SUMMARY: Environment | Airport neighbors are concerned about additional pollution from the operation
Boeing wants to expand its jumbo jet spray painting operation at Portland International Airport --and increase the pollution emitted from two huge painting hangars on the airport's southern edge.
Neighborhood leaders near the plant, already riled about pollution from the airport and other sources, are upset that the Chicago-based aviation and aerospace giant doesn't plan to install pollution control equipment along with the expansion. The first meeting on Boeing's proposal, which requires Department of Environmental Quality approval, is set for tonight.
Boeing proposes to follow environmental painting practices that reduce pollution, such as using low volatility paints and solvents and capturing overspray in exhaust filters. But those practices are standard, said Erwin Bergman, a retired Bonneville Power environmental specialist who handles quality of life issues for the Cully neighborhood.
"What they're doing is substituting efficient painting practices that don't cost them one red penny for controls that actually reduce emissions," Bergman said.
In the permit application, Boeing says it wants to increase ventilation, nearly tripling air turnover in the hangers. That will increase pollution emitted. But it will also be healthier for the roughly 100 workers inside, prevent overspray from entering attached buildings and allow faster production and higher quality paint jobs, the company says. The air turnover will still be far less than Boeing's other plants or plants on Air Force bases in Utah and Hawaii, Boeing says.
"We're proposing to use best practices, and based on our review of similar projects we think those are the most appropriate controls," Boeing spokeswoman Leslie Hazzard said. "However, the Oregon DEQ gets to make the final determination and we have to abide by whatever they say."
Boeing began leasing the painting facility from the Port of Portland this spring. The company wants to expand its allowable releases of smog-producing volatile organic compounds at the site from 39 tons a year now to 99 tons. That would allow increasing painting to 80 planes a year by 2009, up from 27 now, including the 747-8, the latest version of Boeing's 747 fleet.
That tonnage is a relative drop in the bucket compared to total VOC releases, at last count 73,000 tons a year in Multnomah County, with the biggest shares coming from cars, trucks and "area sources" such as print shops, gas stations and house paint. If the spray painting operation hit 99 tons, the increase would be less than 2 percent of annual industrial emissions in the county.
On the other hand, requests for increases in industrial pollution are relatively rare. And the technology for capturing the pollution is effective, snaring up to 95 percent of the compounds. Three airplane painters in Southern California, where air quality regulations are the tightest in the nation, have installed controls, according to Boeing's application.
But Boeing officials say the pollution from the plant is relatively low and the cost of control equipment that burns off or absorbs it is too high.
The equipment would cost from $1.7 million to $3 million, Boeing's application says. With operations expenses, the cost per ton of pollution reduced would total at least $27,000. In Washington state, regulators pegged about $8,000 a ton as a reasonable, the company says, and permit agency standards in other states run from $5,000 to $10,000 a ton. Oregon hasn't set a standard for airplane painters yet; the Boeing plant is the biggest one in the state.
The company hopes to begin construction in February. Kathy Amidon, a natural resource specialist with the Department of Environmental Quality, said the agency has not analyzed Boeing's claims and won't begin to do so until after tonight's meeting. The agency will likely rule on the permit request by year end, she said.
Bergman, who has lived in the Cully neighborhood since 1970, says he and other neighborhood leaders fear DEQ will give Boeing whatever it wants. That's aggravating, he said. Boeing's revenues in 2006 were $61.5 billion, and the company can afford pollution control. And the neighborhood already suffers from pollution, heavy truck traffic on some stretches and airplane noise.
"Our neighborhood gets dumped on," he said. "So this is about environmental justice."
Scott Learn: 503-294-7657; [email protected]
