For years Cully has been working so hard on and off to have our industrial neighbors be more supportive in providing us with healthier air to breath, efforts need to start being supported by our elected officials and we are petitioning the City of Portland, Oregon State and the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to support us with a Community Air Program (CAP) that focuses on Cumulative Health Risks.
Please read the petition below and sign on to the cause if you feel the desire to support healthier air in our lives!
To: Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ)
From: Residents of the City of Portland
Re: Petition to Protect & Support Air Quality in Cully
The issue:
Residents of the Cully neighborhood live next to a heavy industrial manufacturing district, and many of our homes are mixed to low-income housing. For years, neighbors have raised concerns about toxic air emissions from industrial manufacturing and their effects on our health and quality of life.
We are asking the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to take these concerns seriously by strengthening its permitting and oversight of these nearby, harmful industrial facilities.
We, the undersigned, ask DEQ to:
Speed up review of all new air permit applications for facilities in or near the Cully neighborhood.
Move problem facilities to stricter permits. Any facility operating under a Basic or Simple Air Contaminant Discharge Permit (ACDP) that is within a 100 yard radius of low-income housing should be assessed under the OAR 340-216-0035 for their permit based on the factors listed in the regulations, especially the "proximity to places where people live and work." Under OAR 340-216-0060(5), DEQ may rescind a facility’s General ACDP assignment, requiring it to apply within 60 days for a Simple or Standard ACDP. DEQ should exercise this authority for problem facilities in the Cully and adjacent neighborhoods.
Require a risk assessment for Porter Yett facility under Cleaner Air Oregon to exercise the Division 245 authority to call in Porter Yett and other facilities for health-risk assessments and impose risk-based controls on these facilities.
Treat any facility with air emissions complaints in a given year as a “facility of concern,” starting with:
Porter W. Yett Asphalt: upgrade from a General ACDP to a Simple ACDP no later than its renewal in October 2027.
Industrial Tire Services: complete permitting within the next 6 months.
Myers Containers / North Coast Containers: complete permitting within the next 6 months.
All other facilities that receive a threshold number of complaints, Because every family in Cully, and the City of Portland, deserves clean air, the facilities that generate repeated complaints should face the level of oversight that matches their impact on the neighborhood and the neighborhood should not be the only entity responsible for enforcing this oversight.
Additionally, we would like to request that the DEQ and the City of Portland work together to create a Community Air Protections (CAP) program that addresses the cumulative health risk of living in close proximity to industrial facilities.
Because every family in Cully deserves clean air, the facilities that generate repeated complaints should face the level of oversight that matches their impact on the neighborhood and the neighborhood should not be the only entity responsible for enforcing this oversight.
Cumulative health impacts arise when multiple pollution sources and environmental stressors combine over time, and Cully residents know this all too well with our proximity to industrial facilities and transportation corridors, where we have historic exclusionary zoning, poverty, limited healthcare access, and climate stressors that compound exposure to air toxics. Because regulating chemicals and facilities individually underestimates the true risk, the City of Portland must adopt a program that accounts for the combined effects of multiple air toxics from multiple sources, and addresses the resulting environmental injustice impacts of these harmful emissions.
The citizens of Portland deserve a supportive resource regarding our air pollution concerns and request that the City, State & DEQ work together to;
Help develop community emissions reducing programs
Support retrofitting pollution controls and facilities of known concern
Provide more community air monitoring with accessible public records in the specified neighborhoods of Cully, St. John’s, Kenton, Piedmont, Woodlawn, Sunderland, Concordia, Sumner, Parkrose, Argay Terrace, etc.
Support affected neighborhoods with funding opportunities for education, remediation programs and small grants to support community members with associated health problems (cancer, asthma, etc.)
Limit new permits for industrial polluters and ability to operate
Put a moratorium on adding low-income housing complexes within 1,500 yards of any industrial facilities