DEQ At-a-Glance

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s mission is to be a leader in restoring, maintaining and enhancing the quality of Oregon’s air, water and land. DEQ works with all Oregonians to provide a healthy, sustainable environment that supports a diverse economy. 

DEQ employs approximately 700 people who implement state and federal environmental laws to protect Oregon’s air, water and land. The Oregon Environmental Quality Commission, a five-member citizen panel appointed by Oregon’s governor, serves as DEQ’s policy and rulemaking board. DEQ is one of 10 state agencies that collaborate to find local solutions to community and economic issues through Oregon’s Regional Solutions Team. 

DEQ manages air monitors at 53 locations across the state to support Oregon’s Air Quality Index, a tool that allows the public to see amounts of pollution in real time. This can be critical information particularly to people with underlying conditions made worse by poor air quality. DEQ makes information available through its website, the Oregon Air smartphone app and the Oregon Smoke Blog.

DEQ helps remove environmental barriers to redevelopment of properties by providing assistance in investigating and cleaning up potentially contaminated property known as brownfields. Contaminated property may pose health and safety risks to the surrounding community, and devalue surrounding properties. Cleaning up and redeveloping brownfields helps communities remove blight and provides needed services, such as industrial or commercial development, housing, or open space for playing fields and parks. Redeveloping land that is already urbanized also helps to reduce sprawl.

As a member of Oregon’s Regional Solutions Teams, DEQ works collaboratively with state agency partners to bring people and resources together to solve local problems. Located throughout the state, Regional Solutions Teams reflect the unique priorities of each region. Working directly with local government, business and industry, DEQ’s Regional Solutions Team members work to achieve environmental benefit and economic development by:

• Creating better relationships between agencies on tangible, priority economic projects that create new or retain existing jobs
• Leveraging resources to provide proactive assistance to businesses and communities, which increases compliance with regulations
• Making permitting and other regulatory processes more understandable and efficient to save funding and time