As a continuation of my work on air toxics in Portland, I have been investigating the Columbia River Crossing for Cascadia Times. My main concern is that environmental justice and air pollution issues are getting rolled by the project.
The story is centered on the toxic airsheds of North, Northeast and Northwest Portland, near the freeway. A new EPA model known as “REIS” ranks these neighborhoods in the bottom 1-5 percent nationally for the most toxic air. Roosevelt High School appears to be at ground zero.
Meanwhile, a new DEQ program, the Portland Air Toxics Solution, is examining ways to clean up the air in this largely disadvantaged neighborhood. The PATS tells us that the risk of breathing air in these neighborhoods is about twice the national average, and violates — by a factor of 72 — the goals of the Clean Air Act.
Both the EPA and Multnomah County Health Division tell us that if the CRC is built, traffic is going to increase and the health risk of breathing this air would go up. In their dreams, the bridge planners think the new bridge will relieve traffic congestion. But studies show traffic congestion will get worse if it is built. Traffic hates a vacuum. Suburban sprawl in Clark County will supply a growing number of cars. People will find that their quick, easy commute into Portland will transform into a long grind in only a few years. It’s going to cost us $10 billion to learn the tragic truth about what will happen in the long run, many years after the new bridge is built.
But there is time to stop it. There is no guarantee of funding, and a final decision won’t come until summer 2011 at the earliest, the project sponsors told me Dec. 13.
As you know, we are talking about a low-income and ethically diverse neighborhood. These people do not have the money or influence to match the powerful interests arrayed against them.
One must ask, what happened to the DEQ in this process? The DEQ says it did not formally comment or submit comments on the CRC’s draft impact statement. The DEQ’s invisability on the issue marked a missed opportunity to inform the CRC sponsors about air toxic problems in Portland. By failing to submit comments, the DEQ also missed an opportunity to inform the residents of those neighborhoods about their (and Portland’s) air quality problems. If the project sponsors had this information in their possession, they didn’t put it in the draft environmental impact statement.
The principles of environmental justice say that the burden of pollution should not fall disproportionately on any one group, such as the residents near the freeway, and that they should have a meaningful chance to participate in environmental decisions affecting them.
The CRC is the biggest environmental justice issue to hit Portland in generations. It’s too bad they weren’t given all the information they needed to participate in it.
What can explain the DEQ’s invisibility? Who is responsible for defending the public interest in clean air? Why didn’t the draft environmental impact statement point out the existing or future health risks? How can we make sure that the Final EIS and Record of Decision, due out next year, take this into account? Who is going to ensure that the CRC’s impacts on these neighborhoods are fully mitigated?
Paul,
In response to your questions, the first thing to notice is that all of the “project sponsors” are transportation departments. Neither environmental nor health departments at any level were included in the planning, never mind civil society NGOs with relevant interests — such as affected community groups — or environmental or health expertise.
While I don’t disagree with your remarks about DEQ’s failing to comment on the Draft EIS, the deeper point is that they, and Washington Dept of Ecology, and health agencies both states and in the affected cities and counties and Metro, should have been part of the planning and environmental and health impact assessment from the beginning, not even just outside commentators.
Also the law should be expanded to require Health Impact Assessments as well as Environmental ones.
As a result, CRC reconstruction was narrowly defined as a traffic engineering problem. Moreover, it was defined in terms of narrow geography close to the Columbia, without reference to the overall Portland metro area (including Clark County) transportation system, nor reference to the long term traffic plans of either the City of Portland or of Metro, which in turn are not entirely consistent, although both plans have at least a little reference to ecological and health criteria.
What is needed is planning that takes a systemic point of view, both in terms of the regional transportation system as a system, and the effects of the transport system on wider social system sustainability and health equity.
As to the limits of the Draft EIS, the law under which the federal EPA operates constrains the definition narrowly to the local geographic scope of the project. It is possible that if the more systemic approach to planning I’ve advocated had been taken, it would have created a corresponding scope for the EIS. I am not sure. But in any event, because the engineering project was defined in a narrow geographic scope, the environmental impacts required to be addressed were similarly restricted: effects on the river and on the immediate shore areas where demolition and construction would take place.
Notably EPA ruled the original DEIS inadequate even in those terms, which slowed the project up creating more time for response as well as creating financing issues in the context of the economic recession. However, the limits unfortunately also affected a pilot Health Impact Assessment that was done either by Multnomah County or DHS, I’m not sure, which used a parallel spatial definition, and thus didn’t capture the air quality issues further from the river.
Finally, in addition to your good point about “induced demand” meaning that congestion would only be temporarily reduced near the bridge, it also would be driven more deeply into Portland residential areas, at least on direction of commuting on I-5, with probable huge mess at the areas around the Rose Quarter / Fremont Bridge / I-84 Junction / exits for 99E and to cross to downtown. That in turn probably affects congestion on I-84. And as has been pointed out to me by others, if the CRC is tolled, as plans indicate, it also will displace crossing traffic to I-205 and I-84 at that end. Moreover, I-205 has fewer protections for surrounding neighborhoods from highway air pollution, and of course is in areas to which poorer communities and communities of color historically more centralized in inner Northeast are being displaced.
Thanks for your work.