The dismissal of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s first environmental justice coordinator has triggered a backlash against the agency’s director over what some employees say has been a glacial response to longstanding worker complaints of discrimination and a lackluster implementation of the agency’s environmental justice initiatives. Associated Press

The dismissal of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s first environmental justice coordinator has triggered a backlash against the agency’s director over what some employees say has been a glacial response to longstanding worker complaints of discrimination.

About a quarter of the department’s 855 employees have signed a petition to protest last month’s ouster of the coordinator, Brenda María Trejo Rosas, and decry “the agency’s hypocritical approach to equity and justice.”

An employee-led volunteer work group – the main catalyst for advancing environmental justice across the department over the past five years – also disbanded in protest.

“​​The sudden termination… was the final significant blow to the structure and spirit of this group,” its leaders wrote.

Trejo Rosas had been on the job only five months and had another month left in her probationary period when her boss ended her employment.

A letter to Trejo Rosas obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive cited her failure to respond to multiple attempts by her supervisor and a human resources manager to reach her at the end of the day when they said they expected her to be working.

Trejo Rosas declined comment. Her supervisor, Brian Boling, cited confidentiality in personnel issues in also declining comment. Boling is DEQ’s deputy director, one of the agency’s top leaders overseeing a number of programs, including human resources, finance and payroll.

Backers of Trejo Rosas reserved particular ire for DEQ Director Leah Feldon, who two years ago – shortly after her promotion to the head job – sent a letter to staff acknowledging racial bias in the agency’s probation practices and said she planned to fix it. Employees during probation have fewer job protections.

Leah Feldon was appointed to be Oregon DEQ’s new director in February 2023. She has worked at the agency for 20 years and employees say she was well aware of the longstanding worker complaints of discrimination. curtesy of Oregon Department of Environmental Quality

Employees of color also sent Feldon and the rest of the leadership team a letter in March reiterating previous complaints that managers have pushed out people of color during their probation, handled racist incidents poorly and fostered a culture of retaliation if people complained.

The criticism came to a head at a meeting of the Environmental Quality Commission, the department’s governing board, earlier this month when employees, union representatives and community members condemned Trejo Rosas’ termination and said leaders don’t support employees of color.

“This is not the first time something like this has happened to a person at DEQ who happens to identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color). It’s also not the second time,” Lauren Dimock, an employee of seven years and a union steward, told the commission. “This is a pattern of behavior that is extremely damaging to the people that it’s happening to and to every single other person that works at this agency.”

The fracas comes as the Trump administration has been dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the country – though Trejo Rosas’ dismissal is not related to federal actions and is internal to the DEQ.

Feldon in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive said the agency must do better.

She announced last week that the Office of Equity would now report to her and said she planned to fill its four vacant positions, including the environmental justice coordinator job.

“I recognize the issues staff are raising are serious, as are the impacts that decisions regarding our environmental justice work have had on our employees,” she said. “I am fully engaged in and have shared the next steps I plan to take with the agency. We are going to do more and do better to ensure DEQ is a welcoming place for everyone to work.”

INAUGURAL COORDINATOR

Trejo Rosas moved from Washington, D.C., to take the job after a six-month hiring process. The position, which paid $88,236 annually, was housed in the department’s Office of Equity – a new hub launched by DEQ last year to support diversity and environmental justice throughout the agency.

Trejo Rosas was the office’s only active employee – a second staff person was on extended medical leave and three other positions were unfilled.

The agency defines environmental justice as “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, culture, education or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies.”

No community, according to the policy, should bear a disproportionate share of the pollution and other hazards caused by factories, cities and businesses and the people who are potentially affected should be able to participate in and influence decision-making.

DEQ first adopted environmental justice principles in 1997, though it had no dedicated staff or structure to carry them out. Trejo Rosas was the department’s inaugural environmental justice coordinator hired “to infuse environmental justice and diversity, equity and inclusion principles into the daily work of the agency,” according to the job description.

A child of Mexican farmworkers from Hood River, Trejo Rosas has a master’s degree in public health, is working on a doctorate in environmental health and has contributed to research about pesticide exposure and racism’s societal impacts on health. She was an environmental justice fellow at Columbia University and serves on the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee.

The employee petition supporting Trejo Rosas contends the DEQ’s leaders have made it difficult for employees to carry out justice and equity work.

“While the agency publicly states that it values environmental justice, when staff are doing the work of building it into the fabric of DEQ’s programs and culture, they are made to feel uncomfortable, unsupported, and pushed out,” the petition said.

With Trejo Rosas’ departure, it’s unclear who will coordinate environmental justice programs at the agency.

The employee-led volunteer work group, whose 120 members focused on outreach to low-income and other communities and tried to filter DEQ policies and technical analysis through an environmental justice lens, is no longer picking up the slack.

UNANSWERED LETTER

Gus Glaser, president of the AFSCME Local 3336 that represents 700 of the agency’s workers, said Feldon and other top administrators haven’t followed through on promises to improve diversity and address discrimination.

“There hasn’t been coordinated trainings and outreach to staff,” said Glaser, an environmental engineer in the agency’s water quality division. “It’s been a lot of missed opportunities by management and a lot of bad calls on their part.”

A half-dozen other employees who talked to The Oregonian/OregonLive cited ongoing frustration over lack of a measurable response from Feldon and her leadership team. Most asked their names not be published due to fear of losing their jobs.

The employees said the dismissal of Trejo Rosas contradicts Feldon’s statements in a 2023 letter to employees that DEQ’s probation practices had “systemic” flaws and that staff had pointed out the problems to managers “more than once.”

Feldon was responding to an internal uproar over the agency’s attempt to dismiss another employee of color during probation. The terminated employee was later reinstated into another position.

Feldon, who has worked for DEQ for 20 years, promised improvements to the probation policy and asked the agency’s recruitment and retention team to work on it.

Feldon also only this past December, records show, formally replied to a 2021 letter to DEQ leaders from the agency’s Black, Indigenous and People of Color affinity group outlining the high turnover of BIPOC employees and a concentration of people of color in lower-paid positions, numerous instances of workplace discrimination or harassment and a fear of speaking out about them.

According to DEQ,181 of its current employees or 21% are people of color – lower than the percentage in Oregon’s general population, which is 26.5%.

Feldon apologized for the lack of action and promised future updates with steps to address the problems, according to the letter.

That same month, Feldon reorganized the Office of Equity, removing a woman of South Asian descent who helped launch it and putting Boling – a white man – in charge.

Agency officials declined to comment on that reorganization.

This spring, the BIPOC group sent a second letter to Feldon, reiterating the grievances outlined in the original letter.

NEW COMMITMENTS

Feldon said she will hold conversations with employees of color to get feedback on how to better support them and promised to form a leadership team to champion equity work and to hire an external consultant to lead a restorative justice discussion with staff to rebuild trust.

DEQ spokesperson Lauren Wirtis said environmental justice work continues at the agency, including in eastern Oregon where mostly Latino residents face elevated nitrate levels and in Portland where residents are concerned with the instability of fuel tanks at a storage hub on the Willamette River.

The recruitment and retention steering committee that was convened in 2022 has finally developed a work plan on how to update the troubled probationary period process for employees of color, Wirtis said.

The committee will soon share draft ideas with employees, she said.

— Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at gwozniacka@oregonian.com or 971-421-3154.