The normally inconspicuous Lane Regional Air Protection Agency is in the limelight as it handles an air pollution permit for the massive proposed parcel-delivery center near the Eugene Airport.
Key questions include: what powers does LRAPA have over this project, and how will it use them? The agency says it has the toughest rules in the state for these kinds of facilities, but the anonymous company pushing the project wants to skirt those rules.
One LRAPA board member — a local environmental activist — has come out strongly against the project. Another — David Loveall, the hard-right member of the Lane County Board of Commissioners — is sharply in favor.
Hundreds of area residents have appealed to LRAPA to kill the project, which is widely assumed to be for Amazon. LRAPA officials say the outpouring — virtually all in opposition — is unprecedented in the agency’s recent years.
LRAPA’s rules say the air agency can nix the project only if it would cause air quality in Lane County to violate state air quality standards — which seems highly unlikely. But the agency’s rules — specifically its so-called “indirect source” rules — give it power to force the developer to formally evaluate the impacts of the parcel-delivery center, including how much smog-creating air pollution its vehicles would create, and the vehicles’ effect on traffic on Highway 99.
The rules also give LRAPA the power to impose conditions, including traffic management and ongoing air pollution monitoring. It’s unclear if the agency can mandate that the delivery-truck fleet comprise only electric vehicles — a demand by some residents.
LRAPA’s nod is essential for the project. In addition to LRAPA’s rules, the city’s rules for the industrial-zoned farmland where the project would be built require, “at the time of submittal” of building permit applications, a “pre-clearance letter” from LRAPA, “confirming that the proposed use and associated operations have the ability to meet air quality standards with appropriate control technologies and mitigation measures.”
The applicant’s consultants filed for building permits nine months ago, and the city is processing them. But LRAPA has never provided such a letter, nor have the city or the applicant requested one, says LRAPA spokesperson Matt Sorensen.
LRAPA is the state-created government entity that enforces federal, state and its own air pollution rules in Lane County. Now, it faces intense lobbying from the public and from the unnamed applicant, which is antsy to start building. The applicant’s consultants argue that LRAPA’s rules requiring a vehicle pollution study don’t apply to this project, and that, besides, they can’t find anyone to do such a study.
Loveall speaks
The facility would be a 320,000-square-foot behemoth with more than 1,000 parking spaces for its delivery fleet. It would receive trailer-truck loads of packages, sort them on conveyor belts, and deliver them to area homes and businesses, the permit filings show.
Board member Dylan Plummer, an environmental and labor union leader, at a recent board meeting urged LRAPA’s executive director, Travis Knudsen, to “reject the permit in light of [the project’s] significant pollution.” At the very least, Plummer said, LRAPA should mandate an all-EV fleet “in order to address some of (the public’s) pollution concerns.”
Plummer slammed Amazon’s anti-union labor practices — even though the agency legally can’t take that into account. “Amazon has made it clear that they do not value their workers,” Plummer said.
Loveall countered that the public’s pollution fears were “a bit inflated.” Plus, rejecting the parcel-delivery project would be “devastating” to “those of us trying to find jobs, those of us trying to make ends meet,” Loveall said. But critics have argued the facility would likely not result in a net gain of local jobs. Almost all of Amazon’s Lane County-area deliveries currently are done by workers for UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service, which Amazon contracts with. Amazon would simply shift that delivery work to people it would hire for the center, eliminating the work for the current contracted workers, critics fear.
Toughest rules
Amazon has already built such centers elsewhere in Oregon with scant fuss over air pollution. Why the uproar here? LRAPA has the strictest rules in the state for such facilities, LRAPA’s Knudsen told the board at its most recent meeting. LRAPA created those rules itself, making them stricter than state and federal rules, as it is allowed to do, he told the board. The rules are LRAPA’s 13-page Title 20 rules, initially created in 1976 and last updated in 1990.
The agency doesn’t use the rules much, because not many development projects fall within its reach — really big parking lots for hundreds of vehicles.
The last time it issued such a permit was in 2009, for the several hundred parking spots for the state psychiatric facility near Junction City. The biggest project LRAPA has ever issued such a permit for was 21 years ago, for the PeaceHealth RiverBend hospital’s several thousand parking stalls, LRAPA records show. It’s not clear what LRAPA required of PeaceHealth. In the past quarter century, LRAPA issued 13 “indirect source” permits, mostly for parking lots at retail stores, plus the Royal Caribbean call center and the Sony CD factory.
Fight over definitions
Now, LRAPA is scrambling to determine how to apply the rules to the Hwy 99 project.
Emails between LRAPA and The Satre Group, the Eugene consultant handling the application for the anonymous developer, show friction over which parts of Title 20 apply.
Title 20 has two key sections: The first and toughest applies to facilities with “total parking capacity for 1,000 or more vehicles.” The second, and the weaker, applies to facilities with “parking capacity for 250 to 1,000 vehicles.”
In its filings with LRAPA, Satre states the center would have 359 parking spaces for employees and 1,030 spaces for delivery vehicles — or 1,389 spots in total. So, the tougher rules would seem to apply.
Yet Satre repeatedly argues they do not, its correspondence with LRAPA shows.
Satre has argued LRAPA’s rules apply only to employee parking spots, not to the delivery fleet, so the weaker rules apply. Alternately, Satre has claimed the rules apply only to vehicles with internal combustion engines, and because the facility hopes a preponderance of its delivery trucks and employee vehicles eventually will be EVs, the tougher rules don’t apply. The company “is aiming for” 70 percent of its fleet to be EVs by year 10 of the facility’s operation, Satre states in a letter to LRAPA.
Under the tougher 1,000-spaces-plus rules, the developer must provide “an estimate of the gross emissions of carbon monoxide, lead, reactive hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen” from the internal combustion engine vehicles using the facility. Those chemicals contribute to smog. The weaker rules for the 250 to 1,000 parking spaces don’t require such a study.
In emails, Satre complains it can’t find anyone to do that study, and that its anonymous client has never been required to do such a study for other similar facilities it has built in Oregon, Washington and California. Such a study “is above and beyond what we need to do,” Satre told LRAPA.
The tougher, 1,000-spaces-plus rules also require “an estimate of the additional residential, commercial and industrial developments which may occur concurrent with, or as the result of the construction and use of the [project]. This shall also include an air quality impact assessment of such development.” Satre denies that requirement applies to its project.
Three vehicles a minute
LRAPA’s rules — both for 1,000-plus-space projects and for smaller ones — also require a traffic impact analysis for Hwy 99. Satre says it hired a contractor who did that study, and Satre provided LRAPA with some numbers from it, but not the study itself. The data show the parcel-delivery center at its peak daily operating time, 9 am to 5 pm, would add 1,327 vehicles to Hwy 99, Satre states. That’s just under three vehicles a minute. Satre did not indicate that would cause any traffic problems.
LRAPA says it is evaluating the application. But the agency won’t specify to Eugene Weekly what portions of the Title 20 it is applying to the project — the tougher 1,000-plus-spaces rules, or the weaker rules for smaller projects. It’s unclear when LRAPA will make a decision.
Board member Plummer said he fears the city’s designation of farmland around the Eugene Airport for industrial development will spark other developers to seek to build package-delivery centers there. LRAPA needs to clarify and strengthen its rules on the air pollution these places generate, he told the Weekly.
To review LRAPA’s rules, visit LRAPA-or.gov.
Bricks $ Mortar is a column anchored by Christian Wihtol, who worked as an editor and writer at The Register-Guard in Eugene 1990-2018, much of the time focused on real estate, economic development and business. Reach him at Christian@EugeneWeekly.com.