Wil Bridges, a technical advisor for The Blueprint Foundation and an environmental engineer, climbs a ladder to mount a solar panel on a fence near Multnomah County’s Yeon Building that will power a small air quality monitoring system. While he bolts the panel, monitoring device and weather station to the fence, the heavy machinery from a neighboring gravel quarry rumbles past in the distance.
The Yeon Building, in Gresham’s Rockwood neighborhood, houses the County’s fleet repair shop and other services. Bridges, who lives a few minutes from the facility, explains that the site was selected due to its proximity to a gravel mine and its associated dirt-moving operation that creates “a lot of dust and gravel.”
“The communities here are definitely affected,” Bridges said. “The semi-trucks are picking up gravel and driving right through our neighborhoods.”
As Bridges climbs down the ladder, the system begins pulling in data for a part of Multnomah County that has been a target of environmental racism and excluded from air quality monitoring.
Rockwood is one of the most richly diverse neighborhoods in the County. More than a quarter of its residents were born outside the U.S., with the largest share of immigrants coming from Mexico, Ukraine, Vietnam and the Philippines. Around half of all the neighborhood’s residents identify as Black, Indigenous or other people of color. The Yeon Building is near neighborhoods with disproportionately high populations of displaced Black and Brown people.
At the same time, the median income is significantly below the state average. Residents are at higher risk of extreme heat because the neighborhood has both a lower-than-average number of trees and more pavement, which creates urban heat islands.
“Increasing the number of Rockwood’s air quality monitors will help us be specific on which areas are being affected by air quality issues,” said Bridges. “We have sensors in the area, but they only provide a generalization. The more monitors we can install will allow us to see what is causing bad air pollution in a specific neighborhood.”
The data is used for two purposes. First, it aids communities and government officials in real-time decision-making. It also helps analyze how replacing a wood stove impacts outdoor air quality, as well as how installing double-pane windows can affect air quality indoors.
Green interventions and investments: creating a green sector workforce and a more climate-resilient Rockwood
In November 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded the Multnomah County Public Health Division $999,587 to increase climate resilience while reducing air pollution and carbon emissions over the next three years. Since then, the County has focused on replacing inefficient and polluting residential heating and cooling systems, improving indoor air quality, and increasing shade in the Rockwood neighborhood.
Wood smoke is the number one source of human-caused air pollutants in Multnomah County. The Oregon Department of Energy estimates that 1% of homes in Multnomah County are heated with wood and that many more people use wood to supplement their heat. Since March 2023, the County’s wood burning exchange program has helped 94 homes remove 103 wood burning devices and 37 additional high pollutant devices. The County plans to remove over 100 wood stoves throughout the County with the EPA grant funds, and at least 25 of those homes will be in Rockwood.
The County also partnered with The Blueprint Foundation to achieve one of the grant’s intended outcomes: to create green job opportunities for youth. Through the organization’s Change is in the Air program (CAP), Black and Brown students learn how to build and install indoor air quality monitors from Black and Brown technical experts and researchers.
“This project is both interesting and innovative, blending science, policy and STEAM education,” said John Wasiutynski, the director of Multnomah County’s Office of Sustainability. “In this grant you can see the power of ongoing partnerships. This new funding is deepening and accelerating years of work in the Rockwood neighborhood and will help us understand the extent of our environmental justice work’s impact.”
For the past two years, student scientists aged 10 to 18 have helped create and install a growing network of monitors where baseline data is needed to help Rockwood become more climate resilient. The students apply lessons in coding and microelectronics to build their own air quality monitor that they put up in their home.
“You get to help your community by making these bottle bots (monitors) to detect air quality, which is important, especially if you live in a neighborhood where the air quality is really bad,” said 13-year-old Kingston, who completed CAP last summer with his brother Max, who is 11. Kingston wants to be a social activist lawyer and Max wants to be a naturalist.
Beginning spring 2025, a portion of the County’s EPA grant funding will allow The Blueprint Foundation to pay students and their mentors to build and install 45 indoor air quality monitors in the homes where the County completes climate change interventions, like switching out wood stoves for heat pumps or installing double-pane windows. The funds will also be used to purchase the materials needed to build the monitors and to provide technical assistance in analyzing indoor air quality data.
The students are also tasked with interviewing local residents about air quality concerns to help them select areas to install outdoor air quality monitors in the future. In fact, the Yeon Building where Bridges installed the monitor sits at one end of Vance Park, a location chosen by a student cohort that wanted to study parks. A first monitor was installed at the other end of Vance Park a few months earlier in August.
Air quality can vary from one end of the park to the other. Having a monitor on both sides of Vance Park helps tell a fuller story for people like Bridges, who are living on the side of the park next to the gravel mine.
Bridges explained that the project is bigger than just gathering data. It’s also about teaching Black and Brown students important life lessons on how to make mistakes and still succeed.
“When students get introduced to microelectronics, coding and circuitry, I can tell through their body language they are nervous,” he said. “After we finish the first half of the modules and they start building their own air quality monitor, they start to become more confident.”
Kingston said that anyone interested should not be nervous because the mentors teach the students everything they need to know, even if they have never coded.
“They pay you and also have snacks,” added Max. “It’s fun to build the circuit boards and work up to the bottle bots.”
Both Max and Kingston gained a greater understanding of air quality through the CAP.
“Air quality is important to know about for our health because air quality affects you and everybody around you, including the whole world,” said Max.
“You could be living in an area that has a lot of air pollution,” added Kingston. “If you’re living in one of those places, you should know if your air quality is bad or good.”
“The program allowed us to have family discussions about environmental racism, environmental justice, and the idea that where you live, what you look like and the amount of resources you have can affect the air you breathe,” said Rob, Kingston and Max’s dad, who also sat in on the classes. “That’s not something that is really taught, especially for kids.”
Dr. Derron Coles, Change is in the Air project manager, stressed that allowing Black and Brown students to be taught that they can make mistakes and still succeed by people who look like them is vital.
“This is a very different experience than I had, studying engineering in undergrad where everyone was white.” he said. “Making mistakes feels a lot different in that context because it feels like your mistake is all Black people’s mistake, not just your own.”
Some of the older student scientists have become mentors for newer cohorts; one former participant is now studying computer science at Oregon State University and another is taking computer science classes at Portland Community College and Portland State University.
“Our work is having an impact,” said Dr. Coles.
