Here's a sample letter to the City of Eugene:

Feel free to use this letter to craft your own message and adjust as you see fit. Please copy & paste this text into an email, or word document, to edit and send! Thank you.

 

December XX, 2024

Jeff Gepper, Senior Planner, City of Eugene
JGepper@eugene-or.gov
City Planning Division, Atrium Building
99 West 10th Avenue, Suite 290
Eugene, Oregon 97401

Dear City of Eugene,
I am ___ [introduce your relationship to this issue, e.g., Beyond Toxics member/resident/concerned citizen]. The issues that most concern me are ___.

I ask you to consider the impacts and risks associated with the USD Eugene Clean Fuels transloading facility proposed to be located at 799 Bethel Drive and deny the zoning verification. The inevitable harms of the facility, including traffic safety, noise, and hazardous material exposures, will bring further inequities to our community. The City should be unwilling to permit further impacts, potential illness, and stress in a neighborhood that has been historically overburdened by industry and excluded from meaningful public participation.

With the City’s withdrawal of the Zoning Verification, Eugene residents feel a tremendous sense of urgency to ensure City staff take into consideration community concerns. In your reconsideration of the decision, please consider whether the facility is consistent with Eugene’s land use code and City’s guiding values, as well as protective of the public health and safety for community members living in nearby neighborhoods.

The facility, as currently planned, will be located on railroad property directly adjacent to the Trainsong neighborhood. Trainsong, along with much of West Eugene, is a Justice40 community, meaning that it is recognized by the federal government as a disadvantaged community based on environmental burdens (e.g., exposure to legacy pollution) and socioeconomic indicators (i.e., low-income). Community members still face many unknowns about the facility, including the content of hazardous materials in these biofuels, including renewable jet fuels and renewable diesel, biodiesel and denatured alcohol, the risk of spills, explosions and fires, the impact on traffic safety, pedestrian safety, and congestion in residential areas, and the air quality harms of trucks idling and air toxics leakage from fuel transfer operations. All of these issues negatively impact basic quality of life for residents and neighborhood relationships. 

The City should consider the fact that a number of streets in Trainsong are dead-end streets, with Bethel Drive as both the only escape route and the likely source of fire or hazardous vapors. In addition to the fact that the fire station, public works, and other emergency infrastructure is located less than a mile of the facility’s location exposes the City to significant risks.

The Zoning Verification approval should be denied because the approval would be inconsistent with Eugene’s land use code. In reconsidering Zoning Verification Decision 24-20, the City should find that the proposed transloading facility would far exceed the allowed use under section 9.1070(3), which allows only “tracks, signals, and other operative devices and the movement of rolling stock.” Because the operational needs of the transloading facility far surpass these limited uses, I feel concerned about living next to a facility that is not within the outright permitted uses of our city code.

In particular, I worry about ______.

I also urge the City to remember its recent commitments towards furthering environmental justice in Trainsong and other West Eugene neighborhoods, and consider whether the transloading facility is consistent with those commitments.

__________
Signature
[Date]