Portland currently has less trees providing shade and critical cooling supports than we had five years ago.

We need to work with our environmental experts in Portland to create a vision and a plan to plant and care for trees that will help when temperatures continue to rise, cool areas covered in blacktop, and reduce CO2 gases.

The latest report highlights that our Urban Heat Islands effect our most vulnerable neighbors. We know how to fix this - plant AND maintain trees.

Latest reports indicate that Portland will experience “the Big One” sometime within the next 50 years. We need to be proactive rather than reactive in getting ready for this seismic event.

In our N/NE Portland neighborhoods, we have multiple concerns happening at once. ex. Earthquake preparedness - train bridges connecting the north peninsula to the rest of Portland, and the tanks along the river. These neighborhoods are at the intersection of homes and industrial business as well as the remnants of industry, which have created environmental disasters that still need remediation.

We need leaders who are concerned about the natural world where we live and who want to act with bold vision and detailed plans to be ready for when an earthquake impacts our region.

Join your local NETs-

Neighborhood Emergency Teams, can be a gateway for communities to work together and impact decision made by the city, for the better.

Laura, like may Portlanders, are very disappointed that our current city council voted in favor of allowing the Zenith Pipeline to move forward. These current City Council Members say that fuel and toxic chemicals won’t be moving through any neighborhoods. But the main train transport system is less than a block from Laura's house. She knows there is no way they can promise there will never be a spill or a break in the pipelines. How can they make such a promise?

All we have to do is look at Kalamazoo, Michigan in 2010 where a tars pipeline burst creating a major environmental disaster. More recent, we only need to look at East Palestine Ohio in 2023 to see the how that particular environmental disaster was created from a train derailment whose rail cars were carrying toxic chemicals through a populated community.

When elected to Portland’s City Council, Laura will work to create a safe space for our community where we protect the natural resources we love so much - our trees, water, and air.

We think about the impact of the climate crisis as a world wide disaster, but what it is on the local scale is numerous small disasters that contribute to the total impact of how our world will thrive for future generations or slowly evolve to a planet more like Mars.

If Portland adopts policy, say making eco-roofs a necessity for new buildings, but then delays the roll out which in turn delays a healthier future, how is that really helping our city hit our environmental targets to combat this self-made crisis? The business lobby is vast and powerful, but ask yourself-if we do not have thriving, healthy communities because no one can leave their homes when we are experiencing heat wave after heat wave, what does it matter if we have a thriving downtown?

We need to invest in Forest Park now, before it becomes a tinder box threatening all of our homes in the Portland region.

We need to consider our water sources , as well as, the ground contamination and superfund sites that have been delayed in their clean up. This is part of the climate solution.

We need to take into account the trees that the City of Portland did not manage and let die when they ended their contract with Friends of Trees. Sometimes community knows best- and city leaders need to listen, learn, and create policy supported by community from listening to the experts in the field. Laura pledges to do just that.

The area of the Willamette that travels from Sauvie Island, Linton, St Johns, Cathedral Park, and through the industrial area of Swan Island and beyond to downtown and Sellwood has several superfund sites due to the unregulated industry that grew up from the 1880’s and beyond. The EPA’s Portland Harbor Superfund website does a great job documenting what has happened and how multiple agencies are working to clean and reclaim the river so fish and all of us can thrive. If we don’t continue to act - the Chinook Salmon could be come extinct within our lifetime and our quality of life will also be detrimentally effected. We need to have climate solutions.