Oregon Group Files Civil Rights Complaint Over Biomass Air Pollution

- by Lisa Arkin, August 6, 2014, Beyond Tox­i­cs

On August 6, Beyond Tox­i­cs filed a civ­il rights and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice com­plaint with the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) chal­leng­ing the Lane Coun­ty Region­al Air Pro­tec­tion Agency’s deci­sion to allow a pow­er plant to increase its dis­charges of haz­ardous par­tic­u­late mat­ter. The com­plaint alleges that allow­ing Seneca Sus­tain­able Ener­gy to increase pol­lu­tion dis­charges dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impacts the health of minor­i­ty and low-income res­i­dents of West Eugene. The com­plaint requests that U.S. EPA’s Office of Civ­il Rights (OCR) inval­i­date the deci­sion to increase pol­lu­tant discharges.

Seneca Sus­tain­able Energy’s plant emits fine par­tic­u­late mat­ter, which is high­ly dan­ger­ous to human health. Expo­sure to fine par­ti­cles can affect lung func­tion and wors­en med­ical con­di­tions such as asth­ma and heart dis­ease, and increase the risk of pre­ma­ture death. Children’s asth­ma rates in the West Eugene area are almost twice the state average.

Res­i­dents of the sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hoods are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly like­ly to be minor­i­ty and low-income (in com­par­i­son with oth­er areas of Eugene). The near­by neigh­bor­hoods (Bethel-Danebo, Train­song, and parts of Riv­er Road) are also over­bur­dened with indus­tri­al pol­lu­tion, mak­ing these res­i­dents dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly like­ly to suf­fer from health effects such as asthma.

Chris Win­ter is an attor­ney with the Crag Law Cen­ter, a pub­lic inter­est envi­ron­men­tal law firm, and is rep­re­sent­ing Beyond Tox­i­cs. Win­ter said, “LRAPA is accept­ing fed­er­al mon­ey with the promise that it will pro­tect the most mar­gin­al­ized and vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties in Lane Coun­ty. Instead of fol­low­ing through on this promise, LRAPA is ignor­ing its oblig­a­tions under the Title VI of the 1964 Civ­il Rights Act.” 

Lisa Arkin, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Beyond Tox­i­cs, says, “Neigh­bors in the area of West Eugene down­wind from Seneca’s bio­mass ener­gy plant have repeat­ed­ly expressed con­cerns about LRAPA’s approval of increas­ing amounts of par­tic­u­late air pol­lu­tion. We now must turn to the Office of Civ­il Rights to ask for help.”

Beyond Tox­i­cs has asked OCR to require that LRAPA revoke its approval of the per­mit mod­i­fi­ca­tion. The U.S. EPA can also revoke fed­er­al fund­ing for vio­la­tions of the Civ­il Rights Act. 

Beyond Tox­i­cs has also request­ed OCR con­duct a full review of LRAPA’s pro­grams to ensure com­pli­ance with Title VI of the Civ­il Rights Act, express­ing its con­cern that the orig­i­nal SSE per­mit (issued in 2009) and oth­er recent per­mit­ting deci­sions also have dis­crim­i­na­to­ry effects on com­mu­ni­ties in West Eugene.