DEQ Admits: Emissions from foundry are 95% of air quality problem for neighborhood

On Thursday, the March NW Examiner featured an astounding article about the air quality issue in the NW neighborhood.  For most observers it seems like stating the obvious.  But for those of us that live and breathe in close proximity to industrial facilities, routinely cleaning the black dust off our porches and smelling the pungent metallic odors with regularity-it is nothing short of miraculous.  With stubborn resolve for over a decade, our regulatory agency has repeated the mantra:  industry is less than 10% of the problem.

Knowing that history was no small part of my resolve last spring when I took on this issue.  When I came across the study published in USA Today, showcasing industrial emissions in isolation, several neighborhoods in Portland were clearly ground zero toxic industrial hotspots of the worst kind.  My first thought was:  "This is the game changer. This is when we finally can take on the hard work of specifically mitigating the problem of industrial air toxics."

Unfortunately, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, was not ready to change so fast. In the first of many email exchanges that I received almost exactly a year ago on March 26th, 2009, Cory Ann Wind, NW region Air Quality Manager reiterates:

The study that you are referring to is the one that originally appeared in the USA Today in December 2008.  The study uses information based on the Toxics Release Inventory, a chemical reporting database only for larger industry.  But to fully understand air pollution, information from all sources of air pollution - industrial and business activities, cars and trucks, home and commercial heating, and population activities such as open burning, landscape maintenance and solvent use – must be taken into account.  Typically, industrial activities are a very small (less than 10%) piece of the pollution puzzle. 

This response, or specifically, this resolve the agency had to deflect attention from industry has been repeated many times since that first exchange.  Most notably, in two legislative hearings (Aug '09 & Sept. '09) on air pollution and health that intended to examine the issue of the effect of industrial emissions on public health, Andy Ginsburg, DEQ Air Quality administrator instead showed up with a long slide presentation on the hazards of wood smoke.

There have been many points during this past year that signaled neighbors were gaining momentum on the air quality issue, but none can be more significant than this point when the regulatory agency takes the critical first step in acknowledging the problem out loud.  I can not fathom why it has taken this long, and what might have triggered the change in Andy Ginsburg's heart to make such a statement, one for which he clearly understands the implications and effect on the discussion.  I do think back to my first encounter that I described in a posting last July with DEQ Director Dick Pedersen.  All present at that meeting who had worked with and more likely against DEQ for years, were impressed with the relatively new director's sincerity and integrity to be a change agent, and to reassert the protection of the environment into the mission of the Department of Environmental Quality.

I think it is clear that Dick Pedersen is the real deal.

Thanksgiving Meditation

Ever since my niece was born, half into our family of Minnesota Catholics of European descent and half into the Lakota nation, I have had to reconsider much of the world I take for granted. Some of those things are in the details, in insidious stereotypes perpetuated by sport team mascots and Peter Pan. Others are in the larger context of our cultural mythology, like the institutionalized teaching of the uniquely American Thanksgiving holiday, or even more unique: Columbus Day. It is not a far stretch of empathy to understand that a portion of our nation may not see either of those events as a reason to celebrate, or certainly in the same light that has been shined on them from the European perspective.

Thanksgiving is still one of my favorites, a holiday of gathering with friends, or less often these days, family; a chance to reflect on gratefulness, and an unabashed excuse to bask in self-absorbed guiltless culinary indulgence (hours in the kitchen all to myself!). More considered reading of history has only added depth to its importance. My total immersion this year into the effort to reduce toxic industrial air pollution provides interesting fodder for meditation while chopping onions and herbs. I find myself considering what was lost, as much as gained in that fateful collision of the two worlds represented in the history book as "pilgrims" and "indians."

As a civilization we had a chance then, and in the ensuing years of establishing what would become the United States of America, to reconsider what was "own-able." Ownership and sovereign rights vex civilization to this day. How different the world economy and potentially the environment and climate would be if we didn't assume that the natural world was own-able. It occurs to me now, that since certain classes of people were still deemed own-able, convincing power and money hungry entities that trees, land, water, and air should be universally shared, would be nearly impossible.

The history of corporate America is littered with an undulating path of push and pull regarding sovereign rights. Early 19th century corporate leaders resisted labor organizing, leery of the inherent concept that employees had rights or ownership of any decision making regarding company practices. In the 1990's when I worked for NIKE, the idea of rights filtered down to consumers, as activists insisted that a company that makes so much money from the African American community and culture, should also make sure that they are more inclusive in their hiring practices.

My hope for this century is a reformation of the cost of the environment. We need the external costs to be internalized, to be reflected in the value put on each and every thing we do and we produce. I have faith in the free market, and continue to be inspired by the ingenuity of innovation that characterizes American business practice. So I believe that once external costs of polluting air, of consuming non-renewable resources, and of harm to public health and well-being are calculated, businesses will be able to adapt and continue to do what they do best: determine a way to build wealth and capital. But, the problem I see for the future of sustainable business, is that we haven't stopped subsidizing non-sustainable business. If a company can continue to process non-renewable raw materials spewing hundreds of thousands of persistent bioaccumulative toxins into the air, land and water and can still claim, as ESCO did in the letter to the NW Examiner editor in November 2009: "results assured us that ESCO is not causing harm," then the bike component manufacturer around the corner with a net zero carbon output doesn't have a chance unless we find a "value" to be added beyond market differentiation.

We need a discount, or at least a financial benefit, for the businesses who do no harm, who do not add to the health care costs of the state, or the superfund clean up, or the Department of Environmental Quality's costs to protect humans and the environment. The businesses who, in effect, do not take for granted that impact on the natural environment is free.