Opposition to new gas stations is growing; city leaders must react

In the past three years, it has become apparent that many Camas residents do not react kindly to the idea of a new gas station opening near their residential neighborhoods.

In 2022, dozens of Camas residents turned out to public hearings to voice opposition to a gas station-car wash-retail complex to be developed at the corner of Northwest Brady Road and Northwest 16th Avenue in Camas’ Prune Hill neighborhood.

Before Joe Turner, the city of Camas’ contracted hearings examiner, approved a conditional-use permit for the Camas Station development in August 2022, neighbors had voiced concerns about the development’s impact on the environment, the neighborhood’s quiet, residential feel and on traffic safety on a corner located close to a Camas elementary school and regional sports park.

“It is regular to see drivers … speed through there,” Amy Linder, the president of the Prune Hill Elementary School parent-teacher association (PTA) told Turner in July 2022, during a hearing on the Camas Station proposal. “And now we’re talking about adding 300 to 400 trips every morning? This is a recipe for disaster.”

In August 2022, Turner found that additional traffic generated by the Camas Station development “may pose an increased risk for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians in the area” and “may well warrant a heightened degree of attentiveness to traffic when driving, cycling or walking in the neighborhood,” but said the impetus for protecting citizens was on the City, not the gas station developer.

“If necessary, the City can address issues of speeding and other traffic violations by providing increased enforcement of traffic laws on streets in the area,” Turner stated in his August 2022 ruling. “Area residents can petition the City to provide increased enforcement on area streets. However, speeding and other traffic violations noted in the record are an existing problem, which the (developer) cannot be required to remedy.”

A little more than two years after he granted the Camas Station development its necessary conditional-use permits, Turner was back at Camas City Hall this month, listening to another group of Camas neighbors voice serious concerns about another proposed gas station-car wash-convenience store project near the intersection of Northeast 13th and Northeast Friberg-Strunk streets in Camas, located one-half mile from Union High School in a business park zone surrounded by residences.

Given the facts that this project seems to conform to the uses the city of Camas allows in its business park zones — and therefore does not need a conditional-use permit — and that Camas city staff have already ruled that any environmental concerns can be addressed through City requirements and conditions the state may impose on the gas station complex, it is likely that Camas residents who oppose the project are, once again, going to be let down by Turner’s ruling.

Camas city officials should, by this point, be paying attention to what seems to be growing opposition to new gas station developments. The fight over allowing new gas stations is nothing new. In 2021, the city of Petaluma, California, became the first city to ban new gas station developments. At least five California cities have followed Petaluma’s lead, and Eugene, Oregon, is considering implementing its own ban on new gas stations.

Proponents say banning new gas stations makes sense in a world being decimated by climate change. As the United Nations recently pointed out, “the science is clear: to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, emissions need to be reduced by almost half by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050. To achieve this, we need to end our reliance on fossil fuels — such as coal, oil and gas, which are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions — and invest in alternative sources of energy that are clean, accessible, affordable, sustainable and reliable.”

As the world continues to shift away from fossil fuels for more renewable energy — and as electric and hybrid passenger vehicles become more common — gas stations will likely become much less profitable.

City of Camas leaders, including members of the City’s planning commission and city council, must be willing to say “no” to developers and change the city’s current zoning and development codes to help reduce Camas’ climate change footprint and meet the demands of what will surely be a much different city 20 years from now.

These leaders must begin today — during the City’s “Our Camas 2045” comprehensive plan update planning period — to think about what Camas residents will want to see in their city 20 years from now.

Dozens of Camas residents have already said they do not want to see more gas station developments, so that seems like an easy place for Camas officials and planners to begin — by implementing an outright ban or, at the very least, by revamping city code to prohibit new gas stations near schools or in mostly residential neighborhoods.