Beyond Toxics explains the West Eugene public health overlay zone

Presenter: The City Council on June 8 approved a public health overlay zone for West Eugene. 

This week Beyond Toxics is helping to explain where it came from, what it means, and what comes next. From the podcast ‘Why We Do The Work,’ Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault: 

Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault: Hello folks, it’s Arjorie here on ‘Why We Do The Work.’ I am joined by one of my previous guests, one of Oregon’s only environmental justice attorneys, Rebeka Dewit. We will be talking about something that I’ve talked about on the show quite a bit: the land use regulation code, the public health standards. I have referred to it as the ‘Public Health Overlay Zone.’

Let me take you back in history just a pinch. We began our campaign in 2022. Here at Beyond Toxics, we saw an urgent need to protect the folks out in West Eugene from sharing their living spaces with polluters.

Back in the day, we didn’t know the harm it could cause folks living near industrial facilities. A lot of the time, if we’re honest, these are low-income Black, Indigenous, and people of color—BIPOC—communities where these folks live because they don’t have any other choices because of their finances. And in this case, 98% of all reported air toxins are reported in that 97402 area code, which is West Eugene. 

Fast forward to 2026. Our team saw a need to help fix a regulation that was not in place. The public health overlay zone was not just out of thin air. We modeled it after the Clear Lake Overlay Zone in Eugene, Oregon, a 924-acre urban growth boundary expansion area designed to transition farmland near the Eugene airport into a green employment center.

It focuses on light industrial, manufacturing, and transitioning development, balancing economic growth with wetland and water quality protection. It bans worst land uses, requires manufacturing to be done indoors in areas closest to homes, parks, schools; applies to properties south of Clear Lake Road. 

It also has a public meeting requirement. It needs a preclearance letter from LRAPA (which is Lane Regional Air Protection Agency), and that regulates the air and provides air permits for Eugene. That was our model.

What the public health overlay zone would do is adjust the land use rules where it is applied for the use of protecting public health. This was our model. 

We drafted the concept and submitted it to the then-Eugene city Mayor Lucy Vinis and City Council in February of 2022. City Council formally took up the concept and unanimously voted to advance it in October of 2023.

I sped up the timeline quite a bit for time’s sake, but it wasn’t an easy task. We met tirelessly with community groups, community members, leaders and elected officials.

We held community meetings, workshops on how to write testimony, how to give testimony, and we had community groups sign on letters of support that we then delivered to the Mayor and the City Council.

There was a lot of support for this, and we were thrilled to have our community-driven concept come to life. Everyone should be able to be protected from living near potentially new or expanding polluting businesses.

It was important that you got caught up so you can know about what’s happening with this land use code, because it’s very exciting to see how far it’s come. It’s refreshing to hear City Council say, ‘This is because of J.H. Baxter.’ 

J.H. Baxter is a former wood treatment plant that was polluting West Eugene since the 1940s that is now shut down and is a Superfund site after it was discovered that it was polluting the neighborhood with dioxins. 

Now that I’ve given you some background, let’s bring Rebeka into the conversation. How have you been?

Rebeka Dewit: Oh, man. I mean, the first year as deputy director, so that’s been a really exciting change in work plan. I’ve been at Crag for five years this fall.

For folks who may not know what Crag Law Center is, it’s a nonprofit environmental law center based in Portland, and we give free and low-cost legal services to folks who want to protect their communities, environment, places they love most.

And I’m really fortunate that my work really gets to center on environmental justice work and get to work with amazing folks like Beyond Toxics and you, Arjorie. And it’s been really great.

So it’s our 25th anniversary this year. I was just telling someone last night, it’s great that it’s our 25th anniversary but that means like, dang, you know, we don’t have really good environmental justice laws on the books yet, so I don’t get to sue much because there’s really nothing to sue under.

So a lot of our work is supporting our amazing clients in the policy space and trying to get good laws on the books. That’s kind of looked like transportation equity, land use equity, which I’m really excited to get into with you, water quality. 

Now we’re starting to dabble a little bit more in the conversations around utilities and renewables. So we’re starting to become a little bit of a one-stop shop.

Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault: When did you get involved with the public health standards? 

Rebeka Dewit: We were all kind of licking the wounds of the 2025 legislative session. As the legislative session winded down, we started getting notice about the public health standards process. so we were kind of waiting in the wings around last year, maybe mid- to late-last year and have been deep in it with Beyond Toxics.

It’s been a pleasure, you know, helping navigate the different versions and, figuring out what public comments may look like and just trying to, you know, hold folks accountable and make sure that the process keeps moving in a way that makes sense for community as well. 

Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault: And I’m going to remind everyone that at the beginning of this, in 2022, there were a whole bunch of banned uses of this and that, that we took from the Clear Lake Overlay Zone that I told you about.

It’s includes a requirement for the applicant to document and attest to an air, land, and water quality permits that they need. The documentation requirement can be met by completing a form that will be provided by the city, or by providing a list of the required permits.

To aid in the documentation process, the city will provide the contact information for the three regulatory agency permitting offices. That’s going to be LRAPA (which is the regional protection agency), the DEQ and the EPA. Okay. So you need to say what are the three permits that you need from these places?

You have to fill out a form saying that you need these permits. Jeff Gepper, the city planner for Eugene, he clarified that they do not require that you get the permits. Just that you say that you have to have these permits. Okay.

So this process is simply meant for you to submit the form to state that you know that you need these permits to the regulatory agencies. So his thing that he said, quote, is ‘to build in coordination and to not add a barrier.’

Councilor Mike Clark asked, what’s city staff’s response to the applicant if the regulatory agency does not respond.

Presenter: At the April 20th public hearing, Jeff Gepper and Councilor Mike Clark.

Jeff Gepper: Jeff Gepper, principal planner for the land use planning team.

Councilor Mike Clark: And Jeff, walk through this with me. Does the city staff have any power to require those agencies to respond? Do regulatory partners have a responsibility to respond to you?

Jeff Gepper: The only requirement in the code is that they submit this attestation form and we then supply that form as well as some basic information about the proposal to our agency partners.

Because these aren’t our regulations we don’t want them holding up the building permit process. We just want to meet the requirements of this proposed land use code that is essentially just building in coordination and not adding a barrier. 

Councilor Mike Clark: What’s city staff’s response to the applicant if the regulatory agency does not respond? 

Jeff Gepper: We would tell them if they believe they do not need a permit to fill out the form and submit it to us, and we’ll accept that and we’ll pass it on to that agency.

Councilor Mike Clark: So it’s to approve it anyway, even though they never got a response. 

Jeff Gepper: So we are not approving anything. We are receiving a form and we are passing that form onto our agency partners along with some additional information. So it’s about the receipt of that information and being able to pass that off to our agency partners. 

Presenter: With her podcast guest Rebeka Dewit, Beyond Toxics’ Arjorie  Arberry-Baribeault: 

Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault: I’m going to ask you to provide some legal importance of this initiative in this process.

Rebeka Dewit: The thing with environmental law and land use law is, it is this really unique combination of science, checked boxes, politics, and textbook environmental law or whatever statutes are on the book, right?

So there’s nothing incorrect necessarily saying that the city isn’t approving anything. That’s true. I mean, DEQ is going to be the one that approves these permits. And our other state agencies are going to be the ones involved in approving their actual environmental permits or, you know, whichever other permits they might need that aren’t related to the city itself.

But what is interesting is then there’s no indication as to what authority the city is going to have in the kind of back end And approval of a facility. that’s where I’m I guess frustrated because when I initially learned about the public health standards, I envisioned it as you have interagency coordination, which is great, but that’s going to be coupled with the hazard and risk assessment analysis that is supposed to happen sometime in the next year.

So I think this very specific issue of just addressing what kind of permits someone may need is correct in the sense that, okay, yeah, they’re not technically approving anything.

But if the whole point is interagency communication and making sure that the city has everything they need in front of them—

These large industrial facilities, you know, the larger companies, nine times out of ten have their own permit person who knows what permits they need, who knows what needs to be applied for and what doesn’t need to be applied for. So they’re already doing that backend work. 

Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault: You talked about a bill that did not pass in 2023. HB 3217, which is relating to environmental justice in land use planning. Can you tell me a little bit about that. I think the reason why it didn’t pass is because they didn’t like that word ‘environmental justice’ in there.

Rebeka Dewit: So yes, HB 3217 relates to integrating environmental justice into Goal 1.

For folks who would like a land use 101 refresher: Oregon has 19 land use goals. They relate from public participation to how we protect our urban growth boundaries, to how we protect our farmland, natural resources, our coast, etc.

And Goal 1 specifically relates to public participation. Ideally, you know, when our land use laws are created, it is with the intent that Oregonians know what’s going on. That’s the fundamental principle of it.

And, our land use regulatory entities are aware of what the impacted community is concerned about. Goal 1 facilitates the back-and-forth providing of information.

HB 3217 did not pass. HB 3217 is actually smack in the middle of two other environmental justice bills that tried to get passed in 2021 and 2025. 

HB 2488 was really the first one. And that was also addressing Goal 1 environmental justice, and also trying to add a Goal 20 to specifically talk about climate change. And the climate change bit was a little too spicy. We weren’t ready for that yet.

And HB 2488 from my memory actually made it pretty decently okay, but ultimately did not pass.

HB 3062 was a really broad coalition, you know, Beyond Toxics was a part of it; it was a bunch of environmental justice organizations and some traditional conservation organizations as well. 

HB 2488, HB 3217 were firmly in an administration where EJ was a great term. There was a lot of money going to EJ communities. There’s a lot of environmental justice policies getting adopted from hyperlocal to the federal level. It was a great time, you know, all things considered, for EJ advocacy.

You get to 2025 and, you know, EJ is a bad word. Diversity is a bad word. You know, equity is a bad word. So we shifted the language to say, okay, public participation is great. but who cares about public participation if what you’re participating in doesn’t actually go anywhere, right?

So we took it a step further in HB 3062 in 2025 by saying, okay, if you’re going to zone something industrial or if you’re going to site an industrial facility within 1,000 feet of a vulnerable community. So we changed it to a vulnerable community or sensitive use.

So we were saying schools, hospitals, care facilities, homes, apartments, etc. you have to do essentially an offset impact analysis saying: How is this industrial facility or this industrial use going to impact those that would be the most impacted by this use?

And that also did not pass. We fought really—our clients fought really, really hard for that one. So I would love something like HB 3217 where you have just, you know, kind of environmental justice integration into Goal 1 and public participation.

But I think, you know, we’re in the era of we’re past public participation. I think public participation is great. And I think there’s plenty of opportunities oftentimes for comments and asking folks to, you know, keep rehashing their lived experiences for some data that’s going to go nowhere.

But I think what really matters is: Where is the rubber going to hit the road? So I think there are elements of what would be HB 3217 in this kind of community involvement piece for this public health standard development.

You know, there’s a lot of opportunities for public feedback. There’s a lot of opportunities for public participation. Everything is really accessible online. I’m really, really impressed with that. And I think that basically fulfills the fundamental goals of HB 3217 and elements of HB 2488 from 2021.

But I think the next step and my dream kind of scenario of a public health standards process that is complete has those elements of HB 3062 of 2025 where it actually has, ‘Okay, this is how it impacts communities. This is what the risk analysis says. This is what you have to think about.’

And then whose hands are being essentially untied by the passage of a law, right? That’s essentially the crux of environmental justice advocacy, right? Because I think a lot of environmental justice advocates get told, ‘Our hands are tied, sorry.’ Like, ‘We can’t actually consider that.’ And, you know, ‘Whoops, like we just wish things were different.’

And I think this is the opportunity to say, ‘Okay, your hands are untied. Here are the standards that you need to follow. And here are the mitigation measures that you need to follow.’ And I think those are both elements from HB 3217 and the Healthy Communities Act that was attempted to pass in 2025.

Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault: Nice.

Rebeka Dewit: Yeah. When did that get controversial?

Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault: I’m trying to help the people. (I know.) Just trying to protect people. They’re just trying to help people. What the heck, people? Come on. They’re human beings. What the heck? It’s weird to me. It’s weird. 

I’m not naive, but at the same time, I can’t believe that people just don’t care. 

Rebeka Dewit: The first few years of my job I had a very similar feeling of: ‘Am I really that naive on thinking that our environmental laws were really there to protect everyone?’

Our environmental laws are objectively new compared to a lot of our other laws in this country. And when they were written and drafted and passed, there was not adequate consideration for: What is the flexibility outside of the black letter of the law, outside of what’s just printed?

And also: Who was in the room when these laws were passed and who wasn’t? And I think it’s been really exciting to see more and more advocates at the Capitol, being a thorn in that side, making legislators acknowledge some, frankly, really bizarre bills, that really put communities in harm’s way.

Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault: You know, one of the councilors mentioned something to the effect of, this could chase business away. And our employment rate is at an all-time low. And, you know, we want people to have jobs. We do, but we want people to live in a healthy environment, regardless of what businesses are around them, what industries around them. We want people to live in a healthy environment. We want people to be safe.

So my goal is to keep people in the forefront of the conversation before we get to the juicy part, before we get to the risk analysis, the risk assessment, the cumulative health impacts and all that.

And as the city is preparing for this next phase, Rebeka, what do you think this process looks like? Like, what kind of stuff do you think the city should be asking the community as they’re moving forward. 

Rebeka Dewit: I think you have the opportunity to really ask impacted communities like the historical context, like what past decisions have impacted the place that you live today, right? That kind of comes out of unpacking, the historical context in which a lot of our laws were created and who was not in the room when these laws were created, who was not in the room when these different zoning decisions were done. 

I usually have a three-part map when I talk about inequitable land use. You have a map of redlined Portland from the 1920s to the ‘30s. Redlining is when certain communities were deemed too hazardous for certain financial investments or mortgages. And certain communities were usually Black, Brown, low-income communities.

When redlining is done, then you have the zoning of industrial facilities in Portland. And there’s essentially a direct overlap of what places were considered hazardous 100 years ago and where are the biggest polluters today.

And how did that become, now, environmentally hazardous rather than just like Brown-people hazardous, right?

And those impacts are important to address and acknowledge in this risk assessment. Like: Why is there a disproportionate amount of zoning of industrial use in West Eugene? And why is there a history of underenforcement in West Eugene?

Those historical contexts are important to get from community members who oftentimes, their families and themselves have been there for as long as these issues have been going on. So that historical context is important in articulating the future solution.

Direct input on solutions: What are your top priorities for improving the quality of life in your community? The community has really robust suggestions on, like, what y’all should do for this community because they’re the ones that live here. They’re the ones that can tell you really what they need.

And so I think just even asking something as simple as: ‘What do you all want to see?’ Like: ‘What is your top priority for improving quality of life?’ You don’t need to be a scientist or a Ph.D. to be able to provide an answer for that.

I think asking about: What are your current concerns? What are your current burdens? Where do you feel are opportunities for improvement to make you feel environmentally safe in your community?

And I think this is, like, extra gold star for bravery that I would love to see a decision maker ask community is: What kind of accountability measures would you like to see integrated into this standard?

If people want some kind of hearing opportunity for certain risk assessments, great. If they want some kind of tangible outcome, maybe we do traffic impact studies for specific uses, etc.

Do you want the results of these studies to live somewhere that is accessible to people? I think directly asking: ‘How can we be accountable to you?’ is something that is not often asked, but I think would really provide a lot of trust between community and decision-makers to know that, you know, you’re not going to just do this risk analysis and do nothing with it.

Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault: Yeah, I’m excited for it. I’m excited for the juicy part. I am so happy that you came to talk to me and I would love to have you back once we get more into Phase 2. 

Would you be willing to come back and talk when we get to Phase 2? (Of course) Excellent.

And of course, a big thank you to the producer and editor of the show, Krystal Abrams. Thank you, Krystal!

Presenter: That was Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault with her guest Rebeka Dewit of Crag Law Center. You can hear Episode 22 of the Beyond Toxics podcast ‘Why We Do The Work’ in its entirety wherever you find good podcasts. 

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