News Jul 2, 2014 at 4:00 pm

Deadly Chemicals Abound in Portland. You're Supposed to Know That.

Comments

1
Nuclear waste is transported by trucks and trains, all around the country, and could be passing through Portland from Hanford all the time. Reed College has it's very, own nuclear reactor, even though voters got Trojan shut down.
2
Wait for it ... probably a good thing the city never built that fluoride treatment facility, ya think?
3
Thanks so much to reporter Dirk Van der Hart for delving into this as yet non-trendy enviro story about the Bhopal potential lurking in our kombucha distilling & composting 'hoods. Also, much gratitude to Ed. Humphrey & MERCURY\STRANGER publishers for freeing up the news hole to deepen our understanding of issues closer to hand and more likely to splash or dose us than the higher profile public disclosure issues pertaining to the increased rail tanker car traffic en route to trans-shipment terminals on the Oregon coast. That higher profile issue was discussed on OPB's THINK OUT LOAD er LOUD this morning with BNSF's reluctance to comply with Public Disclosure regulations under scrutiny.

Seems to me that a creative multi-media way to leverage community interest and involvement in enviro defense (especially urban enviro defense as under review here) would be to have greater symbiotic co-operation between community radio (KBOO), public radio (OPB), college radio (KUSF, KMHD etc) and the print muckrakers like VanderHart, Theriault and Mirk of your staff (always found Sarah's email address smirk@ too snarky by half) along with the local alt cabaret\performance space scenes.

Amplifying and repeating any media reportage might just jolt a few social media addicts from navel-gazing and selfie-posing, put issues such as our immediate safety on the agenda even before the ballot petitions start a'circulating and above all else, kinda like dental floss breaks up colonies of bacteria at gum level, such amplification and repetition of the muck & mire might just break up the crony capitalism that is less an economic system and more of the default mode of human nature left to its own unfettered devices...

Keep on doing
Appreciatively,
Mitchito
4
Maybe Reed College media could chime in?
5
Great article, but 99% of people aren't going to take the time to read this. Turn this into 2-4 powerful paragraphs to inspire people to educate themselves further. Just too long for the average joe.
6
@Dread Uptown: No, voters did not close Trojan. There were enough voters that didn't have a clue about the dangers involved for all those ballot measures to fail, and PGE spend millions campaigning to keep it that way. Then they closed the plant voluntarily because it was such a dangerous, badly engineered mess that had to be shut down over and over again and was costing them too much money and could not even be sufficiently repaired. Let's remember that history and all those promises about the safety of nuclear plants when people still say that nuclear power is part of the answer to getting away from fossil fuels.

@Travis Sims: Why dumb everything down for people who refuse to read? Let them keep on skimming and pretending they know everything even though they "don't have time" to read.
7
I'm still pissed about that Superfund fee on my water bill. I know i'ts only a few bucks but hey, I didn't make that mess, why the fuck am I having to pay to clean it up?
8
Phew, a task force... problem solved.
9
I made it to a Multnomah Co. LEPC meeting earlier this year. I'm a PBEM NET volunteer, and I met another NET there. Neighborhood Emergency Teams (NETs) are Portland residents trained by PBEM and Portland Fire & Rescue to provide emergency disaster assistance within their own neighborhoods. NET members are trained to save lives and property until professional responders can arrive. These volunteers are specially trained to help others without putting themselves in harm’s way. We need more volunteers!
10
Right to Know information about facilities with large quantities of extremely hazardous substances (RMP Facilities) is searchable by zipcode at http://www.rtknet.org/

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