Ellie Aguirre, a bilingual resident working with OTA on our West Eugene Environmental Health Project, explores the West Eugene Wetlands with her daughter, Naysa. Ellie feels passionate about the need for a healthy future for her family.
TOP NEWS Stories
OTA and Centro LatinoAmericano Receive Grants to Address Air Pollution and Asthma (Press Release)
Seneca’s biomass plant fails first pollution test
An environmental agency fines the company $9,856, but says the emissions pose no threat to human health – by Diane Dietz, The Eugene Register-Guard
NEWS FLASH: See Lisa Arkin’s interview on KVAL-TV with Shelley Kurtz about asthma and children in West Eugene (June 2nd)
The West Eugene Industrial Corridor Environmental Health Project
This project promises to create a new era of cooperation between environmental groups and those working for social justice in the Willamette Valley.
In close partnership with Centro LatinoAmericano, OTA launched the West Eugene Industrial Corridor Environmental Health Project. is collaborative project received an Environmental Justice grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency, one of only six awarded in the entire Northwest. The project grew out of concerns expressed from neighbors in the area of West Eugene immediately downwind from a proposed biomass energy plant, which is scheduled to start burning forest by-products in 2011. Th ese a ffected neighborhoods have high percentages of minority, elderly, disabled and poverty level residents. Th ese families are disproportionally a ffected by higher concentrations of industrial air pollutants from surrounding industrial sources. OTA employed five canvassers to go door-to-door to gather data about environmental health issues that concern residents.
According to preliminary results, neighbors believe that they have been exposed to cumulative multiple air pollutants and suff er health consequences because of the eff ect of cumulative pollution. e project is actively encouraging area residents to take part in solutions they feel will improve their health. Ultimately, our goal is to take proactive steps towards improving the living and health conditions of the Industrial Corridor neighborhood residents.
Local Environmental Issues
The environmental issue that we seek to address is air pollution from industrial and transportation sources in the Industrial Corridor of West Eugene, an area that is home to higher densities of low-income residents, many of whom are Latino families. According to the EPA EnviroMapper, fifty air and toxic release sites and two Superfund sites are listed within the nine square mile area of West Eugene. The Eugene-Springfield metropolitan area is located at the southern end of Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The area is dubbed “the toe of the sock” because it is cupped by mountains on the south, east and west sides. Frequent air stagnations caused by topographical barriers and wind patterns result in the accumulation of local pollution and wind-borne air pollution from other larger metropolitan areas up the valley (Portland-Beaverton and Salem-Keizer).
Purpose of the project:
- enhance the community’s understanding of environmental pollutants,
- improve the community’s ability to communicate their environmental health concerns,
- and mobilize community and business partnerships to help minority and low-income neighborhoods reduce their exposure to toxics.
MORE…
See the Oregon Toxics Alliance web site
