September 14, 2025 • 30 mins
The Oregon Consumer Privacy Act allows you to know what businesses know about you. Putting equity in the Oregon Climate Protection Program. The effect of city noise on your health.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to local Voices. I'm brad Ford. This week how
to use the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act to know what
businesses know about you. The Oregon DEQ is taking the
next step forward in establishing the Climate Protection Program, making
sure equity is part of that plan. Plus, noise in
the city of Porting can be unhealthy. We'll talk with
a researcher at Oregon State University. Oregon has a new
(00:28):
law that allows you to know what companies know about you.
It's the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act. Doctor Katie Blevins is
a privacy analyst with the Oregon Deprivement of Justice. Katie
explain the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Absolutely so, the organ Consumer Privacy Act is Organ's own
comprehensive privacy law. And really what that means is it
focuses on allowing Oregonians control over their own personal data
in the context of business entities, non p and really
(01:02):
just kind of giving some power back to Oregonians.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
So what does it allow consumers to do?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Absolutely so, Essentially, what it allows them to do is
they have certain rights over their personal data that is
outlined by the law. And then obviously at the end
we'll talk about resources for people who want to get
more details. But it allows consumers to do things like
request a copy of their data. So you could go
(01:29):
to a company's website and then you can go to
that website and the privacy notice and generally they'll either
be an email or a web form you fill out
and you can request and say, please give me all
the information you have about me as an individual, so
that would be something like the copy of your data.
You could also ask for things like for your data
to be deleted, so you could go to that company
(01:51):
and fill out the same web form and say, please
delete all of the personal data that you have about me.
And so there's some other kind of associated rights that
you have under the law, but those are kind of
the two main ones that a lot of our consumers
are interested in.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So a report on the first year of the new
law was issued. What did it show?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Absolutely, So it showed a couple of things. It was
a really active year, which I think was fantastic. So
first off, it showed that Oregonians really care about privacy.
We had done a statewide survey of Oregonians and their
kind of perceptions around privacy and their interest in personal
privacy and I think our first year of enforcement really
(02:31):
showed us the truth of the survey, which is that
Oregonians really care. They want to protect their data, they
want to protect children's data, their children be good kind
of civic minded citizens. And so to that end, with
the enforcement report, we have, you know, a lot of
consumer complaints. So we get complaints at the organ DOJ.
(02:55):
Essentially if a consumer has problems trying to to effectuate
their privacy, right, so if they're trying to go and
get their data deleted, if they potentially have a problem
with the company or the entity that they're trying to
get their data deleted, they have the option of.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Filing a complaint with US.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And so the privacy team at the organ DOJ we
go through and reread through the complaints and rereach out
to companies. And so that's a lot of what the
enforcement port showed us is with our two hundred some
odd consumer complaints, we have a lot of really privacy
oriented people that are that are reaching out to us
and having us do kind of enforcement work on their behalf,
(03:36):
which is fantastic. So I think just kind of the
interest that the report shows is just how much Oregonians
are really engaged with this process.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
What are some of the key takeaways for businesses?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Some of the key takeaways One organ has a relatively
unique provision and our consumer prime law which allows consumers
to have information about where their data was shared or sold.
So this is referred to in the law as like
a list of specific third parties. And the idea here
(04:13):
is that if I go to an entity and ask
them please give me the list of third parties that
you've sold my data to, this allows me as a
consumer to track down like where my data may have
gone downstream, so then I could go to those companies
and ask them to delete my data, so on and
so on. So Oregon was the first state to institute
(04:36):
this particular provision in their consumer privacy law. Other states
have added this on since the OCPA went into effect,
and so this is something that I think because it's
a relatively new provision, not all companies are used to
incorporating this, so this is an area we do a
lot of enforcement work. So that's definitely one of the
kind of business takeaways is making sure they're fully addressing
(04:59):
all their acquirements under the OCPA, and then similar to that,
making sure like technical aspects are working properly. So if
you if a company is using a web form to
take in privacy request from consumers, making sure the web
form is functional completely, that it makes sense that it
(05:19):
you know, fully addresses all the aspects of the law.
And then probably the last big one is making sure
that like the full body of data about a consumer
is what's being provided. So if a consumer asks for
a copy of their data, it shouldn't just be the
profile data that a consumer might be able to see themselves,
(05:42):
it should be any back end data, including marketing data
that the company.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Is keeping on the consumer.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
So really just kind of following through with the letter
of the law there.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
So, as a consumer, how do I use the Consumer
Privacy Act? Where do I start?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Absolutely, that's a great question. A lot of it is
about kind of being educated as a consumer that this
law exists. So this is a great first step. And
then from there, businesses have the duty to make these
rights available to consumers. And so really, if you have
(06:17):
an interest in knowing what a certain business or group
of businesses have in terms of their data about you,
or you want that data deleted, you go directly to
those businesses. You can go to their privacy notices, which
are usually at the bottom of their pages, and then
within the privacy notices, they'll have a section about state
rights or consumer rights or your options to control your data,
(06:40):
and they title it different things, but they'll say, here
are these rights that you have, so things like right
to deletion or a right to a copy or access
of your data, and they'll give you directions. They'll say,
send us an email here, or fill out this web form.
And generally there's some minor what we call authentic but
really it's just making sure you are who you say
(07:02):
you are. So there are some safety features built into
these laws to make sure there's no identity issues and
so you know, they'll verify maybe if they have an
email on file with you, they'll make sure that that's
actually who's making the request, things like that. But from
there it should be fairly straightforward. They have a certain
(07:22):
time limit in which they have to either you know,
comply with the privacy request, and then if they for
some reason deny your privacy request, then you have an
appeals process you can do and then if there are
any problems or issues that a consumer has or even questions,
we have a lot of resources for the organ DOJ
at our Privacy website, and then we also have our
(07:44):
Privacy Complaint Portal, which is that that form where a
consumer can write a complaint that goes directly to us,
where we can review and see what issues consumers might
be having in this process.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
So it sounds like Oregon Depropmt. Of Justice. Then on
their website kind of has information where we can go
and start to learn how to use it and how
to work with the companies.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Absolutely, so there's handouts that are addressed specifically to consumers.
There are consumers faques, so just kind of dealing with
some of the more in depth questions and thinking about
how to approach this process. And we even have a
template for consumers to use if there's an email address
as opposed to a web form on a company's website,
(08:27):
and if a consumer is not really sure how to
ask for please delete my data, there's a little paragraph
you can go and copy and paste and you add
your name to it and whatnot, just to make this
process as seamless as possible. So I really dedicated to
making sure our Gonians know about this law and know
how to use it.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Katie, anything else you'd like to add just.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
That we're really grateful for all of the great community
support we've had and just it's been really inspiring working
with or Gonians on getting this law off the ground
and getting people to work on their privacy rights and
help us on there.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
We have Katie, thanks for joining us on Local Voices
as doctor Katie Blevin's a privacy analyst with the Oregon
Deprovement of Justice, explaining the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act and
how you can use it to know what's happening to
data about you. You can learn more on the Oregon
Depropment of Justice website. The Oregon Deprovement of Environmental Quality
(09:23):
is developing the Climate Protection Program and part of that
is the Equity Advisory Committee. Nicole Saying with d EQ
joins us on Local Voices. Nicole, what is the Climate
Protection Program?
Speaker 4 (09:34):
So?
Speaker 3 (09:34):
The Climate Protection Program is a statewide program that reduces
climate pollution from fossil fuels used throughout war Again, so
this includes the use of fuels in our cars, in
our buildings, in our offices, and also in our factories
and industry. And the way the program works is it
basically just sets a limit or a cap on these emissions,
(09:58):
those emissions from the use of fuels, and the program
is designed to reduce the climate pollution emissions from the
use of those fuels fifty percent by twenty thirty five
and ninety percent by twenty fifty.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
The d EQUS Climate Protection Program Equity Advisory Committee held
its first meeting last week. What's the purpose of the
Equity Advisory Committee.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Well, the Equity Advisory Committee is critical to the Climate
Protection Program, and what I should say is the program
is focused on reducing climate pollution, reducing greenhouse gas emissions,
but we're trying to do that in a way where
we can support equitable outcomes. You know, equity is a
word that's thrown around a lot. Maybe in some circles
it's a dirty word. But what we mean by equity
(10:40):
is we know that communities get left behind when you
think of energy or when you think of a clean
energy transition, and we know a lot of communities are
dealing with more impacts from pollution and dealing with more
impacts of climate change. So as we're limiting these emissions
from the use of fossil fuels, trying to do in
a way that we can support those communities that have
traditionally been left behind. So for our program, when we
(11:01):
think about these communities who get left behind, we're thinking
of our tribes, tribal communities, our communities of color, but
we're also thinking about our rural communities because there's a
lot of lack of infrastructure for things like energy and
energy choice and energy reliability. So in order to support
those goals, the equity goals of the program, the Equity
Advisory Committee is very important to us. They're a key
(11:24):
partner in a particular part of our program, which we
call our Community Climate Investments, and the Equity Advisory Committee
helps dq figure out what we should do if we
were to receive any community climate investments. And I can
talk a little bit more about what the community climate
investments are and how they work with the overall Climate
protection program.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, that would be great, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah, So the Climate Protection program. When I say we
put a limit or a cap on emissions for fossil
fuels used in the state, what we're really doing is
we're regulating certain companies, and the companies that we're regulating
are basically those folks who bring those fuels into the States.
So these suppliers of fossil fuels, so folks that bring
gasoline in, folks that bring natural gas in. So for example,
(12:08):
we're regulating our three natural gas utilities because they bring
the natural gas into the state. So those companies do
have to reduce their emissions. The way the program works
is we basically give every we circulate these free you
can call them credits, free credits that represent one ton
of JHD emissions or one ton of climate pollution. And
(12:28):
the number of credits that we give out to free
to these companies, it goes down over time. So that's
how we can make sure that the program is reducing emissions.
But we do have another option for these regulated companies.
They can choose to also earn what we call community
climate investments. So instead of maybe reducing their own emissions,
they can earn a CECI credit, and that CCI credit
(12:51):
it is different from the other credits. It does come
at a certain price. But if they are to earn
or use these CCI credits, they would therefore generate funds
we would have these community climate investments, and so that's
a really key role for the Equity Advisory Committee because
they help DQ figure out if we had these community
climate investments, how those community Climate Investments would be invested
(13:14):
in different projects across the state. Now, we don't do
that directly as d EQ. What we do is we
have these third party CCI entities. So these are these
nonprofits that would apply to be CCI entities and then
that nonprofit would work with DQ on the types of
projects that would be funded by any Community Climate investments.
(13:34):
So the Equity Advisory Committee is so critical because a
they help DQ review applications to be CCI entities, and
in the future when we do have a CCI entity,
the Equity Advisory Committee actually once again helps d EQ
develop work plans with those CCI entities, and those work
plans are really where we decide what communities receive funds
(13:57):
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also what types of
projects communities are most interested in in terms of the
use of any potential CCI funds.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
So how many people are on the Equity Advisory Committee
and what type of organizations do they represent?
Speaker 3 (14:12):
So there's a wide group of folks on the Equity
Advisory Committee. We have ten amazing individuals from all across
the state of Oregon participating. We have folks that have
expertise and environmental justice, community engagement, air pollution, transportation, decarbonization.
We're really fortunate to have folks that have been committed
(14:33):
and working on these types of issues for many, many years,
many decades. We've worked with some of these organizations previously
on developing the Climate Protection program. A lot of these
organizations were really the voice behind the Community Climate Investments.
It was their comments, their engagement that really led to
the development of the Community Climate Investments component of the program.
(14:54):
But we also have a lot of new folks that
we haven't worked with as much, So we're really excited.
We have folks from Hood River, we have folks from
kous Bay, we have folks representing the Yu Matilla tribe,
and we have folks that also represent you know, statewide
organizations who work on all parts of Oregon, like Unite Oregon.
So yeah, we're very excited to have those folks and
(15:14):
we are really going to learn a lot from all
the expertise and lived experience they're going to bring to
the committee.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, very wide range of groups. Well, the Equity Advisory
Committee continue to review projects as time goes on and
then add new projects as say current projects are completed.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Well, I would say right now, we don't we don't
actually have any projects because the first step for us
is getting a potential CCI entity, the CCI entity. Once
we have that in place, then that would take us
to the next step, which is you know, being open
to get the credits the investments from any regulated companies
and then developing the work plans. So the Equity Advisory
(15:53):
Committee is going to be helping us in terms of
the selection of CCI entities, and then as you just mentioned,
they be helping us figure out which projects are going
to be targeted for those investments, and that could be ongoing.
You know, I think we envisioned that we'd have some
projects early on for some communities, we'd be asking our
Equity Advisory Committee to like feedback from their communities projects
(16:15):
of interest. So it's not going to be static. It's
definitely going to be something where we have a work plan,
but we're going to be adding projects, changing projects, looking
at different communities over time.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
And are you looking for nonprofits and are there qualifications
that they need to meet in order to apply.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yes, we have a lot of qualifications for them. They
do need to be five to one c's, so they
do need to be nonprofits. You know, there's a pretty
ex we will probably later this month be putting out
a request for applications for the CCI Entity. We do
have also an info session if folks are interested in
being a CCI entity or maybe even potentially working with
(16:55):
the CCI entity on projects. We have that meeting. I
believe it's September sixteenth, So hopefully we'll get the RFA
out later this month and that'll be more detailed in
terms of the requirements. But we are looking for folks
that have experience in community engagement, have experienced in decarbonization,
have experienced managing significant funds, whether from states or from
(17:16):
the federal government. So we do have a lot of requirements,
but we're excited and hopeful that we'll get a large
interest in potentially being a CCI in today.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Great Nicole, anything else you'd like to add that I
didn't ask you about.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
You know, we're really grateful for the amount of folks
who have taken the time to be on the Equity
Advisory Committee. I think one thing we've learned at DEEQ
is we need to make space for lots of voices.
We don't do a lot of this work well, and
really critically important to creating that space is making sure
that we do have the right resources, so we're asking
folks to give up all these hours to work with
(17:49):
us that we can give them the financial compensation that
they need. So we're also really happy and we're very
fortunate that we still able to have the funds to
be able to support the engagement of such a bright
group of folks from across the state.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
That's Nicole saying with the Oregon d EQ and details
about the climate protection program that's being developed and the
role that the Equity Advisory Committee will play in selecting
projects that are funded through the program. Cities are noisy
and that noise can be unhealthy. Matthew Bozagar is an
assistant professor at Oregon State University, and he and graduate
(18:23):
student Carson Mauer of the OSU College of Health studied
noise levels in Portland. Matthew tell us about the study.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
We were trying to understand noise exposure or how much
noise people experience kind of in their day to day
activities across a whole city. And this is something that
actually hasn't been done super thoroughly or much at all
(18:52):
in many cities in the US.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
How do you conduct the research?
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Yeah, so with my research assistant and with our partners
at the Maloma County Health Department, we first kind of
learned how to use the equipment that we wanted to
use for this for this study, which is a newer
technology that has digital microphones so kind of compresses you know,
(19:19):
what was formerly in very large and expensive equipment down
to something very small that's battery power, that's still a
high quality microphone that can record noise well and given
a small size we can put that. So you know,
this is what we did is we went out in
(19:39):
the field and we went out through the city of
Portland and systematically identified places that probably had a unique
noise profile or something interesting locally about that location to
measure noise at that location. So we you know, twelve
(20:00):
on cold owned by the Portland Bureau of Transportation, who
we had a permit to do this work from. We
installed sound pressure level monitors, uh so just measuring the
intensity of sound, not audio or anything like that because
(20:21):
actually that's against Oregon state law, but just measuring the
intensity at each one of these locations for about a
week at a time. And so we have you know,
our members go out there, including need set up to
a round of setups and then about six days later,
come back down, come back and take them down, you know,
(20:43):
download the data from the devices, and then shut recharge them,
and go out the next day usually to set up
the devices and new locations.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
So in general, how much of a health hazard is
noise pollution?
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Yeah, so this is something that's really I think underappreciated
in the United States in particular, but more so just
kind of outside of Europe. I would say it's I think,
you know, a lot of people when they first hear
oh noises, you know, bad for your health, right, Like,
(21:18):
I think people are kind of like, yeah, right, you know,
like so what like another thing in the environment, you know,
could could hurt us. And when we kind of break
through that barrier, the evidence is becoming quite clear. But
most of it is coming out of Europe because they've
just had this on their radar longer. They've had h
(21:40):
you know, uh right, organizations that have really looked at
noise longer, and the evidence is clear that hey, look
it's it's probably impacting your sleep, and it's probably impacting
and increasing your stress levels. And so those two things
are those are kind of the main two path plays
(22:02):
that we think noise is impacting longer term health. You know,
we're talking about noise exposures over a long period. It's
sign not just one you know, loud bang or something
like that, though that can certainly cause something like hearing
hearing damage or auditory you know, system damage. But the
(22:24):
elevated noise, the elevated stress, and elev and disrupted sleep
are things that are risk factors for many chronic diseases.
We're talking about things like even cognitive impairments, cardiovascular disease,
high blood pressure, different metabolic disorders, and even things like
(22:46):
adverse pregnancy outcomes. We're finding it is linked to noise exposure.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
So is it possible to summarize what you found? Portland
is a big area, but did you get some some
general findings?
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (22:58):
So right, this is step one of a multi part study.
So this first step was just to understand noise exposures
through the city so that we can then try to
link those data to health outcomes to really understand the
health impacts of the noise exposures. But I mean, one
thing we found was that, I like many other things,
(23:21):
noise is not distributed evenly throughout the city and the
groups that experience, it tend to experience the worst of
it tend to be you know, the lowest in terms
of socioeconomic status. It also tends to occur more frequently
these high noise exposures in communities that are more racially diverse.
(23:45):
And so this follows like a long a pattern of
similar you know, environmental stressors all happening, whether it's air
pollution or something else, to the similar types of communities. Right,
So we found that, and then we also found that
we found some interesting patterns with noise profiles throughout the city.
(24:05):
I think one of our one of the most interesting
things we found in Red in relation to that was,
you know, we're very interested from a health perspective in
the pulsing nature or the intermittency of noise, not just
the overall level or intensity, but how fast is noise
kind of rising and falling, like to some degree where
(24:27):
you would notice, you know, oh, is there there's like
loud peaks happening like frequently. And we found that those
types of profiles actually were not on the main roads themselves.
The main roads definitely had higher kind of overall noise levels,
(24:47):
but we found that over a twenty four hour average
four hour period. The places that who were experiencing the
most intermittent noise were about one to two blocks off
of the road. So that's something that you know, maybe
residents are thinking, hey, you know, I'm not on the
main road, I should be good. But if you're close,
(25:08):
like you may be experiencing a different type of noise solution.
So that was one of the interesting findings that was
found too.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yeah, you would think that the louder noises would align
with maybe zoning right industrial areas compared to residential areas,
but that doesn't sound like that's what the finding was.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
Yeah, and most of our our study was geared towards
trying to estimate noise or because you said, the measure
noise where people spend the majority of their day. So
we really selectively targeted the residential areas over some of
the industrial areas in terms of where we placed our monitors.
(25:46):
But at the same time, yeah, the residential areas were
surprisingly loud in many places, but it was being that, Yeah,
the industrial areas were also you know, loud, if not
louder in most of those, So some patterns you might
might expect, But then there were differences at nighttime you know,
(26:07):
some of the residential areas, as you would expect, were
quieter at night, some were not. So a lot of
multi family kind of zoned places were not as quiet
at night, and the residents. The industrial noise tended to
be a little bit more intermittent at night compared to
throughout the day. So there were some granular patterns there.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
You said that the device measures the intensity of the noise,
not the specific noise. Are you able to identify with
the sources of the noise were, whether as traffic noise
or industrial noise.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Yeah, that's a great question. We have done some of
that preluiminary research. We this is on published research at
the moment, but we used kind of very very fancy
statistical and kind of like artificial intelligence type of method
is to try to understand, yeah, what's the type of
(27:05):
what's causing the noise at any given any given sight
of all the sites to be measured. So for that
we did take some additional types of data collected. So
we did do some brief audio snippets, some video snippets,
(27:27):
and we use so so again when people were not
around because not permitted by organ law, but we use
those types of data to so we augmented our noise
measurement data with those data streams and using a data
science approach, we were able to find essentially that the
(27:48):
dominant source at every site was road or like vehicle
traffic related sources of noise, So that was the dominant source.
And then you know, some of the other things that
you think might be common we're showing up like construction,
you know, people people speaking, or music and things like that,
(28:13):
but by far the most dominant was the road traffic
noise at each site.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
So this is the first part of a multi part study.
What's next This was step one.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
Step two is to really I think I don't know
if I mentioned it earlier, is to try to be
able to develop a model that can predict the noise,
the different types of noise exposure too, at every location
in the city. You know, we're not able to go
out and measure every location. We just don't have the
resources to do that. But we tried to in our
(28:44):
first phase measure the types of locations that might be
representative of many more locations throughout the city. So then
we can develop a high resolution noise prediction model. Now
we can say, you know, try to estimates at any
given location. So if we have health data, then this
(29:05):
would be kind of the third phase. We can we
can we can assess whether or not we have like
a location for those people that have different health outcomes
and things, and if we can tie them to a location,
whether it's like most commonly their residential address, then we
(29:25):
can therefore estimate the noise at that location. And now
we have a noise link to you know, their health outcomes,
and we can do some more advanced health studies with that.
So it's kind of like a three three part setup really.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Matthew, thanks for joining us on Local Voices with details
about your study on noise in Portland and the health impacts.
Thanks for listening to Local Voices. I'm brand board. You
can hear past episodes on the iHeartRadio app under the
podcast tab. Local Voices is a public affairs presentation from
iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
No
Welcome to local Voices. I'm brad Ford. This week how
to use the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act to know what
businesses know about you. The Oregon DEQ is taking the
next step forward in establishing the Climate Protection Program, making
sure equity is part of that plan. Plus, noise in
the city of Porting can be unhealthy. We'll talk with
a researcher at Oregon State University. Oregon has a new
(00:28):
law that allows you to know what companies know about you.
It's the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act. Doctor Katie Blevins is
a privacy analyst with the Oregon Deprivement of Justice. Katie
explain the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Absolutely so, the organ Consumer Privacy Act is Organ's own
comprehensive privacy law. And really what that means is it
focuses on allowing Oregonians control over their own personal data
in the context of business entities, non p and really
(01:02):
just kind of giving some power back to Oregonians.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
So what does it allow consumers to do?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Absolutely so, Essentially, what it allows them to do is
they have certain rights over their personal data that is
outlined by the law. And then obviously at the end
we'll talk about resources for people who want to get
more details. But it allows consumers to do things like
request a copy of their data. So you could go
(01:29):
to a company's website and then you can go to
that website and the privacy notice and generally they'll either
be an email or a web form you fill out
and you can request and say, please give me all
the information you have about me as an individual, so
that would be something like the copy of your data.
You could also ask for things like for your data
to be deleted, so you could go to that company
(01:51):
and fill out the same web form and say, please
delete all of the personal data that you have about me.
And so there's some other kind of associated rights that
you have under the law, but those are kind of
the two main ones that a lot of our consumers
are interested in.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So a report on the first year of the new
law was issued. What did it show?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Absolutely, So it showed a couple of things. It was
a really active year, which I think was fantastic. So
first off, it showed that Oregonians really care about privacy.
We had done a statewide survey of Oregonians and their
kind of perceptions around privacy and their interest in personal
privacy and I think our first year of enforcement really
(02:31):
showed us the truth of the survey, which is that
Oregonians really care. They want to protect their data, they
want to protect children's data, their children be good kind
of civic minded citizens. And so to that end, with
the enforcement report, we have, you know, a lot of
consumer complaints. So we get complaints at the organ DOJ.
(02:55):
Essentially if a consumer has problems trying to to effectuate
their privacy, right, so if they're trying to go and
get their data deleted, if they potentially have a problem
with the company or the entity that they're trying to
get their data deleted, they have the option of.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Filing a complaint with US.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And so the privacy team at the organ DOJ we
go through and reread through the complaints and rereach out
to companies. And so that's a lot of what the
enforcement port showed us is with our two hundred some
odd consumer complaints, we have a lot of really privacy
oriented people that are that are reaching out to us
and having us do kind of enforcement work on their behalf,
(03:36):
which is fantastic. So I think just kind of the
interest that the report shows is just how much Oregonians
are really engaged with this process.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
What are some of the key takeaways for businesses?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Some of the key takeaways One organ has a relatively
unique provision and our consumer prime law which allows consumers
to have information about where their data was shared or sold.
So this is referred to in the law as like
a list of specific third parties. And the idea here
(04:13):
is that if I go to an entity and ask
them please give me the list of third parties that
you've sold my data to, this allows me as a
consumer to track down like where my data may have
gone downstream, so then I could go to those companies
and ask them to delete my data, so on and
so on. So Oregon was the first state to institute
(04:36):
this particular provision in their consumer privacy law. Other states
have added this on since the OCPA went into effect,
and so this is something that I think because it's
a relatively new provision, not all companies are used to
incorporating this, so this is an area we do a
lot of enforcement work. So that's definitely one of the
kind of business takeaways is making sure they're fully addressing
(04:59):
all their acquirements under the OCPA, and then similar to that,
making sure like technical aspects are working properly. So if
you if a company is using a web form to
take in privacy request from consumers, making sure the web
form is functional completely, that it makes sense that it
(05:19):
you know, fully addresses all the aspects of the law.
And then probably the last big one is making sure
that like the full body of data about a consumer
is what's being provided. So if a consumer asks for
a copy of their data, it shouldn't just be the
profile data that a consumer might be able to see themselves,
(05:42):
it should be any back end data, including marketing data
that the company.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Is keeping on the consumer.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
So really just kind of following through with the letter
of the law there.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
So, as a consumer, how do I use the Consumer
Privacy Act? Where do I start?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Absolutely, that's a great question. A lot of it is
about kind of being educated as a consumer that this
law exists. So this is a great first step. And
then from there, businesses have the duty to make these
rights available to consumers. And so really, if you have
(06:17):
an interest in knowing what a certain business or group
of businesses have in terms of their data about you,
or you want that data deleted, you go directly to
those businesses. You can go to their privacy notices, which
are usually at the bottom of their pages, and then
within the privacy notices, they'll have a section about state
rights or consumer rights or your options to control your data,
(06:40):
and they title it different things, but they'll say, here
are these rights that you have, so things like right
to deletion or a right to a copy or access
of your data, and they'll give you directions. They'll say,
send us an email here, or fill out this web form.
And generally there's some minor what we call authentic but
really it's just making sure you are who you say
(07:02):
you are. So there are some safety features built into
these laws to make sure there's no identity issues and
so you know, they'll verify maybe if they have an
email on file with you, they'll make sure that that's
actually who's making the request, things like that. But from
there it should be fairly straightforward. They have a certain
(07:22):
time limit in which they have to either you know,
comply with the privacy request, and then if they for
some reason deny your privacy request, then you have an
appeals process you can do and then if there are
any problems or issues that a consumer has or even questions,
we have a lot of resources for the organ DOJ
at our Privacy website, and then we also have our
(07:44):
Privacy Complaint Portal, which is that that form where a
consumer can write a complaint that goes directly to us,
where we can review and see what issues consumers might
be having in this process.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
So it sounds like Oregon Depropmt. Of Justice. Then on
their website kind of has information where we can go
and start to learn how to use it and how
to work with the companies.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Absolutely, so there's handouts that are addressed specifically to consumers.
There are consumers faques, so just kind of dealing with
some of the more in depth questions and thinking about
how to approach this process. And we even have a
template for consumers to use if there's an email address
as opposed to a web form on a company's website,
(08:27):
and if a consumer is not really sure how to
ask for please delete my data, there's a little paragraph
you can go and copy and paste and you add
your name to it and whatnot, just to make this
process as seamless as possible. So I really dedicated to
making sure our Gonians know about this law and know
how to use it.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Katie, anything else you'd like to add just.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
That we're really grateful for all of the great community
support we've had and just it's been really inspiring working
with or Gonians on getting this law off the ground
and getting people to work on their privacy rights and
help us on there.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
We have Katie, thanks for joining us on Local Voices
as doctor Katie Blevin's a privacy analyst with the Oregon
Deprovement of Justice, explaining the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act and
how you can use it to know what's happening to
data about you. You can learn more on the Oregon
Depropment of Justice website. The Oregon Deprovement of Environmental Quality
(09:23):
is developing the Climate Protection Program and part of that
is the Equity Advisory Committee. Nicole Saying with d EQ
joins us on Local Voices. Nicole, what is the Climate
Protection Program?
Speaker 4 (09:34):
So?
Speaker 3 (09:34):
The Climate Protection Program is a statewide program that reduces
climate pollution from fossil fuels used throughout war Again, so
this includes the use of fuels in our cars, in
our buildings, in our offices, and also in our factories
and industry. And the way the program works is it
basically just sets a limit or a cap on these emissions,
(09:58):
those emissions from the use of fuels, and the program
is designed to reduce the climate pollution emissions from the
use of those fuels fifty percent by twenty thirty five
and ninety percent by twenty fifty.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
The d EQUS Climate Protection Program Equity Advisory Committee held
its first meeting last week. What's the purpose of the
Equity Advisory Committee.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Well, the Equity Advisory Committee is critical to the Climate
Protection Program, and what I should say is the program
is focused on reducing climate pollution, reducing greenhouse gas emissions,
but we're trying to do that in a way where
we can support equitable outcomes. You know, equity is a
word that's thrown around a lot. Maybe in some circles
it's a dirty word. But what we mean by equity
(10:40):
is we know that communities get left behind when you
think of energy or when you think of a clean
energy transition, and we know a lot of communities are
dealing with more impacts from pollution and dealing with more
impacts of climate change. So as we're limiting these emissions
from the use of fossil fuels, trying to do in
a way that we can support those communities that have
traditionally been left behind. So for our program, when we
(11:01):
think about these communities who get left behind, we're thinking
of our tribes, tribal communities, our communities of color, but
we're also thinking about our rural communities because there's a
lot of lack of infrastructure for things like energy and
energy choice and energy reliability. So in order to support
those goals, the equity goals of the program, the Equity
Advisory Committee is very important to us. They're a key
(11:24):
partner in a particular part of our program, which we
call our Community Climate Investments, and the Equity Advisory Committee
helps dq figure out what we should do if we
were to receive any community climate investments. And I can
talk a little bit more about what the community climate
investments are and how they work with the overall Climate
protection program.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, that would be great, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah, So the Climate Protection program. When I say we
put a limit or a cap on emissions for fossil
fuels used in the state, what we're really doing is
we're regulating certain companies, and the companies that we're regulating
are basically those folks who bring those fuels into the States.
So these suppliers of fossil fuels, so folks that bring
gasoline in, folks that bring natural gas in. So for example,
(12:08):
we're regulating our three natural gas utilities because they bring
the natural gas into the state. So those companies do
have to reduce their emissions. The way the program works
is we basically give every we circulate these free you
can call them credits, free credits that represent one ton
of JHD emissions or one ton of climate pollution. And
(12:28):
the number of credits that we give out to free
to these companies, it goes down over time. So that's
how we can make sure that the program is reducing emissions.
But we do have another option for these regulated companies.
They can choose to also earn what we call community
climate investments. So instead of maybe reducing their own emissions,
they can earn a CECI credit, and that CCI credit
(12:51):
it is different from the other credits. It does come
at a certain price. But if they are to earn
or use these CCI credits, they would therefore generate funds
we would have these community climate investments, and so that's
a really key role for the Equity Advisory Committee because
they help DQ figure out if we had these community
climate investments, how those community Climate Investments would be invested
(13:14):
in different projects across the state. Now, we don't do
that directly as d EQ. What we do is we
have these third party CCI entities. So these are these
nonprofits that would apply to be CCI entities and then
that nonprofit would work with DQ on the types of
projects that would be funded by any Community Climate investments.
(13:34):
So the Equity Advisory Committee is so critical because a
they help DQ review applications to be CCI entities, and
in the future when we do have a CCI entity,
the Equity Advisory Committee actually once again helps d EQ
develop work plans with those CCI entities, and those work
plans are really where we decide what communities receive funds
(13:57):
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also what types of
projects communities are most interested in in terms of the
use of any potential CCI funds.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
So how many people are on the Equity Advisory Committee
and what type of organizations do they represent?
Speaker 3 (14:12):
So there's a wide group of folks on the Equity
Advisory Committee. We have ten amazing individuals from all across
the state of Oregon participating. We have folks that have
expertise and environmental justice, community engagement, air pollution, transportation, decarbonization.
We're really fortunate to have folks that have been committed
(14:33):
and working on these types of issues for many, many years,
many decades. We've worked with some of these organizations previously
on developing the Climate Protection program. A lot of these
organizations were really the voice behind the Community Climate Investments.
It was their comments, their engagement that really led to
the development of the Community Climate Investments component of the program.
(14:54):
But we also have a lot of new folks that
we haven't worked with as much, So we're really excited.
We have folks from Hood River, we have folks from
kous Bay, we have folks representing the Yu Matilla tribe,
and we have folks that also represent you know, statewide
organizations who work on all parts of Oregon, like Unite Oregon.
So yeah, we're very excited to have those folks and
(15:14):
we are really going to learn a lot from all
the expertise and lived experience they're going to bring to
the committee.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, very wide range of groups. Well, the Equity Advisory
Committee continue to review projects as time goes on and
then add new projects as say current projects are completed.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Well, I would say right now, we don't we don't
actually have any projects because the first step for us
is getting a potential CCI entity, the CCI entity. Once
we have that in place, then that would take us
to the next step, which is you know, being open
to get the credits the investments from any regulated companies
and then developing the work plans. So the Equity Advisory
(15:53):
Committee is going to be helping us in terms of
the selection of CCI entities, and then as you just mentioned,
they be helping us figure out which projects are going
to be targeted for those investments, and that could be ongoing.
You know, I think we envisioned that we'd have some
projects early on for some communities, we'd be asking our
Equity Advisory Committee to like feedback from their communities projects
(16:15):
of interest. So it's not going to be static. It's
definitely going to be something where we have a work plan,
but we're going to be adding projects, changing projects, looking
at different communities over time.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
And are you looking for nonprofits and are there qualifications
that they need to meet in order to apply.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yes, we have a lot of qualifications for them. They
do need to be five to one c's, so they
do need to be nonprofits. You know, there's a pretty
ex we will probably later this month be putting out
a request for applications for the CCI Entity. We do
have also an info session if folks are interested in
being a CCI entity or maybe even potentially working with
(16:55):
the CCI entity on projects. We have that meeting. I
believe it's September sixteenth, So hopefully we'll get the RFA
out later this month and that'll be more detailed in
terms of the requirements. But we are looking for folks
that have experience in community engagement, have experienced in decarbonization,
have experienced managing significant funds, whether from states or from
(17:16):
the federal government. So we do have a lot of requirements,
but we're excited and hopeful that we'll get a large
interest in potentially being a CCI in today.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Great Nicole, anything else you'd like to add that I
didn't ask you about.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
You know, we're really grateful for the amount of folks
who have taken the time to be on the Equity
Advisory Committee. I think one thing we've learned at DEEQ
is we need to make space for lots of voices.
We don't do a lot of this work well, and
really critically important to creating that space is making sure
that we do have the right resources, so we're asking
folks to give up all these hours to work with
(17:49):
us that we can give them the financial compensation that
they need. So we're also really happy and we're very
fortunate that we still able to have the funds to
be able to support the engagement of such a bright
group of folks from across the state.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
That's Nicole saying with the Oregon d EQ and details
about the climate protection program that's being developed and the
role that the Equity Advisory Committee will play in selecting
projects that are funded through the program. Cities are noisy
and that noise can be unhealthy. Matthew Bozagar is an
assistant professor at Oregon State University, and he and graduate
(18:23):
student Carson Mauer of the OSU College of Health studied
noise levels in Portland. Matthew tell us about the study.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
We were trying to understand noise exposure or how much
noise people experience kind of in their day to day
activities across a whole city. And this is something that
actually hasn't been done super thoroughly or much at all
(18:52):
in many cities in the US.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
How do you conduct the research?
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Yeah, so with my research assistant and with our partners
at the Maloma County Health Department, we first kind of
learned how to use the equipment that we wanted to
use for this for this study, which is a newer
technology that has digital microphones so kind of compresses you know,
(19:19):
what was formerly in very large and expensive equipment down
to something very small that's battery power, that's still a
high quality microphone that can record noise well and given
a small size we can put that. So you know,
this is what we did is we went out in
(19:39):
the field and we went out through the city of
Portland and systematically identified places that probably had a unique
noise profile or something interesting locally about that location to
measure noise at that location. So we you know, twelve
(20:00):
on cold owned by the Portland Bureau of Transportation, who
we had a permit to do this work from. We
installed sound pressure level monitors, uh so just measuring the
intensity of sound, not audio or anything like that because
(20:21):
actually that's against Oregon state law, but just measuring the
intensity at each one of these locations for about a
week at a time. And so we have you know,
our members go out there, including need set up to
a round of setups and then about six days later,
come back down, come back and take them down, you know,
(20:43):
download the data from the devices, and then shut recharge them,
and go out the next day usually to set up
the devices and new locations.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
So in general, how much of a health hazard is
noise pollution?
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Yeah, so this is something that's really I think underappreciated
in the United States in particular, but more so just
kind of outside of Europe. I would say it's I think,
you know, a lot of people when they first hear
oh noises, you know, bad for your health, right, Like,
(21:18):
I think people are kind of like, yeah, right, you know,
like so what like another thing in the environment, you know,
could could hurt us. And when we kind of break
through that barrier, the evidence is becoming quite clear. But
most of it is coming out of Europe because they've
just had this on their radar longer. They've had h
(21:40):
you know, uh right, organizations that have really looked at
noise longer, and the evidence is clear that hey, look
it's it's probably impacting your sleep, and it's probably impacting
and increasing your stress levels. And so those two things
are those are kind of the main two path plays
(22:02):
that we think noise is impacting longer term health. You know,
we're talking about noise exposures over a long period. It's
sign not just one you know, loud bang or something
like that, though that can certainly cause something like hearing
hearing damage or auditory you know, system damage. But the
(22:24):
elevated noise, the elevated stress, and elev and disrupted sleep
are things that are risk factors for many chronic diseases.
We're talking about things like even cognitive impairments, cardiovascular disease,
high blood pressure, different metabolic disorders, and even things like
(22:46):
adverse pregnancy outcomes. We're finding it is linked to noise exposure.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
So is it possible to summarize what you found? Portland
is a big area, but did you get some some
general findings?
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (22:58):
So right, this is step one of a multi part study.
So this first step was just to understand noise exposures
through the city so that we can then try to
link those data to health outcomes to really understand the
health impacts of the noise exposures. But I mean, one
thing we found was that, I like many other things,
(23:21):
noise is not distributed evenly throughout the city and the
groups that experience, it tend to experience the worst of
it tend to be you know, the lowest in terms
of socioeconomic status. It also tends to occur more frequently
these high noise exposures in communities that are more racially diverse.
(23:45):
And so this follows like a long a pattern of
similar you know, environmental stressors all happening, whether it's air
pollution or something else, to the similar types of communities. Right,
So we found that, and then we also found that
we found some interesting patterns with noise profiles throughout the city.
(24:05):
I think one of our one of the most interesting
things we found in Red in relation to that was,
you know, we're very interested from a health perspective in
the pulsing nature or the intermittency of noise, not just
the overall level or intensity, but how fast is noise
kind of rising and falling, like to some degree where
(24:27):
you would notice, you know, oh, is there there's like
loud peaks happening like frequently. And we found that those
types of profiles actually were not on the main roads themselves.
The main roads definitely had higher kind of overall noise levels,
(24:47):
but we found that over a twenty four hour average
four hour period. The places that who were experiencing the
most intermittent noise were about one to two blocks off
of the road. So that's something that you know, maybe
residents are thinking, hey, you know, I'm not on the
main road, I should be good. But if you're close,
(25:08):
like you may be experiencing a different type of noise solution.
So that was one of the interesting findings that was
found too.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yeah, you would think that the louder noises would align
with maybe zoning right industrial areas compared to residential areas,
but that doesn't sound like that's what the finding was.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
Yeah, and most of our our study was geared towards
trying to estimate noise or because you said, the measure
noise where people spend the majority of their day. So
we really selectively targeted the residential areas over some of
the industrial areas in terms of where we placed our monitors.
(25:46):
But at the same time, yeah, the residential areas were
surprisingly loud in many places, but it was being that, Yeah,
the industrial areas were also you know, loud, if not
louder in most of those, So some patterns you might
might expect, But then there were differences at nighttime you know,
(26:07):
some of the residential areas, as you would expect, were
quieter at night, some were not. So a lot of
multi family kind of zoned places were not as quiet
at night, and the residents. The industrial noise tended to
be a little bit more intermittent at night compared to
throughout the day. So there were some granular patterns there.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
You said that the device measures the intensity of the noise,
not the specific noise. Are you able to identify with
the sources of the noise were, whether as traffic noise
or industrial noise.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Yeah, that's a great question. We have done some of
that preluiminary research. We this is on published research at
the moment, but we used kind of very very fancy
statistical and kind of like artificial intelligence type of method
is to try to understand, yeah, what's the type of
(27:05):
what's causing the noise at any given any given sight
of all the sites to be measured. So for that
we did take some additional types of data collected. So
we did do some brief audio snippets, some video snippets,
(27:27):
and we use so so again when people were not
around because not permitted by organ law, but we use
those types of data to so we augmented our noise
measurement data with those data streams and using a data
science approach, we were able to find essentially that the
(27:48):
dominant source at every site was road or like vehicle
traffic related sources of noise, So that was the dominant source.
And then you know, some of the other things that
you think might be common we're showing up like construction,
you know, people people speaking, or music and things like that,
(28:13):
but by far the most dominant was the road traffic
noise at each site.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
So this is the first part of a multi part study.
What's next This was step one.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
Step two is to really I think I don't know
if I mentioned it earlier, is to try to be
able to develop a model that can predict the noise,
the different types of noise exposure too, at every location
in the city. You know, we're not able to go
out and measure every location. We just don't have the
resources to do that. But we tried to in our
(28:44):
first phase measure the types of locations that might be
representative of many more locations throughout the city. So then
we can develop a high resolution noise prediction model. Now
we can say, you know, try to estimates at any
given location. So if we have health data, then this
(29:05):
would be kind of the third phase. We can we
can we can assess whether or not we have like
a location for those people that have different health outcomes
and things, and if we can tie them to a location,
whether it's like most commonly their residential address, then we
(29:25):
can therefore estimate the noise at that location. And now
we have a noise link to you know, their health outcomes,
and we can do some more advanced health studies with that.
So it's kind of like a three three part setup really.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Matthew, thanks for joining us on Local Voices with details
about your study on noise in Portland and the health impacts.
Thanks for listening to Local Voices. I'm brand board. You
can hear past episodes on the iHeartRadio app under the
podcast tab. Local Voices is a public affairs presentation from
iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
No
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