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Southeast Portland residents who live in the neighborhoods close to the Brooklyn Rail Yard are organizing to try to fight the diesel pollution they say comes from the train and truck traffic at the site.
"Diesel emissions in Portland represent a serious health risk," said Joe Hovey, media contact for Portland Neighbors Addressing Diesel Pollution. "We are concerned that too little has been done to address this threat to our health. We believe public awareness has been insufficient to ensure an effective response from our leaders."
"Our goal is to get the state, county and city to work together with its constituents to find real immediate solutions," Hovey continues.
Portland Neighbors Addressing Diesel Pollution, a group that formed last year, will host a forum tonight at 7 pm at Sacred Heart Catholic Church to discuss the health risks and dangers posed by diesel emissions to residents across all of Portland. The forum will include a panel of experts, elected officials, and candidates who will discuss the scope of the problem and what can be done about it.
The forum will address how locomotive and container truck diesel emissions from Brooklyn Rail Yard and other concentrations across Portland impact the health of neighboring residential areas. Concerns center around the diesel particulate, a hazardous component of diesel exhaust.
Organizers admit they have no data on the rail yards specifically, but are looking to get answers.
"In forming a coalition, we hope to find solutions to this threat to our collective health," said Hovey. "We believe the state, county and city are responsible for the health of Portlanders and therefore look to them for definitive solutions. We feel the best solution is emission controls on diesel engines to reduce the levels of particulates released into our air, coupled with widely distributed monitoring to verify our safety."
In 2012, the Brooklyn neighborhood agreed to lift a 60-year-old injunction limiting activities at the Brooklyn Rail Yard so long as the yard agreed to purchase newer, cleaner equipment to reduce emissions.
Robert McCullough, a former president of the nearby Eastmoreland Neighborhood Association, says there is still monitoring of the yard today to make sure they are keeping up their end of the deal.
However the agreement did not include modernizing short haul trucking, which McCullough says is a big deal: "That's where most of the particulates comes from. It's a major issue."
"[Union Pacific Rail Road] are shipping in and out of that yard on 400,000 trucks per year," McCullough says. "Those trucks do not use diesel filters."
In fact, he adds that the Brooklyn area has been called "the place where diesel engines go to die."
In 2008, California adopted strict new environmental regulations for diesel trucks, forcing over 350,000 trucks to be phased out for failing to meet the new standards. Eventually, older truck models found their way to Oregon, where air quality regulations aren't nearly as strict.
This year, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality received a $466,276 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a two year study on diesel pollution across Portland. (The research is lead by Linda George, professor of environmental science at Portland State University, who will work with PSU college Vivek Shandas, professor of urban planning, and Juliane Fry, chemistry professor from Reed College.)
The issue of diesel pollution has again drawn local attention with the reopening of Harriet Tubman School, which is located right next to Interstate 5, a common thoroughfare for diesel trucks. In April, an air quality study by Portland State University recommended that students of Harriet Tubman stay inside to avoid any negative health effects—even as state officials seek to expand the highway.
Tonight's forum will be videotaped and available here.