Here’s what you helped make happen this year:
✅ Your support held Zenith accountable.
Portlanders mobilized last winter to stop the City from granting a new Land Use Compatibility Statement (LUCS) to Zenith after a historic fine from Oregon DEQ. But Mayor Wilson and his city administrators rushed an approval over the objections of thousands of Portland residents. So, we protested, organized, supported a lawsuit, and continued to work to protect Portlanders and our environment. The Oregon Court of Appeals just issued an important procedural ruling in favor of community scrutiny.
In March, we worked with Portland City Council to pass the Zenith accountability and oversight resolution – the first major policy action taken by our new City Council. In addition to demanding important investigations into Zenith that we continue to watchdog, 11 out of 12 City Councilors voted to declare what we all knew to be true: “the process for Zenith’s 2022 LUCS substantially undermined public confidence in the City’s administrative apparatus by creating the appearance of impropriety[.]”
With your ongoing support, we will make sure that backroom dealings benefitting the fossil fuel industry are a thing of the past.
✅ Your support is revitalizing the movement against gas in Oregon’s buildings.
In February, Breach supported on-the-ground organizers in the city of Ashland, who successfully pushed their City Council to pass a fee on new gas construction. On the heels of this victory, Breach is working with Bend residents to pass a similar policy in their city. Meanwhile, Breach and the Fossil Free Eugene coalition are continuing to push the City of Eugene and the Eugene Water Electricity Board to lead with strong people and policies to achieve a rapid, equitable energy transition and get Eugene’s climate goals back on track.
✅ You helped demolish greenwashing and false solutions in the halls of power.
We used Portland’s new City Council structure to hold hearings to debunk fossil fuel industry greenwashing around so-called “renewable fuels” and expose the gas industry’s false solutions playbook.
When a fossil fuel industry-dominated advisory group demanded that Portland weaken its own renewable fuel rules, we made sure that the city didn’t bow to pressure from the fossil industry while continuing to hold the line on our concerns that these fuels are dangerous and do not actually result in the claimed emissions reductions.
✅ Your support ensured Multnomah County’s Climate Justice Plan and Office of Sustainability are well funded.
When Multnomah County Commissioners proposed big cuts to the Office of Sustainability, we came for the fight and kept vital climate justice work funded and frontline voices centered.
✅ Your support is moving Portland’s Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub policy toward real transformation.
We organized with partners to push staff to propose a landmark policy to the Planning Commission:
No increased storage capacity for fossil fuels, renewable fuels, sustainable aviation fuel, or other dangerous liquid fuel solutions; and
A liquid fuel storage drawdown plan and mandatory seismic retrofits to reduce existing seismic risks
On December 16, we’ll be at the Planning Commission hearing to rally and testify for even more. We will keep fighting until we get the safety and environmental protection we need and deserve.
