DEQ hearing.JPG
A meeting in March at Lane Middle School, in Portland, brought out angry parents worried about air toxics and public health. The meeting followed the resignation of the Department of Environmental Quality's director.
(Beth Nakamura/Staff)
Jobs come and go. But not the top spot at Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality, without a permanent leader for months and with little prospect of having one soon. Despite the civic emergency this year of toxics in Portland's air and the demands ahead of a complex Superfund cleanup of Portland Harbor, however, the delay can be used wisely.
It's called getting it right. Oregon, celebrated widely for its environmental consciousness, has never needed it more.
The agency was battered earlier this year with the disclosure that air sullied by industrial emissions was penetrating residential neighborhoods - this following the discovery by the U.S. Forest Service that mosses downwind of a Portland glass-making plant were contaminated with toxics. That DEQ didn't know or act in a timely manner in response to the findings was bad enough. It was when the Oregon Health Authority was summoned to gauge public health risk that it finally appeared state's top environmental watchdog agency seemed, well, blind. Longtime agency director Dick Pedersen, in the maelstrom of neighborhood panic and backlash, decided to retire, leaving his chair open.
In recent weeks, the Environmental Quality Commission, to which the environmental agency reports, interviewed by telephone three candidates from among more than 50 who had applied for Pedersen's position. None will be invited for finalist interviews or sessions in which to meet the public. None, apparently, has what it takes.
But that's the squirrelly part. What, precisely, will it take?
The search so far has been handled by the state's Department of Administrative Services. And the job posting is kitchen-sink exhaustive, saying the next director must "administer and enforce laws regulating air, water, and land pollution; administer authorities delegated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) including the Clean Air, Clean Water and Resource Conservation and Recovery Acts; administer state statutes including solid waste management, recycling, and environmental cleanup; serve as a member of the Governor's cabinet; and assist Assistant to the Governor for Natural Resources in efforts to coordinate Natural Resource Agencies." The job posting goes on to say the candidate must work outside the building, as well, navigating and explaining to lawmakers and interest groups - all while promoting "awareness of environmental issues and agency programs to the public and the regulated community through public informational meetings, public hearings and the media."
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If an individual can do all of these things well and happily, we'd like to meet her or him.
The Environmental Quality Commission in a meeting last Wednesday made a smart move but one that will commit the agency to extended interim leadership: It decided to use a professional executive search firm that, it is expected, will make cogent the requirements of the top job and then recruit the right candidates with the right stuff. It should, in its directives to the recruitment firm, be clear that the job's qualifying competencies are not to be trimmed so much as sharpened and prioritized.
The original search was to have delivered a new director sometime in the fall, now an impossibility. A rigorous new search will take at least four or five months. Complicating the timeline further is that a new director could be identified and hired during the 2017 legislative session, when the agency needs only seasoned, informed representation in Salem. In this scenario, a delayed start date for a new director - perhaps on the far side of March of next year - makes sense. DEQ has on-staff perfectly capable, experienced people to inform and work with lawmakers.
Oregon and the Department of Environmental Quality deserve the best at a time when the embattled agency needs to win back credibility and the public's trust. That task, however, will take more in a leader than the ability to efficiently navigate regulations and interested parties. That task will take guts, forthrightness, positive energy and the savvy to show to both citizens and lawmakers that unsullied, healthful urban and rural environments are hard-earned, never to be taken for granted.
-The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board