DEQ in the Crosshairs

What's up at DEQ?  Nothing but the usual.

DEQ, Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality, has come under heavy fire recently for sitting on important data about air and soil contamination in Portland.  DEQ did not inform the City or School District for over a year that a US Forest Service study in the City had turned up "hot spots" of toxic metals including arsenic and cadmium.  The disclosure resulted in a shake-up at DEQ when Director Dick Pedersen suddenly retired for urgent health reasons.

Of course news that DEQ is asleep at the wheel is nothing new to Yamhill County residents -- although our Board of Commissioners might be in for a shock.  County Commissioners have long relied, very heavily, on DEQ to police our environment for us.  Dating back to the earliest approvals of Riverbend Landfill, in the 1980s, the Commissioners have refused to consider environmental issues connected to dumping waste on a river bank in farm country.  Instead, the Commissioners pushed that burden off on DEQ -- which has not been handling it well.

People across the state are now crying for an overhaul of DEQ.  Will that happen?  Or will "business as usual" prevail?  The Department has been in turmoil before, without a turnaround in sight.  In fact, when Pedersen first became Director, back in 2008, the Department was understaffed, underfunded, and rudderless.  Nothing changed.

We can't expect a local board that refuses to do its constituents even the courtesy of discussing its reasoning to suddenly wake up and start protecting our farmland or the beauty and good water and air quality of Yamhill County.  But we can call for change at DEQ.

Write your representative and Senator and Governor Brown.  The local papers.  Get active in campaigns for County Commission, Senate, and Representative.  Demand that candidates take a stand on DEQ -- and of course on Riverbend expansion!

Contact information:

Governor Brown:  http://www.oregon.gov/gov/pages/shareyouropinionsent.aspx
State Senate:  https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/senate/pages/senatorsall.aspx
State Representatives:  https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/house/Pages/RepresentativesAll.aspx

Letters to Editor:
Statesman Journal:  http://community.statesmanjournal.com/email/letters_to_the_editor.php
News-Register:  http://newsregister.com/submit-letter
Newberg Graphic:  http://www.emailmeform.com/builder/form/P6F64czlK9qVsdN0r2

Environmental Reporting:
Willamette Week njaquiss@wweek.com
OREGONIAN RDavis@oregonian.com
OPB cprofita@opb.org