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FOR
THE LONG HAUL
Becky Riley bought a home with her husband in the River Road neighborhood 14 years ago, and she didn't think about the implications of living eight blocks away from the Union Pacific (UP) railyard. The neighborhood seemed idyllic — bursting with alder trees, well-manicured yards and even small duck ponds. These days, however, Riley, 46, spends a good portion of time and energy thinking about the implications of living by that railyard. "There's a toxic witch's brew of chemicals over there," says Riley, now a full-time community activist. The nearly 300-acre railyard, which has been mostly decommissioned for more than five years now, is polluted with more than 50 harmful chemicals and compounds, including diesel fuel, pesticides, asbestos, arsenic and lead. Many of these chemicals have seeped into the groundwater nearby, effectively contaminating it and making it unsafe for use aside from gardening and watering lawns, according to EPA standards. To be safe, Riley stopped using her well water entirely and pays for city water for her lawn and garden. In 2002, Riley joined a newly formed group of concerned neighbors who wanted to do something about the polluted, unattractive property in their "backyards." Worried about the site's environmental impact and the effect it could have on property values, they formed the Railroad Pollution Coalition (RPC). This grassroots volunteer group is a consortium of neighborhood associations from Bethel, River Road, Trainsong and Whiteaker and from the Oregon Toxics Alliance. Together, they have spent the last two and half years pushing for an appropriate clean-up and redevelopment of the property. The group has worked especially close with the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), which is collaborating with UP on site investigation and clean-up efforts as part of a voluntary agreement established by the yard's previous owner, Southern Pacific. For the past 10 years, DEQ has been working with UP's private environmental consulting firm to test soil, water and air at the site, billing the railroad for its services. So far, says DEQ Project Manager Gene Wong, pollution levels at the site are not high enough to be what the agency considers an "imminent threat and substantial risk to human health and the environment." But the coalition believes that DEQ hasn't pushed UP to investigate the enormous site thoroughly enough, either in terms of areas tested or numbers of possible pollutants tested.
Now the DEQ says it's nearing the final stages of the site investigation, and clean-up recommendation reports will soon follow. In response, the RPC is stepping up its educational outreach efforts throughout in the community. The highest-profile event in the works is the design charette (an intensive brainstorming workshop) at April's HOPES (Holistic Options for Planet Earth Sustainability) Conference at UO, where students will create a range of possible redevelopment designs for the yard. Coalition member Rob Handy says the group hopes to inspire the community and the city of Eugene to make the railyard a primary concern. "Change often starts at the grassroots level, with neighborhoods and residents saying 'we want these things to be a priority,'" the 47-year-old landscaper says. Before UP bought the railyard in 1996, Southern Pacific owned and operated it for locomotive maintenance, refueling, tie treatment and other operations for most of the last century. In 1999, UP started scaling back many of its operations at the Eugene yard — especially maintenance operations — sparking community interest in and speculation about the site's future. That speculation is warranted, says Riley, given that railroads nationwide have been closing yards and tracks as part of massive consolidation efforts in recent years. UP spokesman John Bromley says that, since freight business has actually increased in recent years, the company is still assessing what the future of the property might be. "Our own needs must be met before we dispose of the property," he says. "We want to take a step back before making any decisions." Since the fate of the railyard is in the hands of UP, the coalition is doing what it can to capture the company's attention. "If we can create enough momentum, our goals could directly get communicated to Union Pacific or they could trickle back to them," Handy says. At a series of neighborhood meetings over the last two months, the RPC has collaborated with Lilah Glick of the UO Ecological Design Center to facilitate brainstorm sessions about what people would like to see for the future of the property. At the recent River Road Community Organization meeting, attendees envisioned a variety of positive outcomes for the land: parks with a train theme, athletic fields, a mixed-use site that could include light industry or retail or a railroad museum, a hospital, a green technology park. One enterprising group even came up with the idea of using the traincars as moving branch libraries between Eugene and Junction City. "Everyone seems very thankful to have the opportunity to talk about this," says Glick. "We're getting the ideas flowing on what the possibilities could be."
Riley and Handy also presented at last week's City Club, where more than 50 people were in attendance, including Mayor Kitty Piercy. The audience members, many of whom seemed surprised to hear about the pollution on the property, had a range of questions about the clean-up efforts, the future of the site and how citizens and the city might better collaborate on this issue. At an all-community meeting sponsored by the coalition on March 30, Glick and coalition members will share the results of the neighborhood meetings and solicit further feedback from people from throughout the city. Handy believes it's essential to get people from all areas of Eugene involved in the dialogue. They all serve to benefit from the clean-up and redevelopment of such a large piece of property near the geographic heart of the city. All these discussions will lead up to the April HOPES Conference design charrette. At the 24-hour intensive architectural design/problem-solving session, UO students and interested community members will create design plans for a 75-acre parcel of the railyard. The charrette gives students the opportunity to produce designs for an actual property, taking the site's challenges and community suggestions into consideration. It is also intended to inspire the community. The Railroad Pollution Coalition approached the EDC, the sponsor of the conference, last fall to ask that the railyard be the focus of the annual charrette. Not only did the EDC accept the coalition's offer, but the railyard consequently inspired the theme of this year's entire conference, "ReVision, ReDesign, ReSolution." All of this community dialogue is still merely a brainstorm, of course. A full clean-up and redevelopment of the railyard would carry a heavy price tag. Gene Wong estimates that it could cost UP more than $11 million to clean the site up to the level the coalition would like to see. That doesn't include the cost of incidental fees. At the October Trainsong Neighborhood Association meeting, the city's Community Development Manager Mike Sullivan intimated that dreaming too big could backfire on the coalition. "The most prominent use of railroad sites nationwide is fenced and vacant," he repeatedly said. UP could decide to do the bare minimum in terms of clean-up and abandon the site. The clean-up agreement is voluntary. The company has already spent more than $6 million on testing alone. The coalition, therefore, wants to get the city of Eugene on board so that government leaders might collaborate with UP to work toward shared goals for clean-up and development.
In fact, coalition members and supporters successfully lobbied the City Council to exclude the railyard property from the enterprise zone vote at the March 7 council meeting. The enterprise zone program would provide corporate property tax breaks on 90 percent of the city's industrial land for the next decade. Councilor Andrea Ortiz, a Trainsong resident herself, asked for an amendment to the vote that would, for now, exclude the railyard from the enterprise zone. That leaves future zoning of the site up for discussion, rather than making it a probable candidate for heavy industrial development. The group has also engaged the mayor in several dialogues about its goals. In addition to attending the City Club meeting, Piercy attended the Trainsong Neighborhood Association meeting in February. Councilor Ortiz was also present to participate in the brainstorm discussions about the future of the site. While Piercy expresses concern that the city of Eugene already has its plate full and that UP may not sell the land anyway, she still believes that the coalition is engaged in a worthy cause. "I am interested in any way the railroad yard could be turned into a community asset," she says. Piercy and Allen Lowe from the city Planning Division will be on the panel of judges at the charrette to view final designs and give feedback. UP has expressed interest in possibly sending a representative to be on the panel. Even with all the current developments, though, the coalition knows it could take years for any of its dreams to actually come to fruition, if at all. Tom Coyle, Planning & Development Department executive director, estimates that site redevelopment, if it were to happen, could take more than 10 years. "A whole other series of things have to happen before redevelopment can occur," he says. "We have to deal with remediation, transferring the property and getting an actual developer to redaevelop it." Members of the coalition like to refer to the success stories of other communities throughout the U.S. In Santa Fe, N.M., in an effort backed by the mayor, a non-profit organization formed and rallied support to turn its railyards into a mixed-use park and plaza. In Sacramento, government leaders and the community collaborated to convert the downtown UP yard into a residential, business and retail center. "We see what these other communities have been able to accomplish and that they've been able to engage the railroad," says Handy. "It has inspired us to say, 'Well, why not in Eugene?' This is the kind of community that values its lands and its people." The RPC is willing to push for this issue for as long as it takes. "I love my yard and I love my neighbors," Riley says. "I don't want to move. So we've got to put up the fight."
The RPC all-community meeting will take place from 7 to 9 pm Wednesday, March 30, at the American Red Cross Building, 862 Bethel Dr. For more information, contact the RPC at 689-6372 or rhandy@efn.org A public review of the designs from the HOPES conference charrette will take place from 3 to 5 pm Friday, April 8, at 206 Lawrence Hall at UO. For more information, contact Lilah Glick at lglick@uoregon.edu
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