You are here:
OREGON ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PROFILE
Impact/Purpose:
The Profile will provide an environmental justice assessment for Oregon that can be used to identify potential environmental justice communities, and the environmental and/or health burdens associated with those geographic areas. This information will be valuable for government agencies seeking to ensure compliance with the Environmental Justice Executive Order 12898, State of Oregon Executive Order 00-05 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The project goal is to produce an environmental justice assessment for Oregon that is consistent and comparable across environmental justice study areas, conducted in a non-arbitrary manner, and conceptually and methodologically defensible, as set out in the EPA Interim guidances on EJ and Title VI.
Description:
In response to Executive Order 12898: Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority and Low Income Populations, and in accordance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this project will profile the state of Oregon to identify environmental justice communities. Federal agencies and state agencies funded with federal money in Oregon must assess the impact of their policies and programs on these communities to determine whether disproportionate risk or adverse disparate impact exists. This project will follow the guidelines of a targeting and screening environmental justice assessment designed to characterize areas for further action or assessment. This assessment will profile demographic information on both the Title VI criteria of race, color, or national origin and the Executive Order criteria of minority and low-income populations. Information resources to be used in this assessment will include demographic, environmental and human health effect, and location. The final report will include three maps for Oregon: 1. Ethnicity & environmental/health burden 2. Income & environmental/health burden 3. All 3 - ethnicity, income, & environmental/health burden Demographic data will primarily include 2000 data from the Bureau of Census. Environmental and human health effect data will primarily come from the following EPA databases: RCRIS , BRS , CERCLIS , TRIS, AFS, PCS and CERTS. In addition, other data bases that will be used, if available for Oregon, may include transportation, pesticide application, ambient air pollution, water pollution (surface and ground), drinking water, fish and sediment monitoring data, radon gas, lead, respiratory disease prevalence, and cancer clusters. Location data will be collected from map interpolation in combination with use of Geographical Information Systems(GIS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and the LANDVIEW III Program.
