PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Daimler Trucks North America opened its new headquarters on Swan Island Tuesday. The new building is LEED certified but that’s not good enough for some neighbors who say Daimler is creating toxic air.
Stacey Shroeder protested the unveiling of the new building and tells KOIN 6 News neighborhood groups have been trying for 5 years to get the company to limit the use of certain paints that she says pollute the air around North Portland.
The President and CEO of Daimler Trucks North America, Martin Daum, says they are a good steward of the environment.
“We monitor the air around our factories very, very closely,” Daum says. “I would claim that we are not the source of the odor that they complain.”
The Department of Environmental Quality seems to agree. It found the facility was not causing a nuisance odor under Oregon law. But University of Portland researcher Ted Eckmann says the data from DEQ is flawed.
He says DEQ only took 760 measurements. He’s taken 23,000 measurements and air samples year round.
“All of these make it seem extremely likely that the cast majority of odors are from Daimler’s facility,” he says.
