justice groups
Beyond Toxics and Oregon Environmental Council
met with OPAL, Coalition of Communities of Color,
and Portland’s Neighbors for Clean Air to discuss
uniting in an effort to push for policies that will put a
cap on pollution while the political climate is ripe.
Meeting attendees said they want to avoid spot .
fixes aimed at quelling the frenzy but that do little to
improve the overall quality of air.
While Oregon waits to see if the $2.5 million in
additional funding for air testing cleared by Gov. Kate
Brown, as well as a new DEQ director, can help the
agency do its job effectively, environmental groups
are also promoting strategies for tackling Portland’s
toxic air.
H
Activists want to harness
heightened interest in pollution
to bring reform to
air quality regulations
Right to know
In Eugene, residents believe they have the right to
know if they’re being exposed to toxic chemicals that
can make them sick. In 1996, they voted to
implement Eugene’s Tories Right-to-Know program.
In doing so, they amended the city charter to require
that certain industrially classified facilities bringing in
2,640 pounds or more of a hazardous substance each
year must account for exactly where every pound
went - whether into the air, water, waste or product
- and then report that information to the fire
marshal.
Eugene residents can go to the program’s website,
select their ZIP code, and peruse different output
categories ~ one js “emitted ,to air” - to see what
company is spewing how much of what and where
within Eugene’s city limits.
If Portland had a similar program, community /
members and environmental regulators would have '
had the ability to find out what chemicals Bullseye
Glass and Uroboros Glass were releasing into the air,
and the amounts, Beyond Tories Director Lisa Arkin
told Street Roots. Arkin sits on the right-to-know
program’s board.
“It’s working very smoothly,* Arkin said. “You can
look up any industry and you can see, down to the ■
pound, how much lead they’re putting out, how much
chromium they’re putting out, how much cadmium,
how much formaldehyde.”
She said this makes it easy for
health and environmental
officials
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See POLLUTION, page 5
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to pinpoint hotspots that may need additional
monitoring.
Eugene Fire Marshal’s Office employee Joann
Eppli has been running Eugene’s right-to-know
program for the past five years. She is the only
employee of the program, which has an annual budget
of $119,000.
She said residents have used the city’s right-to-
know web page to identify causes for concern. In the
past, they have notified Lane County’s local air quality
authority, which then worked with the businesses to
correct their emitting behavior.
Lane County has the only regional air quality
authority in the state - a holdover from before DEQ
absorbed other regional agencies across Oregon.
While a right-to-know program could be beneficial
to Portlanders, said Mary Peveto at Neighbors for
Clean Air, without an air quality regulator willing to
act on its authority, the program wouldn’t do much to
K the current situation.
“We are really trying to drive towards the mandate
that the agency already has, that it’s not fulfilling,”
she said - “to act on its current authority to reduce
toxic pollution.”
j| Eppli said that if Portland wants its own right-to-
know program, proponents would be wise to be
transparent with affected businesses about what
impact the program will have on them and to help
them understand why implementing such a program ;
would be beneficial to residents. ‘
She said that when businesses in Eugene
discovered what they had to do to comply, “they were
angry, and they got together with the Chamber of
Commerce and immediately, I think it was in the first
6 months, filed a lawsuit against the city to make the
program go away.”
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