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Eugene Railyard - Living in an Industrial City
Eugene’s vitality and quality of life rests on many assets: cultural, natural, political, and many others. Many of its jobs rest with polluting industrial operations, and west Eugene in particular is home to most of the businesses which release hazardous air pollutants. This information is no secret: it’s available from many sources such as the ScoreCard database (www.scorecard.org), Lane Regional Air Pollution Authority (www.lrapa.org), and Eugene’s own Toxics Right to Know Program (www.ci.eugene.or.us/toxics/).The most easily applicable information comes from the ScoreCard database which can provide a map of the city of Eugene with facilities that have to report under the national Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) program, as well as the levels of hazardous air pollutants in Lane County and the health risks they pose. These chemical exposures are the current price of living in Eugene, a city with a base of manufacturing and high-tech industries. It means that our bodies are already attacked chemically in a variety of ways. The health hazards of Union Pacific’s dirty yard build on this background and for some local residents this cumulative effect may push them over the breaking point between health and illness.
Union Pacific’s (UP) risk assessment is ignoring cumulative effects of chemical exposures and other important information:
1. An arcane part of the Oregon statutes allows the well-documented dangers of diesel emissions from passing locomotives and nearby roads to be counted as zero.
2. The yard was never tested for 2,4-D, 2,4,5-T, or any other herbicides despite reports from retired UP employees that both chemicals were dumped on site in large amounts.
3. The yard was never tested for toxics stored in railcars at the yard despite residents’ concerns over damaged and leaking tanker cars.
4. The background health hazard for nearby residents is assumed to be zero; this is unrealistic considering the number of industries emitting hazardous air pollutants in west Eugene
5. Synergistic interactions between chemicals are also ignored despite the fact that around forty chemicals from the UP rail yard threaten residents.
Risk assessment is supposed to give communities impacted by toxic contamination a way of deciding how much cleanup needs to be done before they can have peace of mind about their health and welfare. However, risk assessment does not take into account the cumulative effects of multiple exposures to industrial pollutants from the industries that operate within one air shed. This is true in the Eugene case. The Union Pacific risk assessment has failed to address the real concerns of community members and an independent scientific review that raises the issue of cumulative toxic exposures.