SEN Environmental Stewardship Committee Report February 2023

Environmental Stewardship Committee – February 2023 Report

The Environmental Stewardship Committee (ESC) meets on the third Tuesday of each month at 10am Hideaway Bakery. The meeting was held on February 21st and 5 people were in attendance.

Several topics were discussed:

  • Amazon Creek tree planting project
  • The tree planting event was rescheduled to Saturday, March 11th (originally Saturday, February 25th) due to the weather being too cold to plant bareroot trees per the City of Eugene’s Parks & Open Space guidance.
  • The results from the Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers (GPLB) survey
  • Thirty-two people responded to the survey as of the meeting date. The survey results were shared with QuietClean Eugene.
  • The results can also be viewed at the end of this report.
  • EWEB’s water storage tanks at 40th and Patterson and future of College Hill Reservoir and Amazon Emergency Water Station
  • Two ESC members recently got a tour of the tank construction progress. At that tour, it was noted that although the tank roofs were designed to support “green roofs”, EWEB’s Board had decided to not move forward with installation. The ESC is looking into why this decision was made.
  • Information about the benefits of green roofs can be found here: https://www.gsa.gov/governmentwide-initiatives/federal-highperformance-green-buildings/resource-library/integrative-strategies/green-roofs)
  • Additional questions for EWEB include (a) the future of the College Hill Reservoir and (b) whether the future Amazon emergency water station will be supplied by well or by the newly constructed tanks.
  • Plastics Reduction, locally and state-wide
  • The Eugene Sustainability Commission (of which Devon Mann is a member) attended a recent presentation regarding a mixed waste processing facility named the Integrated Material & Energy Recovery Facility (IMERF), located at Short Mountain Landfill in the Goshen area. It is a public/private partnership between Lane County and Bulk Handling Systems, who was awarded the contract. It will not take tax dollars to fund the project; rather, funding will come from an increase of site fees.
    • IMERF uses Anaerobic Digestion (AD) to divert roughly 72% of Lane County mixed waste (garbage) from the landfill. AD & subsequent methane collection occurs prior to wood/food waste entering the landfill and will decrease CO2 emissions by 100,000 tons/year.
    • Sorting occurs via AI-driven robotics on site, not at curb. Mixed waste (garbage) arrives at facility, bags opened and waste is sorted by size and density, and 2-dimensional from 3-dimensional. All organic material enters the AD process. After methane collection, the remaining material is dehydrated (Bio-Dried) and used for landfill cover as well as soil amendment. Collected methane is sold to NW Natural (and as fuel for NG vehicles).
    • Can sort co-mingled waste (recycling) as well
    • Food & wood debris are largest waste streams in Lane County, and 85% of greenhouse emissions in Lane County comes from landfills. Currently Short Hill has a waste recover rate in the low 50s%; IMERF would increase to greater than 63%.
  • State Senate plastic reduction bills’ current status: There are 3 bills in committee at the state level regarding plastic reduction – SB 543,SB 544 and SB 545. Here are some details regarding each bill.

SENATE BILL 543:

Bill Title:  “Relating to prohibitions for certain products.”

Bill Summary:  “Prohibits food vendor from using polystyrene container in sales of prepared food.”

SB543:   https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Measures/Overview/SB543

SENATE BILL 544:

Bill Title:  “Relating to prohibiting certain consumer products.”

Bill Summary:  “Directs Environmental Quality Commission to establish program for source reduction of single-use plastic food ware and single-use packaging and achieve 25 percent source reductions compared to 2023 levels by 2030.”

SB544:   https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Measures/Overview/SB544

SENATE BILL 545:

Bill Title:  “Relating to reuse of containers; declaring an emergency.”

Bill Summary:  “Directs State Department of Agriculture and Oregon Health Authority to adopt rules allowing consumers to use own containers for refilling with food at food establishment.”

SB545:  https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Measures/Overview/SB545

SEN Transportation Committee February 2023 Report

The SEN Transportation Committee meets via Zoom on the first and third Wednesdays at 1:00 via zoom and as needed on the fourth Thursday evening at 7:00 pm each month. Please see the SEN calendar for details.

Lucy Bambrey has started to help the committee to create and maintain a work calendar so that important topics and items receive necessary committee time and attention throughout the year. We will work to adopt a work plan by the first week of April.
Jess Roshak heard back from Jenifer Willer from Eugene Public Works regarding the Spring Boulevard bridge inquiry sent in 2022. We are following up with Jenifer with related questions and concerns. Ms. Willer supplied the following response about the Spring Boulevard bridge inquiry:
“Public Works Engineering received an assessment from a bridge engineering firm on the seismic vulnerability of the Spring Blvd overpass over 30th Avenue on 1/31/2023. The conclusion is that the bridge does not meet current seismic standards and it would cost less money to replace the bridge than to retrofit it.  I want to note that all City bridges need to be retrofit or replaced to meet current seismic standards, which is common across the state for both state and local agency bridges.
Currently, the City has prioritized bridge retrofits carrying designated emergency routes shown on the map at https://www.eugene-or.gov/2549/Emergency-IceSnow-Routes The City has preliminary designs for 10 bridges prepared and has proceeded to final design for 3 of the 10 bridges. The City has obtained federal grants for constructing the three bridge retrofits that are in final design and has a grant application submitted for a fourth bridge retrofit.
Regarding bridges over 30th Avenue and neighborhood concerns about the route being blocked with debris from the pedestrian bridge or the Spring Blvd bridge, the City has a process in place to clear blockages to get these routes open in the case of a major emergency. In addition to public works resources, we have contracted with a disaster management company that specializes in coming into areas and cleaning up massive amounts of debris and clearing emergency route blockages. Eugene is one of the few west coast cities to have such contracts in place which will allow for much a much quicker response for our area.”
Committee members met with City Transportation Planner Logan Telles and planning students from the UO to discuss their outreach on potential non-permanent roundabouts at the intersection of 35th and Kincaid. Committee members urged door-to-door outreach at homes in direct contact with the intersections in addition to their planned postcard mailing. We helped distribute a survey made by the students by disseminating on Facebook, paper news, and e-news. Members also advocated for further communication between city planners and neighborhood groups in the identification of future project locations.
Committee members met with city staff at the site of the proposed new sidewalk installations on Hilyard at Tugman to discuss concerns related to turning radius and the proposed bump outs. Staff will go ahead with original plans and are certain that the bump out will not pose any traffic hazzard for motorists making northbound turns onto Hilyard.

LTD continues its system-wide ridership assessment this year and we on the Transportation Committee urge members of the community to take the buses in our neighborhood when possible. We will advocate for the return of recently eliminated scheduled routes as staffing becomes normalized at LTD.

Heather Murphy is our new LTD Board representative for the South Eugene subdistrict. She also represents Cottage Grove, Lowell, and Creswell areas. We invite all SEN members to attend a Zoom meet and greet with Heather on Monday, March 20th at 7:00 pm via this Zoom link.  If you have a question you’d like to submit for Ms. Murphy to answer, please email it to sentrans97405@gmail.com ahead of the meeting.

We’ll be looking to plan out the Spring sidewalk cleanup soon as soon as we designate a committee point person — stay tuned for details! If you need help maintaining your sidewalk free of vegetation that impedes safe passage for everyone, please reach out. We’ll contact you send volunteers out to remove the overgrown vegetation.

Friends of Tugman – February 2023 Report

Friends of Tugman – February 2023 Report

 

  • We held one volunteer work event in February on Wednesday, 2/8.
  • February 8th highlights:  we removed the cages from the (7) oaks trees lining the Fawn Lily Rise path in the park’s south slope in order to weed and prep the ground for bark chip mulch addition in early March; cages were re-secured following our prep work
  • We canceled our scheduled Wed. 2/22 work event due to inclement weather. Instead, 6 of us met for lunch and enjoyed the camaraderie of our neighborhood Tugger team.
  • We expect several Tuggers to participate in the next Amazon Creek tree planting event which has been rescheduled to Saturday, March 11th.
  • We received approval from Parks & Open Space to start our restoration project in the natural area just south of the plaque circle in the park’s north end. This work will commence in late march/early April and will include chopping back of the invasive grasses, placement of fabric/plastic to kill off grasses, coverage of the area in mulch and eventually restore the area with appropriate native plants in the coming year(s).
  • The Friends of Tugman park adoption contract with P&OS covering 2023-2025 has now been signed and finalized.

Antisemitism literature in South Eugene

Antisemitism leaflets in Southeast Eugene

“Today, the best defense against antisemitism remains these things: proudly showing up as who we are, and calling in others to ally with us. Antisemitism wins when Jews disappear, when we hide and make ourselves small.”  “…please reach out to your Jewish friends and neighbors and ask how they are doing and what support they might need.”  

-Rabbi Ruhi Sophia Motzkin Rubenstein – Temple Beth Israel, Eugene

​​The Southeast Neighbors Association Board strongly condemns the recent acts of antisemitism in our neighborhood as well as Eugene and Springfield.

The following link from the City of Eugene describes hate or bias crimes or incidents, and discrimination.

https://www.eugene-or.gov/529/Hate-and-Bias

To report any hate or bias crimes or incidents or discrimination contact the Eugene Police Non-Emergency Line:

1-541-682-5111

The Oregon Dept. of Justice also requests people report hate/bias crimes and incidents on their non-emergency line: 1-844-924-BIAS (1-844-924-2427) or on their website:

https://justice.oregon.gov/CrimeReporting/BiasCrime

Ready Southeast February 2023 Report

Our preparedness committee continues with our Second Sunday radio check-ins. On January 8 fifty two of our volunteers participated. We start with our block captains reporting to their area coordinators. The coordinators then check in with our communications lead Larry Kirkpatrick, who in turn does a check-in with all of our ham radio operators.
This last week we got back on schedule with our first Thursday of the month committee meetings.  This is an open meeting. All of the volunteers in the preparedness program are invited.

At our meeting on February 2 we discussed the exercises we did with the City’s CERT leadership team last fall and specifically the work most of us need to do to improve the accuracy and brevity of our messaging. We agreed to work on this as well as the use of ICS reporting forms during our next exercise.

We’ve committed to doing two exercises with our volunteers each year. The CERT leadership team has consistently organized an exercise in the fall. We have done our neighborhood exercises in the spring to early summer. We’re planning an exercise for late May this year. We’ll incorporate our emergency supplies cached around the neighborhood into this exercise. We want to include more SE neighbors in this exercise and are exploring how best to invite them. We’ll mention it in this upcoming newsletter and depending on access to SEN outreach and education funding we’ll print up some posters for the event.

Transportation Committee Report January 2023

January Transportation Report

The Transportation Committee met online Jan. 4 and Jan. 18. with an on-site meeting at 38th and Hilyard on Jan. 26 regarding the sidewalk infrastructure.
Due to driver recruitment and retention issues, LTD has cut back on a total of 5 scheduled trips in our neighborhood involving routes 24 and 28: https://www.ltd.org/latest-news/ltd-reduces-service-beginning-feb/. Be sure to check the schedule before heading out. The Transportation Committee supports the drivers’ union, who previously reported to us about forced overtime and lack of days off due to the lack of drivers. We will advocate for the full schedules to be re-established once staffing issues have been resolved.
A meeting with our new LTD Director, Heather Murphy, has been scheduled for Zoom on Monday, March 20th at 7:00 pm. The meeting will be open for all from SEN who wish to meet Ms. Murphy and will have a Q and A component.
Dennis called the on-site with Reed Dunbar Senior Transportation Planner, with specific concerns about the bump-out planned for the right northbound turn at the intersection at 38th and Hilyard St., which is planned as part of the new sidewalk infrastructure grant project there. Below is the sketch and explanation provided by Reed:

“There are a few reasons that the curb extension on the northeast corner of 38th/Hilyard was designed for construction.  I’ve attached an annotated drawing and some notes below.

    1. The EWEB power pole at this corner is an immovable object.  In designing the sidewalks along the east side of Hilyard Street we’ve tried to keep trees and power poles (and fences) where they are and weave the sidewalks around them.  In order to weave the sidewalk and provide ADA compliant sidewalk access ramps in this location, extending the curb was necessary.
    2. There are not sidewalk access ramps shown across Hilyard on the north side of E 38th Avenue because the cross slope of the street did not allow the ramps to meet ADA requirements.  However, when the street is repaved, sidewalk access ramps will be added.
    3. Another reason sidewalk access ramps were not included on the north side of E 38th Avenue across Hilyard Street is the upcoming EWEB project.  That project will dig up the west side of Hilyard Street so we are not sure that the curb extension on the west side of Hilyard will be added as part of the sidewalk project in 2023 or as part of the future paving project since the project schedules for 2023 conflict.  So, with the status of the western sidewalk access ramp unknown, adding one to the east side is not considered good practice.
    4. The northeast curb extension bumps out into E 38th Avenue because it was necessary to achieve ADA slopes for the sidewalk access ramp.  Again, see comment a. above, we could not move the power pole and there wasn’t room to add a ramp within the existing curb line.

Thanks for taking the time to voice your concerns.  It gave staff a lot to talk about and I understand your point of view – that adding the curb extension to the northeast corner of 38th/Hilyard will make right turns from E 38th Avenue to northbound Hilyard Street more difficult for large vehicles or when towing a trailer.  However, for the design reasons listed above the curb extension is deemed necessary to meet ADA requirements for the new sidewalk on the east side of Hilyard Street and will be included in the construction project.”

Leo continues to work with city planners about the 33rd Ave. throughway and requests for increased attention to pedestrian and bike path safety measures there. He points out that the number of speeders indicated from the speed study did qualify the stretch for speed calming, and that this is a metric that needs to be looked at city-wide. 

Jess followed up about the Spring Boulevard Bridge seismic evaluation but has not heard back yet on whether the promised evaluation was completed.

The Transportation Committee will work in the coming months on developing a comprehensive yearly plan so that threads of work do not get lost as new issues arise.

Our next meeting is Wednesday, February 15th at 1:00-2:00 via zoom.

Jess Roshak

Environmental Stewardship Committee Report January 2023

The Environmental Stewardship Committee (ESC) meets on the third Tuesday of each month at Hideaway Bakery. This month, the meeting was held on January 17th and included 10 attendees (a great turnout!). 

Two major items were discussed: 

  1. How to approach reducing the use of gas-powered leaf blowers by the City of Eugene, residents, and businesses. Metro Portland and other cities in the US have been actively working on and passing laws limiting and phasing out the use of these machines. Recently, a new group called Quiet Clean Eugene has been formed, a spin off from Quiet Clean PDX (https://www.quietcleanpdx.org/). Two members of this new group eagerly joined our meeting to discuss where they were at in the nascent phase of their work and were looking for input and ideas as to how get the word out. They do not yet have a website but are actively working to get it up and running with links to articles, ways to contribute and be active, and current legislation in the works. This group is small at this point but hopes to meet with other neighborhood associations to garner support for bringing this up to the City of Eugene. We expect to continue to hear more about their progress in the near future. 
  2. We went over the upcoming Amazon Creek tree planting logistics, which happened on Saturday, January 21st. 

Amazon Creek Tree Planting Project: 

– The actual tree planting day was cold and a bit breezy, but despite the weather we had a HUGE turnout of over 40 neighbors. On that morning, the City of Eugene Parks and Open Space personnel introduced the project, explained how to properly plant the approximately 150 bareroot trees (Cascara, Bitter Cherry, Chokecherry, and White Alder) we were tasked with planting. The group quickly got to work and we all took turns removing grass, digging holes, properly placing the trees in the holes and backfilling with dirt, and then following up with mulch and water. This phase of the planting took place between Fox Hollow and 33rd Avenue along West Amazon Drive. While we didn’t quite get all the trees planted in the time scheduled, the City followed up on Monday with a youth corps volunteer group who completed the project. The next planting, which will cover West Amazon from Fox Hollow to Snell, is scheduled for Saturday, February 25th. 

It was great to see such support from neighbors! 

Friends of Tugman – January 2023 Report

Friends of Tugman – January 2023 Report

  • We held two volunteer work events in January 2023:  Wed. 1/11 & Wed. 1/25
  • January 11th highlights:  mulched in the park’s north end for weed and grass control; planted camas and buttercup seeds in the newly planted beds in the north end; mulched several trees in the central lawn
  • January 25th highlights:  weeded beds in the north end plaque circle and in the south lawn area
  • (7) Tuggers participated in the COE-P&OS, SEN-ESC & Obsidians tree planting event along Amazon Creek on Saturday, January 21st
  • We expect several Tuggers to participate in the next Amazon Creek tree planting event on Saturday, February 25th
  • We still have yet to receive confirmation from P&OS regarding the remaining funds from the 2018 Bond/Levy to be used at Tugman Park. We would like to initiate public outreach activities once we receive confirmation of the amount of remaining funds and the timeline for their use.
  • Renewal efforts of our Friends of Tugman park adoption contract with P&OS covering 2023-2025 is underway
Back To Top