Last month, news broke that two Portland, Oregon glass factories who use heavy metals to color their products were polluting nearby neighborhoods due to a lack of basic pollution controls on their operations. One study found arsenic levels around one of the factories at 149 times state safety benchmarks. This same factory is adjacent to a day care facility, two public schools and a city park.
Reports say that DEQ knew about high levels of arsenic and cadmium in the air for years but could not isolate the source. When the source was found (by the US Forest Service, NOT DEQ), regulators took five months to do their own tests, which took another three months to show results. This snail's pace is unacceptable.
Since then, the Director of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has resigned, and the agency has been scrambling to make the situation right (at this point they are simply requesting more money from the state), but more investigations reveal deeper problems with the agency:
- One senior air quality official boasted going on vacation with an attorney for industrial polluters.
- DEQ spent 6.5 million taxpayer dollars cleaning up a foreclosed site, only to realize they had done improper paperwork and had no legal claim to recoup any of their costs when it sold.
As a Portland resident, I am horrified by the developments and fearful for my safety and the safety of my friends who have reasonable expectations that our air will not make us sick. It's been made clear that DEQ is an ineffective regulator and an ineffective agency.
It's time that the EPA step in to take over regulatory authority, at least until the Oregon DEQ can get its act together. Please sign my petition!