100s rally for Oregon ‘Climate Superfund’ bill to make Oregon polluters pay for extreme weather damages

As federal support wanes for programs that help reduce climate change impacts, Oregon legislators are working on a bill that would make fossil fuel companies pay for the damages and economic losses suffered by local taxpayers from extreme weather disasters in the state.

The proposed legislation would create a “climate Superfund” program to allow the state to recoup costs to prepare for wildfires, droughts and heat domes and recover from them.

The money would come from companies that produce and sell crude oil, natural gas and coal and flow to state agencies that oversee responses.

Senate Bill 1187 is modeled on similar laws recently passed in Vermont and New York and is based on the federal Superfund’s well-established “polluter pays” principle that requires companies to clean up their hazardous waste sites across the U.S.

Ten other states are also considering similar “Climate Superfund” proposals, which have gotten major blowback from fossil fuel officials and have prompted multiple legal challenges.

“The Superfund concept is an old one. It basically says if you created the pollution then you should pay for some of the damages that your pollution has caused,” said Sen. Khanh Pham, D-Portland, one of the chief sponsors of the bill. “It’s not fair to have Oregonians have to bear the impacts and the full cost of these damages.”

Hundreds of people gathered on Monday at the State Capitol to show support for the bill – set for an afternoon public hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Environment. Supporters filled the hearing room, an additional overflow hearing room and gathered in the halls.

“At a time when our federal government is backtracking on any climate commitments, when our Oregon legislators are scrambling to find funding to cover the mounting costs of wildfires and other climate disasters and damages and everyday Oregonians are digging deeper and deeper into their own pockets to cover those costs, we think it’s time for billionaires who are padding their own pockets off the profits of climate pollution to pay their fair share,” said Sarah Loose, an organizer with a faith-based network whose members rallied for the bill in Salem.

Oregon’s “climate Superfund” program would focus on global companies such as Exxon Mobile or Shell that do or have done business in Oregon and whose production-related emissions exceeded 1 billion metric tons of covered greenhouse gas emissions, in aggregate globally, during the period from 1995 to 2024. The emissions covered are those released while fuels were being extracted or refined and do not include tailpipe emissions.

The state would use publicly available data and reporting on fossil fuel producers’ annual production to calculate the companies’ share of pollution and issue demands for payments. The calculations are spearheaded by attribution science, a field of research that calculates companies’ contributions to climate disasters.

Examples of past extreme weather damages in Oregon include the 2020 Labor Day fires, which burned over 1 million acres and cost the state over $350 million for firefighting expenses, and the 2021 heat dome that killed nearly 100 people statewide.

Of the funds recovered by Oregon, 30% would be transferred to the Department of the State Fire Marshal for wildfire costs. The money would help pay for helping communities recover from wildfires as well as for preparing homes for future wildfires – including conducting outreach, building defensible space around homes and building or upgrading homes using materials that are resistant to damage from wildfire.

The remainder of the money would go to other state agencies, including the Oregon Health Authority, the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development. The agencies would be required to spend 40% on communities that are most exposed to climate change-related damages.

New York and Vermont have yet to recover any damages from polluting companies. Both states are embroiled in industry-led lawsuits.

Critics of the existing climate Superfund laws have said that they amount to a new tax on energy production and will lead fossil fuel companies to raise prices for all consumers.

Pham said fossil fuel companies use this threat whenever anyone tries to keep them accountable.

“We know that the combined profits of Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Shell were over $100 billion so we know that they can afford to pay a small portion of their massive profits towards helping communities recover from damages from the climate disasters that their fossil fuel pollution caused,” she said.

Oregon taxpayers now pay for wildfires and other extreme weather disasters, she said. “So if anything, this is actually going to alleviate some of the tax burden that we’re facing,” she said.

If passed, an Oregon Climate Superfund law also could become a target for the Trump administration. Already, oil-and-gas executives have raised concerns about the laws at a White House meeting with President Trump and have asked the U.S. Justice Department to file briefs in support of its lawsuits, the Wall Street Journal has reported. The president appeared to agree that the laws could undermine his energy-dominance agenda and signaled he would consider ways to help the industry.

Sen. Pham acknowledged it might take a few years to settle legal challenges, if such were to materialize in Oregon, but she’s confident the state would prevail because the Superfund principle is not a new legal concept, she said.

“Even children understand that if you make a mess, you clean it up and that’s what the Superfund concept is based on, it’s a basic concept of fairness,” Pham 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.

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