District 33 hosts two looming environmental disasters in the event of a major earthquake: soil liquefaction at the Portland Harbor Superfund Site and major chemical and fuel releases from the seismically-unstable Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub as well as other toxic facilities the public does not know about due to a law called RCRA.
I will focus on the Superfund site because I have direct experience with cheaters under the Superfund law. From 2017-2020, I partially-successfully fought to prevent the construction of housing on a "cleaned" superfund site in San Francisco called Mission Rock where a deed covenant prohibited its use. The developers of the $3 Billion project lied in their Environmental Impact Report about groundwater levels of dissolved arsenic, and nowhere in the 1000-page report was it ever mentioned the site had a former industrial use identical to that of Willamette Cove and the soil had impermissibly high levels of the potent carcinogen benzopyrene. The developers floated millions in tax-free bonds for the project and none of that money was used to clean the soil. Because of my activism, the developers changed the plans to not put housing on the toxic part of the development, but the toxic soil will be beneath a new public park - what I call a "pay to playground." This corrupt development is directly connected to Democrat Gavin Newsom, and I hesitate to think of how many people are going to die of cancer because they were exposed to toxic soil.
Willamette Cove is the most toxic part of the Portland Harbor Superfund Site, and the abomination of local government, Oregon Metro, purchased it in 1996 with the intention of cleaning it up. Since then it's just sat there, often occupied by transients who do not know they are getting poisoned, and the public is deprived of a very scenic and accessible natural space right in urban Portland. It's not for lack of money: Oregon Metro has passed three consecutive "parks and nature" bonds and two five year add on taxes that could have been used to clean both the site and other toxic formerly industrial locations on the Willamette. In the meantime, Oregon Metro has spent over a billion dollars acquiring land already protected by urban growth boundaries.
The reason: Superfund. Because the "superfund" is not actually funded, once a site is listed, everyone can sit around and not take any responsibility, and the State of Oregon will not step in because the project became federalized. The State and Metro were planning to clean up Willamette Cove in the 90's and there was even a funding plan, but in 2000, it and other sites were designated "Superfund" ... and, nothing happened. In 2017, the EPA released a "record of decision." Well, the EPA gave its approval so it must be a good plan, right?
Well, here's the plan: they aren't going to clean it up. Instead, in March 2021, they decided to spend $23 Million in "cleanup credits" to restore other sites outside of this district.
The true purpose of today's EPA is to rubber stamp unhealthy exposure levels to environmental toxins, and to protect polluters by blessing deficient cleanup jobs. It was not always this way - in the 70's, the new EPA had ambition, but then it became subject to regulatory capture. Portland Harbor's actual "decision" is to leave all the industrial toxins in the sludge at the bottom of the river. True cleanup would involve dredging the entire river and then hauling all the soil by barge to a cleanup facility at the Hanford Nuclear site.
What will happen in a major earthquake is the disturbed soil will liquify and the toxins will outgass and be spread far downstream and contaminate other properties.
Next, the public is far more exposed to toxins than it knows. There are actually two superfund laws, and superfund's dirty little sister is a law called RCRA. They work the same, but the difference is Superfund has a P/R budget attached to them so they get written about in news articles and the public knows about them, but RCRA sites are sites as toxic as superfund the EPA knows about, but the cleanup plan has no public input and records often remain secret.
For example, what is going on at this Northwest District chemical distributor called Univar solutions? The EPA's website is clear as mud. Why were they given a $165,000 penalty in 2021?
Did you know about these toxin releases into the air we breathe?
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