This small town in Oregon embraces green energy after fossil fuel disaster

Brent Foster began to sweat as he and 75 other people sat in a cramped Mosier Community School library last September. It was back-to-school night and parents were learning about a new classroom system teachers were using for students. It wasn’t long before parents waved makeshift fans to try to cool themselves down, while others shifted their chairs closer to the tiny air conditioning unit slung in the window.

Foster was finding it hard to concentrate and was instead more focused on how to cool down. He felt as if the room was more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

“[The school] had no air conditioning system, and the heating system was basically a 100-year-old relic,” he said.

After about 30 minutes, Foster finally walked out of the meeting to find relief. It was at that moment he and a group of parents realized what their kids were going through — high temperatures, no quick way to find relief and trouble focusing.

As more extreme weather events like heat waves and wildfires occur more frequently, Foster and other parents knew they had to retrofit the school to be a safe haven for their children during these events.

But it needed substantial upgrades to bring it to the 21st Century, which meant lots of money — a challenge for a small community of about 500 people located on the Columbia River. The school still used a heating oil boiler to heat the school, most of the building still had original single pane windows and a poor ventilation system had spawned mold in parts of the building.

Despite it being a long shot, Foster said a group of volunteers worked together to apply for federal funds to make the school more energy efficient and improve air quality. The school, which won the extremely competitive grant, received more than $850,000 to start making these changes.

In total, Mosier Community School has $1.4 million to complete the upgrades.

“We see the effects of climate change every day here in the gorge. I don’t think you have to ask anyone that the winters have changed, the summers are hotter,” Foster said. “This is kind of one small part that feels pretty significant to us. I think we can play a role in what’s obviously a much bigger effort to decarbonize and shift towards more renewable energy sources.”

As the climate crisis continues and cities are faced with finding solutions to adapt to more frequent extreme weather events, the small tight-knit community of Mosier is revamping itself as a clean energy and climate-resilient city. As federal and state governments pump billions of dollars across the country for climate action, Mosier’s clean energy facelift is evidence of how rapidly even the smallest towns in Oregon can adapt to the changing climate when local residents work together.

Underpromise and overdeliver

Mosier Community School is a pre-K through 8th-grade charter school that has about 200 students. It was built in 1920 and still has many of its original windows and no proper insulation. Because of that, teachers like Fern Johnson have had to adjust their schedules when it gets too cold or too hot.

She said her classroom, which has two external facing walls, can get too warm, making it difficult to teach her 5-7-year-olds, who are not aware when they overheat.

“It’s a lot on the teachers, you have to notice someone’s looking a little redder (or) ‘I don’t think they’ve gone to the bathroom in a long time.’ You have to pay attention to all that when it’s hot,” she said.

According to the Oregon Health Authority, young children are more likely to experience heat-related illnesses and need adult supervision to help them identify if they are experiencing symptoms. Some of those symptoms could include dizziness, red or hot dry skin, or even a headache.

These health and safety concerns, among the much-needed energy-efficient retrofits, helped Mosier Community School receive one of two Pacific Northwest Renew America’s Schools grants, a highly competitive program that’s funded through the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Foster, project lead for the school, said it was a community-led effort to secure funding. The school already had about $300,000 to use for a new HVAC system, a heat pump and heat recovery ventilators. But Foster said that was only the tip of what was necessary.

Foster realized the school needed help to make their application as competitive as possible, especially coming from a small community. He teamed up with the Energy Trust of Oregon, a Portland nonprofit, to assess what other adjustments the school needed, like rooftop solar panels and a battery backup system, and what else it needed to also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Foster, the school’s oil heater is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter in town. He hopes the retrofits will reduce those emissions by at least half or more.

“Our goal is to kind of underpromise and overdeliver,” Foster said.

Creating local green jobs

For a small town like Mosier, one of the biggest challenges to securing money for the upgrades was showing there would be contractors and construction workers in the area to complete the job.

As a way to build its own local workforce, Foster reached out to Comunidades, a Latino-led organization focused on environmental justice issues, to create a pre-apprenticeship program in energy efficiency and renewable jobs for at-risk youth in Hood River.

Ubaldo Hernandez, founder and director of Comunidades, said the program will introduce students to electrical and construction jobs, like solar panel technicians, pay them a stipend and coax them toward the industry, all while creating local jobs that are part of the green energy transition.

A recent study by researchers from Dartmouth College and Princeton University estimated funds from the federal government aimed at climate action could generate more than one million wind and solar jobs in the next decade.

Hernandez said the Mosier program is a way to ensure his community is not left behind in the green energy jobs field.

“Most of this is to plant the seed of interest and from there, those plants can grow anywhere,” he said. “The intention is to show our youth that there are opportunities, they can thrive and be successful and help their families and create a better future for them.”

Fossil fuel devastation

Mosier Community School is not the only building that is getting an energy-efficient facelift.

Recently, the city of Mosier received funds from the Oregon Department of Energy to retrofit City Hall and the local fire station, as well as build a new, energy-efficient community center. These upgrades around town were generated after a series of unfortunate extreme weather events and environmental disasters devastated the community.

In 2016, a Union Pacific Railroad railcar derailed near Mosier and spilled nearly 47,000 gallons of crude oil at the edge of the town. The oil burst into toxic flames and seeped into the Columbia River. In more recent years, the town has brushed up against wildfires, including the Mosier Creek Fire in 2020 that burned nearly 1,000 acres and destroyed at least four structures.

The oil train derailment was a turning point, former mayor Arlene Burns said, not only for herself but the community.

“I think sometimes that’s how it is with life,” she said. “We take these big hits, and they can either take us down or they can inspire us.”

Burns, who was the mayor during the derailment, said her goal was to rebuild Mosier as a climate-resilient city and move it away from fossil fuels.

As part of a settlement between Mosier and Union Pacific Railroad related to the disaster, the transport company agreed to give Mosier four acres of land where the oil spill happened and about $1.5 million for rebuilding projects.

“We told them our vision of doing this net zero city hall, community center and fire station that will not only help the community but serve the whole Gorge,” she said.

The settlement kickstarted several different projects: adding public electric vehicle and bike charging stations, an all-purpose community plaza and updates to the wastewater treatment center, which was damaged in the oil spill.

These types of energy-efficient retrofits are exactly what federal and state governments want cities and towns across the nation to move toward as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“My hope is we all take the long view today to do the best things we can do with some sacrifice, maybe a little more money,” current Mayor Witt Anderson said.

Mosier still needs at least $1.5 million to reach its funding goal for all the projects, Anderson said. The COVID pandemic and inflation have inched the finish line further away as construction prices and materials skyrocket, he said.

But he’s optimistic the city can secure the remaining funds soon to begin construction next year.

“The way I think about it is, 80 years from now, somebody’s going to say, ‘Wow, thank those people that were in the community back in 2023 or 2024 that made this big investment because it’s providing the benefits to this day.’”