Did you know our own Oregon (ODF) is clear-cutting and chemically poisoning public state forest lands, using the same extractive methods as multi-national timber corporations?
The latest herbicide sprays on our public forests took place this month along the Northwest Oregon Coast.
State Forest Agency Suppresses Its Own Aerial Spray Info
Regulating air for community health - a new concept in Oregon?
Governor Kate Brown initiated the Cleaner Air Oregon campaign after state agencies discovered that glass makers were the source of heavy metals – arsenic, cadmium, nickel and chromium – impacting nearby neighborhoods in Portland. Toxics heavy metals were found in the air and in the soil, including the soil of home gardens. Children were taken to doctors to have their blood tested for heavy metals known to cause cancer and neurological impairment. Residents were warned against eating their own homegrown vegetables! Indeed, Oregon has an air quality crisis due to a long history of lax regulations and negligible enforcement.
Eugene struck out with Seneca deal
It’s the bottom of the ninth, and Lane County citizens are down 0-3. From our seats in the nosebleed section of the bleachers, we find our home team facing direct impacts of localized carbon pollution, air quality and the size of our energy bills.
Environmental Justice: Air Agency’s Decisions Disproportionately Impact Minority and Low-Income Residents
We’re just fed up. Beyond Toxics has used all available channels to warn the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency (LRAPA) that it is ignoring its duty to protect the most vulnerable members of our community. Now we must turn to the United States Office of Civil Rights to ask for help to ensure that LRAPA follows recognized standards of justice and public health protections for the families of West Eugene.
Oregon lacking in the science of forestry
Profitable timber production can readily coexist with protections for water quality and community health. That is the lesson of commercial logging operations in Washington, California and even Idaho.
Then there is the way we do it in Oregon.
Refusing to be a corporate throw-away community
Our groundbreaking work centers on bringing the voices of Oregonians to the forefront of policy reform. We help people who want to speak “ground-truthing” to power; in other words, using their real experiences to expose corporate financed and secret backroom deals that allow industry polluters to mislead and harm the public.
Eugenians for Clean Air
Sometimes when I think about our Environmental Justice project, I think about the communities we are working with - West Eugene. And then I think to myself, is it really only West Eugene we are speaking about here? I mean, if you think about it, air certainly doesn’t stay within neighborhood boundaries.
Victory for small (and honest) non-profits in the battle against the giant (and manipulative) coal industry!
In spring of this year, Beyond Toxics submitted a Public Records Request to the Port of Coos Bay to learn the details of plans to haul coal through Eugene for export to nations in the Far East? Remember that they demanded $22,000 to get what should be public information? If that wasn’t enough, the Port of Coos Bay tacked on a long list of intrusive questions, demanding the disclosure of our members’ names and addresses.
Stopping coal: A renewed moral imperative
I want to be clear: I am not against trains (I often travel by passenger train)! I am, however, critical about using our rail system to haul coal to coastal ports and then load the coal and ship it off to Asian destinations.
