Oregon Toxics Alliance's mission is to work for all Oregonians to expose root causes of toxic pollution and help communities find solutions that protect human and environmental health. We adhere to two proactive commitments. Our first goal is to systematically challenge the root causes of toxic pollution in Oregon by changing policies and laws, and our second is to provide grassroots, direct-action on local projects to preserve the environment and protect public health. We build advocacy for changes in statewide guidelines by supporting grassroots partnerships on local toxics issues. By involving affected residents, OTA creates larger public support for fundamental changes in chemical use policy.

What we believe in

Oregon Toxics Alliance believes that communities should have the right to clean air, land and water. Our organization was founded around the underlying principle that communities have a right to participate with informed consent about the decisions that affect their own health.

How we do our work

Communities are often confronted with a false dichotomy: choose between economic growth or a healthy environment. Oregon Toxics Alliance works to see that job growth does not, in reality, lead to pollution growth. When an Oregon community faces a potentially harmful activity or facility, we can help them address the risk for harm by:

• Exercising the community’s right-to-know what is being released into their air, water and soil
  
• Employing alternative assessments that lead to toxics use reduction and elimination
  
• Infusing the precautionary principle into all policy decisions
  

Grassroots in action
OTA is about building grassroots movements and supporting vibrant community work. This work gives legs and heart to the larger “concept” campaigns. Here are just a few projects:

• OTA’s founders lead a successful voter initiative in Eugene to establish the nation’s most comprehensive municipal toxics right-to-know ordinance. OTA continues to defend this law against industry’s attacks and to use it to educate residents all over the state about their fundamental rights to information on what is being released to the air, water and land.
  
• OTA’s partnership with three rural community groups successfully halted two fossil fuel merchant power plants in the Willamette Valley. The Oregon Fair Energy Bill that grew out of this grassroots effort received a unanimous vote in the Oregon Senate in 2005.
  
• OTA’s organization of the Eugene Rail Road Pollution Coalition successfully helped neighborhoods exposed to a elevated cancer risk from groundwater contaminated by activities at the Union Pacific rail yard take strategic action to demand adequate testing, remediation and clean-up.
  
• OTA is doing outreach to Spanish-speaking and low-income families in Lane County about toxics use reduction and precautionary action in the home.
  
• OTA’s partnership with a community group in Ontario, Eastern Oregon was successful in significantly limiting the amount and type of hazardous chemical emissions at a new ethanol production facility.
  
• OTA’s grassroots work with rural Lane County residents concerned about aerial spray of herbicides on forestland is leading to a renewed statewide effort to enact laws that protect children’s health and the safety of rural property owners adjacent to forestland.
  
• OTA’s Don’t Top Off project has alerted thousands of Oregonians to the hazards of benzene vapor exposure at gas stations and given car drivers and gas station owners actions to reduce benzene emissions.
  
• OTA helped proposed and has been a key member of the Eugene Mayor’s Sustainable Development Task Force, which recommended a non-toxics purchasing policy for the city of Eugene in September 2006.