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The city of Eugene urged residents to take a survey on a public health reform project, saying their input could shape its future. But a key technical analysis for the project never materialized — and that miss could stall progress on the project, which is due to go before the city council in a work session next month.
On a rainy Thursday night in West Eugene, residents packed into a small church off a gravel road to share their concerns about living in a community with a lot of industrial activity — and its pollution.
One person spoke of fumes that cling to the air like wildfire smoke mixed with nail polish remover. And that’s on a good day, another man added. Over and over, people said the same thing in different ways: no more.
They were among 20 or so people to attend the last community meeting about a city of Eugene project to see how land-use policy tools could help to reduce pollution in neighborhoods like theirs.
And they didn’t like what they heard. A city official told them the project had suffered a potential setback: The city didn’t carry through with plans to perform a technical analysis — a study that could have provided key data to help persuade city councilors to continue the project.
Residents pushed back, saying enough research already exists even without the technical study and that their lived experiences should be more than enough evidence. Further, city leaders and records have acknowledged that past discriminatory policies pushed people of color and low-income residents to the city’s outer edges, near railroads and industrial zones.
“We are the example of how the zoning and land use has not worked,” said Mick Hornbeck, a resident and co-chair of the Trainsong Neighborhood Association board. “Please help us out.”
How did we get here?
People in the Trainsong and Bethel neighborhoods live in a V-shaped wedge between some of the city’s heavily industrialized areas. In recent years, pollution emitted in the city has been heavily concentrated in the 97402 ZIP code, according to the local nonprofit group Beyond Toxics.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control shows life expectancy in these neighborhoods is nearly 10 years shorter than it is in other Eugene communities with greener businesses and higher-income residents. Also, an Oregon Health Authority analysis has found that rates of lung cancer and Hodgkin’s lymphoma are high in West Eugene.
However, the city’s land use supervisor, Reid Verner, said that research doesn’t offer a causal link — evidence about exactly what is making people unhealthy.
Verner, who has been working on the Public Health Standards project, planned to commission a technical analysis that could bridge that gap. But that analysis didn’t come through, he said during Thursday’s meeting.
People in the crowd expressed concerns about whether that could weaken the case for the project — a policy effort first proposed by the nonprofit Beyond Toxics in 2021 after the extent of J.H. Baxter’s pollution came to light. For nearly eight decades, the wood treatment company used toxic chemicals, including creosote and dioxin, which leached into the ground; soil sampling and illegal activity at the facility prompted government action in recent years.
Beyond Toxic’s goal was to create land use policy that accounts for public health risks when approving new or expanding industrial sites. The city council took up the idea in 2022, but the proposed policy would have required rezoning, a challenge given the extent of industrial infrastructure in the area. In 2023, the council instead directed staff to explore ways public health considerations could be built into the city’s land use code.
That task fell in part to Verner’s team. While the team successfully contracted a public engagement specialist, it didn’t find researchers.
“The goal of the project initially was to rely on technical assistance from a study that the Public Works sustainability team had sent out requests for proposals in 2024; however, due to lack of response to these requests for proposals, the determination was made to move forward with the project without that technical assistance from the study,” Verner said.
Verner did not explain why a decision was made to move forward. Verner and his team will give a presentation to a council work session in mid-June.
“We’re going to present the picture that we hear from the community to city council,” Verner said. “They are ultimately the decision-makers.”
What ‘enough’ feedback looks like to be seen
Verner told Lookout Eugene-Springfield that the city recently found researchers to take on the analysis and is going through steps for contracting.
However, he needs to have enough community feedback and interest to make a case for the project to continue. That concerned the handful of people in attendance Thursday. It was the last community meeting before the feedback period ended. And a survey seeking responses about the project closed Sunday.
Several residents, including Hornbeck, questioned how seriously the city is taking their concerns, saying the survey was open only for a limited time, was not well-promoted and was not widely accessible. They also criticized the questions themselves, saying they focused on generic metrics — like household income — that already exist in sources like census data, rather than addressing the community’s realities.
“Honestly, the survey, if that’s what the city’s looking for, do people care, in this neighborhood, about what happens to us?” Hornbeck said. “That’s not the right way to go about it.”
