Page 4 - sustainable-life-081513

Pamplin Media Group Thursday, August 15 , 2013 C4 SUSTAINABLE LIFE SustainableLife
Cleanup method undecided
There’s one central question:
What should be done with all of
the toxic sludge?
Should it be “capped” with a
giant blanket of cement tiles, as
already has been done at McCor-
mick and Baxter and other sites?
Should it be dredged and
placed in a “contained disposal
unit” somewhere along the riv-
er?
Should it be trucked to a land-
fill for hazardous waste in East-
ern Oregon?
Or should it be treated with
emerging technologies not yet
been proven on projects of this
scale, like “biochar” soil remedia-
tion or toxin-eating microbes?
“None of these solutions are
perfect,” Williams says. “If we’re
removing sand, it has to go some-
where.”
Williams wants people to get
involved in the process, to ensure
that the EPA lands on the best
solution for protecting human
health as well as wildlife and the
ecosystem.
JimAnderson, the OregonDe-
partment of Environmental
Quality section manager for the
Portland Harbor, has tried to
spread awareness of the Super-
fund process at community
events, neighborhood fairs and
the Portland Harbor Community
Advisory Group.
“It’s tough to get people in-
volved, especially when so
much of it is process, but we’re
getting to the point where the
process is turning into action,”
Anderson says. “We’re not that
far away from picking reme-
dies, and once it’s picked they’ll
see construction.”
Capping is far cheaper than
dredging, because contaminants
are left in place.
Dredging involves heavy
equipment and barging the ma-
terial to a facility. It may entail
more short-term risks as sedi-
ment is stirred up, but the con-
taminants would be gone, rather
than just out of sight.
“It’s risk management versus
risk reduction,” Anderson says.
Chemical and political stew
The Portland Harbor Super-
fund process is uniquely com-
plex.
Whi le the boundar ies
haven’t been officially defined,
the Superfund target area
stretches for 10 miles, between
the St. Johns and Fremont
bridges, and could include
about 40 properties on the riv-
er plus 100 onshore sites that
share the groundwater and
stormwater.
A canoe trip down the river
reveals quiet, almost ethereal
signs of life everywhere: bald
eagles and osprey that fly over-
head and perch on wooden pil-
ings and dry docks; barges;
people on jet skis and jet boats;
kayakers who cruise the water-
way; and the thrum of ship-re-
pair and other industrial opera-
tions.
Unlike New York’s Hudson
River or Wisconsin’s Fox River
— both huge Superfund sites
with cleanups under way —
there’s no single party liable
for the damages.
The EPA has identified more
than 150 “potentially responsi-
ble parties” in Portland’s Su-
perfund effort. Of those, 14
have started paying for the
cleanup, including the city of
Portland, Port of Portland, NW
Natural , Gunderson LLC,
Union Pacific Railroad and Sil-
tronic Corp.
Ten of the property owners
operate as the LowerWillamette
Group. Other parties include six
tribal governments, DEQ and
the EPA, the lead agency.
There’s also not just one sin-
gle contaminant, as in the Hud-
son and Fox rivers.
The Portland Harbor holds a
variety of remnants from its
industrial past, including high
levels of carcinogens. The tox-
ins include PCBs, polynuclear
aromatic hydrocarbons, diox-
ins, mercury, traces of pesti-
cides such as DDT (banned by
the EPA in 1972), and the herbi-
cide found in Agent Orange.
An EPA report found 29 con-
taminants that pose a risk to
human health and 89 that pose
a risk to birds, mammals and
fish. That toxic cocktail doesn’t
pose a health risk for swim-
mers or paddlers, as long as
they don’t drink the water.
“I get asked all the time if it’s
safe to swim in the Willa-
mette,” Anderson says. Ironi-
cally, he cautions them not
about the risks associated with
harbor contaminants, but risks
from the city’s combined sewer
overflow. Those untreated sew-
age overflows are much less
frequent since the city com-
pleted its Big Pipe storm sewer
improvements.
Fish are a different story.
The harbor’s contaminants
have increased toxicity as they
move up the food chain, since
they “bioaccumulate” in the
fish — specifically bass, catfish
and carp.
Salmon and steelhead, which
migrate through the Willa-
mette, don’t pose that risk.
In early July, Willamette
Riverkeeper paid to post four
new multilingual fish advisory
signs at Swan Island, Cathe-
dral Park, Kelly Point and the
Eastbank Esplanade.
With its small staff of four
and scores of volunteers, the
group also hosts river restora-
tion work parties and the an-
nual Paddle Oregon, happen-
ing Aug. 16.
There’s also the fourth-an-
nual Great Willamette Cleanup
on Oct. 5, which attracted 900
people last year. Williams also
has written a field guide to the
Willamette River, and recently
launched a new guide for pad-
dlers at http://willamettewater-
trail.org.
“Whether we harvest fish
from the river, paddle, swim, or
simply care about the river’s
well-being,” Williams says,
“having a cleaned-up river ben-
efits our health and our quality
of life.”
He has a favorite slogan:
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River: Multiple parties
muddy the cleanup effort
■ From page 1
Private college
remakes polluted
brownfield into
campus addition
By JENNIFER ANDERSON
Pamplin Media Group
For more than a century,
there was nothing “natu-
ral” about Triangle Park.
At least 50 industrial oper-
ations occupied the North
Portland site: a lumber mill, a
concrete plant, a shipbuilder,
a dry dock, iron works and a
power plant, to name a few.
The newest owner, the
University of Portland, is
taking the Willamette river-
front property in a different
direction.
It recently transformed the
once-contaminated site into
its new River Campus, boast-
ing that it provides a “host of
opportunities for natural re-
source restoration, a new
greenway and trail, increased
opportunities for public use,
stewardship of natural re-
sources by the university’s
well-regarded environmental
science program, and expan-
sion of university facilities.”
After buying the 35-acre
property in 2008, the univer-
sity worked with the city of
Portland, Oregon Depart-
ment of Environmental Qual-
ity and the U.S. Environmen-
tal Protection Agency to
clean up toxic soil and
groundwater.
The soil, contaminated by
polychlorinated biphenyls or
PCBs, polycyclic aromatic hy-
drocarbons, asbestos, arse-
nic, lead, copper, nickel and
chromium, was been exca-
vated, disposed of off-site and
capped.
“Now i t ’s essent ial ly
cleaned up,” says Jim Ander-
son, DEQ’s Superfund sec-
tion manager.
Triangle Park is in the
Portland Harbor but not an
official Superfund site. It was
considered an orphaned
brownfield site because its
prior owner, the Riedel/Wil-
lamette Western Corp., went
bankrupt in 1991 and couldn’t
pay for cleanup.
The Oregon DEQ Orphan
Program uses state funds to
clean up such sites.
Travis
Williams,
executive
director of
Willamette
Riverkeeper,
stands on
the shore near
McCormick
and Baxter
Creosoting Co.,
a cleaned-up
site once
contaminated
by creosote and
other chemicals
dumped into the
Willamette River.
PAMPLIN MEDIA
GROUP PHOTO:
JAIME VALDEZ
COURTESY OF OREGON DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY