The Cully Air Action Team met and discussed the items below. If you are interested in joining us for our next meeting please contact us here.
Discussion
1. Regular meetings: We want to meet regularly and have agreed that for now, it works to meet once per month on a Sunday morning for anywhere from 1 to 2 hours.
The next meeting will be Sunday, August 7th, at 10 a.m. Those who can are encouraged to bring a brunchy treat.
2. Collaborations with other groups:
Living Cully: We are currently collaborating with a variety of community groups and organizations, representing the interests of neighbors in Cully around air quality. We are aligned with Living Cully in our efforts to get monitoring in the neighborhood from DEQ. That appears to be moving in the right direction. We will be engaging in weekly check-ins (conference calls) on the monitoring topic to get updates, get our questions answered, etc. These weekly calls are an opportunity to bring up other issues that interest us and that we think DEQ can address, such as the ongoing stink problems with Porter Yett and Tina’s response so far. We want to bring this up in the next conversation as it appears that Nina is more responsive, so maybe she can help us. The next phone call with DEQ is scheduled for Thursday, July 14 at 12 noon and every Thursday thereafter t 12 noon. Gregory, Xan and Alma are invited. Let one of us know if you want to add a question/comment to our list.
Additionally, we’re looking at the things that Xan mentioned in her previous update about that last meeting with DEQ.
We want to continue to collaborate with Living Cully as we feel this has been a very positive experience so far and Tony’s goals for environmental justice is aligned with ours, and the relationship is good.
Portland Clean Air: We have worked with Greg B and Seth W from PCA in the past around permits, mapping, and creating a fact sheet for Cully (this last one is ongoing). PCA conducted some canvassing in our neighborhood and as a result they have an additional 50 or so members who live in Cully. They want to pass the group to us so we plan on a joint communication to invite those folks to join CAAT. Alma is working on that with Greg B from PCA. Thinking that we can plan for a meeting perhaps in late August or September for people interested in joining us. I’ll look into a venue, like a library community room. PCA is also put a spectrometer to measure VOCs in a safe place and it could be moved to Evans since she lives closer to Porter Yett. We’re hoping it could capture the type of data that the DEQ monitors won’t because those monitors only measure metals.
Big Tent Coalition: Xan is in touch with Mary Peveto of Neighbors for Clean Air and others as part of a coalition looking for statewide solutions to diesel.
Spokes Council: We’re also involved in discussions about a spokes council with PCA, EPAC and other groups. Gregory is our point person for that.
3. Updating the website: Our site needs content! Can you please check it out, check out what’s been posted before and let us know what kind of information would make it more relevant for folks wanting to join our group. Gregory is in the process of updating our name to CAAT. Meanwhile, what else should we include?