Portland, Oregon has been celebrated as one of the leading green cities in America. Due to land use planning aimed at limiting sprawl, transportation infrastructure that has prioritized public transit over single occupancy vehicles, and a populace both home grown and those who have migrated here, it's a place that seems to walk the talk with one of the highest bicycle commuting rates in the nation and an overall carbon emissions rate that is down 15% since 2000, and below 2% of 1990 levels.

Despite this devotion to sustainability, there are some stubborn indicators that there is more hard work to be done, not the least of which are illustrated by hosting a Superfund site in our polluted river that cuts through the city due to a 100 year legacy of heavy industrial activity, and asthma rates for adults at 10.2% and children 9.5%, both above the overall national average.  In 2009, Oregon was among the top five states with the highest percentage of residents living with asthma.

I found out about the discrepancy between perception and reality the hard way.

In March 2009 I was a stay-at-home mom for my three amazing daughters, then ages: 3, 10, and 12.  Searching the internet one day for a local farm to school lunch program, I stumbled on USA Today's report: The Smokestack Effect.  Using the search engine, I learned that my daughters' elementary school, located just blocks from our house, was ranked among the bottom 2% in the nation of schools in industrial air pollution toxic hot spots.  Horrified, I immediately started talking to other parents and organizing a community wide effort to pressure ESCO Steel, the company named most responsible for the ranking, to clean up the air.

Almost three years later, and countless hours collecting signatures, making phones calls, planning meetings, and negotiating terms, I was proud to join those who signed a legal binding contract with ESCO on behalf of the neighborhood which commits the 100-year old steel refinery to specific actions. potentially reducing their emissions, including dangerous heavy metal toxins like lead, manganese, arsenic and chromium 6, by 20%.

But the problem is that with hundreds of other sources of toxic emissions in Portland, we can't protect our children through advocacy directed at one polluter at a time. In fact, I soon learned that the problem was much bigger than just this one source.  Despite a devotion to sustainability, according to EPA's National Air Toxics Assessment, the Portland Metro region boasts the nations 3rd largest population at risk of  excess cancer due to toxic air emissions. These legal, but toxic emissions, meant that 35 area schools were ranked in the same USA Today study as being in the bottom 5% in the nation.   Without meaningful efforts to limit toxic emissions from industrial sources, even in one of the greenest cities in America, the air pollution rises when the economy does.  That meant almost 10% more pollution in 2010 than 2009.  And there is no foreseeable limit, since many of the biggest polluters are playing by rules established almost 50 years ago that don't fully consider the health impacts of pollution such as asthma and cancer.

What I have come to know is that people understand the threat of air pollution when it is visible, like the heavy yellow smog blanketing Los Angeles, or the haze that used to obstruct the Portland residents' view of the majestic Mount Hood east of the city.  And EPA's initial efforts, through the Clean Air Act in the 1970's, did an admirable job of pushing new fuel efficiency standards and reducing the smog producing criteria pollutants that eventually cleared our skies in Oregon.  But it left one large gap in its legacy:  toxic hot spots created by large industrial sources.  In 1990, Congress passed the Clean Air Act amendments, which among other things looked to address this residual problem.  But still much of the risk of localized toxic hot spot impacts are left to the individual states' discretion to assess and mitigate.  And, as we find in Oregon, despite our green reputation, the state is not eager to seem antagonistic toward industry, even when it is spewing 1.7M pounds of toxic pollution into the air our children breathe in Portland.

The Clean Air Act is more to us than a rule book.  It is a declaration and a promise:  That all children deserve to grow up with clean safe air to breathe, and we will do everything in our power to ensure that happens. And this holds across the aisle, across political idealogy. The recent efforts by politicians to undermine our nation’s bedrock environmental laws are not finding much public sympathy. In fact, new polling shows that the public strongly supports the EPA in its efforts to protect public health, and that even 62 percent of Republican voters want Congress to let the EPA do its job. According to an EPA report to Congress last year, "the economic value of the public health and environmental benefits that Americans enjoy from the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 exceed their costs by a margin of four to one." The standards proposed by the U.S. EPA’s Boiler MACT rule (a direct result of the pro-health 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments) alone will save between 2,500 and 6,500 lives every year.

When you think of dirty air, many places come to mind, and usually Portland Oregon isn't one of them.  Our high asthma rates and the significant number of industrial sources we have built this green city around, show us that there is much work yet to be done to fulfill our promise to our children. It is disheartening to see the wrangling currently going on in Washington DC, turning kids with asthma into bargaining chips, and  promoting mercury and soot spewing facilities that cause irreparable harm to our children's brains and lungs.  If our leaders want to get this right, there is just one clear choice: reject laws that protect industry at the expense of our children’s health. Joining industry’s sorry fight to keep air dirty because it’s cheaper is not an acceptable path.

That's why I am joining other moms and parents across the country to make sure our voice is heard, because together we are stronger and louder.  One very exciting chance is next Monday, March 19th.  When MomsRising.org and The Moms Clean Air Force is sponsoring an online discussion with EPA Administrator, and mom of an asthmatic child, Lisa P. Jackson.  I hope you will join me there.  For more information, and to RSVP: visit the MomsRising event page.