Help us out here: What are the health impacts of the proposed I-5 bridge crossing?
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NWHF Staff
| Posted on: July 14th, 2008
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Environmental Health •
Disparities •
Policies & Laws •
Public Health •
Transportation •
Urban Issues
Columbia River Crossing
You may be interested to note that neither the May 21, 2008 Willamette Week cover story (“Bridge Over the River Why?”) nor the more than 70 follow-up comments on the WW website, did not - even once - use the word “health.”
Today’s Portland Tribune article on the July 17 Metro Council hearing for the proposed crossing also failed to mention the word “health.”
The article did, however, reference a July 1 U.S. EPA letter arguing that not enough attention has been paid to the “possibility that new pilings to support it will stir up pollution in the river and contaminate the Troutdale Aquifer that provides much of Clark County’s drinking water.”
Sounds like a health issue to us.
This is not to say that human health has never been considered in the I-5 Bridge process. In their July 9 letter to Doug Ficco and John Osborn, Co-Directors of Columbia River Crossing, Lillian Shirley (Director) and Gary Oxman (Health Officer) of the Multnomah County Health Department, provided a response to Columbia River Crossing’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement.
Oxman and Shirley wrote that project “poses the potential for disproportionate adverse health impacts on susceptible populations,” referring to the North Portland neighborhoods that run close to the I-5 Bridge crossing. These neighborhoods, they write, have “high proportions of populations of color, low income residents, and populations with disabilities. Therefore, it is possible that the health impacts due to air pollution and excessive noise will be felt most acutely by these susceptible populations.”
They also argue that “some federal standards do not protect human health adequately,” and “urge the CRC staff to examine available peer-reviewed literature to determine whether stricter standards are necessary to prevent harmful health impacts in our community rather than simply following NEPA requirements.”
How about you. Would you like to make your own “health impact” statement?
Is there anything that’s not being adequately addressed or not getting addressed at all in terms of human health?
Also any comments as to why “health” is not positioned more prominently in public discussions and in the media?
Any thoughts on what can be done to change this?
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They also argue that “some federal standards do not protect human health adequately,” and “urge the CRC staff to examine available peer-reviewed literature to determine whether stricter standards are necessary to prevent harmful health impacts in our community rather than simply following <a >NEPA</a> requirements.”