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The Portland Harbor. (Wesley Lapointe) <\/p>\nThis story first appeared in the March 27, 2012, edition of WW, under the headline \u201cWhat the Muck?\u201d<\/p>\n
In any good monster movie, the initial terror comes from knowing there\u2019s something awful out there\u2014even though you don\u2019t get a good look at it. <\/p>\n
It lurks in the shadows or just beneath the water\u2019s surface. When the monster finally appears, what\u2019s really scary is not whether someone is going to die, but the gruesome way it\u2019s going to happen. <\/p>\n
For the past 12 years, some of the most powerful companies in Oregon have lived in fear of an unspeakable beast at the bottom of the Willamette River, a toxic freak that could figuratively eat them alive.<\/p>\n
The monster has shown itself. It looks a lot like a carp.<\/p>\n
The Willamette gives Portland its sense of identity: a working waterfront city connected to the wider world by what ships in and out of this river. The postcard views of bridges and barges have helped define Portland as a city that lives in harmony with its environment.<\/p>\n
But the river\u2019s belly is also Portland\u2019s great embarrassment. Its sediments are stained with decades of toxic pollution, coating the river bottom with chemicals, metals and tar so potent the U.S. government is demanding it be cleaned up.<\/p>\n
The fight over who must pay to do it has raged since before 2000, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared 5.7 miles of the Willamette to be a Superfund site. The EPA later expanded the designated area\u2014and some would say the stigma\u2014to a total of nearly 11 miles, running from about the Fremont Bridge downstream to almost where the river meets the Columbia.<\/p>\n
The companies suspected of causing the pollution in Portland Harbor\u2014this stretch of the Willamette where industry hums\u2014have spent more than $96 million determining how polluted the sediments are and if they pose a threat to public health. <\/p>\n
Depending on what the EPA decides, the cleanup could run as high as $2.2 billion and take another 30 years.<\/p>\n
The reckoning starts Friday, March 30.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when 12 companies, plus the City of Portland and the Port of Portland, will deliver to the EPA a study that offers a number of cleanup options.<\/p>\n
In the coming months, you\u2019re going to hear a lot about this study. It\u2019s going to be confusing, controversial and even tedious\u2014but the future of the Willamette is at stake.<\/p>\n
WW has sifted through the river muck to help you understand how this really works and why it matters.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve found there are already two competing narratives here: One calls for scrubbing the Portland Harbor clean, and the other calls for a more cost-effective solution, even if that means burying the poison under more mud.<\/p>\n
What happens now depends on those scary bottom fish\u2014and exactly how far we\u2019re willing to go to make the monster go away.<\/p>\n
How dirty is the river?<\/p>\n
The water\u2019s not bad, actually.<\/p>\n
But the river bottom is a different story.<\/p>\n
The sediment at the bottom of Portland Harbor is a buffet of nasty chemicals: arsenic, mercury, metals, tar and even perchlorate, the main ingredient in rocket fuel. Near the Burlington Northern railroad bridge, for example, two abandoned pesticide plants once leaked deadly chemicals: one, DDT; the other, an herbicide that was used to make Agent Orange.<\/p>\n
Most of the worst pollutants ended up in the river during the past 60 years, primarily from shipbuilding, ship-breaking, manufacturing and other industrial work along the Willamette\u2019s banks.<\/p>\n
The most common poison in the riverbed is also the most dangerous: an odorless, pale yellow liquid called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. They were widely used as coolants in the building of transformers and electric motors until Congress banned their production in 1979.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s good all that crap is down where it won\u2019t bother anyone, right?<\/p>\n
PCB and other chemicals don\u2019t stay put. Tiny creatures that live in the mud (they\u2019re called benthic organisms) eat the chemicals. Then they\u2019re eaten by fish. Migrating fish, such as salmon, cruise through the harbor and don\u2019t nibble too many of these tainted invertebrates.<\/p>\n
But the fish that call the harbor home\u2014carp, smallmouth bass, crappie and bullhead\u2014get fat on the toxic meals. The chemicals that stay in their tissue get passed on to people.<\/p>\n
A study three years ago found that, in many scenarios, people eating fish from the harbor face cancer risks as much as 100 times higher than the EPA\u2019s guidelines. By far the biggest risk comes from those PCBs that travel from mud to fish to people.<\/p>\n
A 2006 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says that people at risk from Portland Harbor fish are not just sportsmen but members of immigrant and ethnic groups that traditionally fish for food: African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Eastern Europeans and Native Americans. <\/p>\n
Vietnamese and Slavic immigrants use carp to make soup and fish paste. Latino people traditionally catch bass, or tilapia. So do African-Americans.<\/p>\n
Almost all of the above in this story is widely agreed upon. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s where it starts to get contentious: No one can say for sure who eats the fish and how much fish they eat.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t eat these cancer fish. Why should I care?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just the attitude that bugs the heck out of the Willamette riverkeeper.<\/p>\n
Yes, that is Travis Williams\u2019 official title. The 41-year-old native of Milwaukie is executive director of the environmental nonprofit Willamette Riverkeeper, and he\u2019s putting pressure on government and businesses to clean up the harbor.<\/p>\n
Williams argues the Willamette deserves a clean slate and a safe food chain for the wildlife that depends on it.<\/p>\n
And anyone should be free to drop a line in the river without worry that there\u2019s a carcinogenic time bomb wriggling on the hook.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about fish and wildlife, from the osprey to the bald eagle,\u201d Williams said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s about the fisherman who is exercising a basic human right\u2014to access a river and its species in a fashion that does not jeopardize his health. This is our one shot to get this right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, let\u2019s get on with it! Why is it taking so long?<\/p>\n
The Willamette is under the control of the federal program known as Superfund, which suggests there\u2019s actually a fund with a super amount of cash in it.<\/p>\n
Not anymore. It used to be that the federal government taxed oil and chemical companies to fill up the so-called Superfund, and then went ahead and paid for cleanups upfront. Then the feds would hunt down and sue anyone who contributed to the pollution to reimburse the government.<\/p>\n
But the Superfund is broke. Now, before a cleanup can begin, the EPA tries to get polluters to agree who will pay for it, and how much actual cleaning up is needed.<\/p>\n
In the case of Portland Harbor, the EPA has identified more than 130 entities that may be financially responsible for cleanup. They include the City of Portland and the Port of Portland, but they\u2019re mostly corporations that did the polluting, or the companies that own the old sites.<\/p>\n
Many companies are small or no longer exist. About a dozen companies with the bucks to pay for the cleanup hold sway in the Portland Harbor. They have yet to decide how those costs will be divided.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019ll find anybody who thinks it hasn\u2019t gone on too long and cost too much money,\u201d says Rick Applegate, who managed the Superfund project for the city for a decade until he resigned last year. \u201cThe agreement breaks down there.\u201d<\/p>\n
So these companies are trying to get away with not cleaning up the river?<\/p>\n
Well, nobody\u2019s rushing to volunteer. But at the same time, a lot of companies have stepped up to work on the problem\u2014if only to make sure they have some control over the cleanup. <\/p>\n
The Portland Harbor. (Wesley Lapointe) <\/p>\n
Eight corporations, plus the port and the city, formed the Lower Willamette Group in 2001. That group has spent at least $96 million studying the river. <\/p>\n
And many say they intend to do right by the Willamette.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe voluntarily signed on,\u201d says David Harvey, environmental director for Gunderson, a barge- and railcar-maker with manufacturing sites along the Willamette\u2019s west banks that are suspected of having contributed to the sediment pollution. \u201cFor this stretch of the river, this is the most important thing that\u2019s going to happen in the next 50 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
How they define that \u201cthing\u201d\u2014and the story these companies tell\u2014is aimed at keeping their exposure limited.<\/p>\n
The Portland Harbor is home to more than 34,000 full-time manufacturing and shipping jobs. And some of these companies say an extensive cleanup threatens those jobs.<\/p>\n
A 2009 report paid for by three companies on the hook\u2014Gunderson, Schnitzer Steel and Vigor Industrial, which owns the Cascade General ship-repair site at Swan Island\u2014claims a decade-long cleanup could cost $2.2 billion and 9,000 jobs.<\/p>\n
So the study coming out Friday\u2014that will be the plan?<\/p>\n
Seven plans, actually.<\/p>\n
In 7,800 pages, the Lower Willamette Group\u2019s feasibility study will propose a menu of options, ranging from doing little or nothing to dredging out nearly every hot spot of pollutants and hauling the contaminated sediment away.<\/p>\n
The EPA will weigh those options and issue final recommendations. That could take another two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the toolbox for the EPA,\u201d says Barbara Smith, a spokeswoman for the group. The options, she says, range \u201cfrom doing nothing to very intensive dredging over many, many, many, many years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doing nothing seems to make no sense\u2014so the obvious choice is to dredge it out, right?<\/p>\n
Sure, if you\u2019re not the one paying for it. <\/p>\n
Dredging contaminated river silt means digging it up, hauling it away, and treating it like the hazardous waste it is. (That means they\u2019ll probably bury it in a landfill where the pollution won\u2019t spread.) Or they could dredge the sediments and sink them in holding ponds. <\/p>\n
But there\u2019s a far easier and cheaper solution laid out in the study that you\u2019re likely to hear these companies promote: Why not just bury it in place by pouring lots of rocks and clean silt on top of it?<\/p>\n
This is called capping, and it\u2019s been done at other Superfund sites. (So has dredging.) <\/p>\n
Capping is a lot cheaper and faster and more cost-effective. But the pollutants are still in the river.<\/p>\n
Odds are the EPA will order a combination of dredging and capping. The big question is, how much of the cheaper method will companies be allowed to use?<\/p>\n
So the deciding factor will be based on science, right?<\/p>\n
Sure, if you mean political science.<\/p>\n
The EPA is already under pressure\u2014thanks to the power and money held by these Portland Harbor companies\u2014to propose a cleanup that will be far more limited than, say, what the Willamette Riverkeeper might want.<\/p>\n
In August, a barge owned by Vigor Industrial, one of the companies potentially on the hook, toured the Willamette with some very special guests: Oregon\u2019s two U.S. senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, and U.S. Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Kurt Schrader.<\/p>\n
The tour gave the congressmen\u2014all Democrats\u2014a first-hand look at the harbor from the companies\u2019 point of view.<\/p>\n
A few months later, all four signed a letter to the EPA<\/a> expressing \u201cconcerns\u201d that sounded very much like a press release from the harbor companies. (See the EPA\u2019s letter in response here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The senators and congressmen kicked it off by reminding the EPA about how the harbor has been \u201can economic center for Oregon for over a hundred years by providing a regional gateway to global markets, family wage jobs, and tax revenue for our communities.\u00e2\u0080\u009d <\/p>\n Sure, the river bottom is contaminated, they wrote, but these are tough economic times, and it would be unfortunate if the EPA ordered a cleanup that just didn\u2019t make much of a difference. <\/p>\n \u201cHas any work been done,\u201d the senators and congressmen wrote, \u201cto establish the point of diminishing returns economically and environmentally for various cleanup strategies?\u201d<\/p>\n Blumenauer tells WW he responded to complaints from \u201cdozens and dozens of businesses and hundreds of people.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody who didn\u2019t have some concern over how much it\u2019s going to cost and who\u2019s going to pay for it would be suspect,\u201d Blumenauer says. \u201cThese are not esoteric questions. This cleanup has already cost Portlanders hundreds of millions of dollars, and we haven\u2019t started cleaning yet.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m hopeful,\u201d he adds, \u201cthat I will live long enough to see some of the river actually cleaned.\u201d<\/p>\n What are these companies\u2014with the clout of our elected officials\u2014really trying to say?<\/p>\n In short, if no one is eating the fish, why have clean fish?<\/p>\n In raising these questions, the senators and congressmen echoed two other reports paid for by some of the companies as leverage against the EPA.<\/p>\n The letter from Wyden, Merkley, Schrader and Blumenauer, in fact, drills down on this very point: Who eats these fish, how many do they eat, and how much risk does doing so pose for people\u2019s health? <\/p>\n So, the entire fight over cleaning up the Portland Harbor comes down to who is eating how many fish?<\/p>\n Yes\u2014and also by the way in which the Portland Harbor companies frame the debate.<\/p>\n Some have recently formed yet another group, Portland Harbor Partnership, that\u2019s running a sleek, $500,000 campaign aimed at the ethnic groups whose members fish the river.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a PR ploy,\u201d says Gunderson\u2019s Harvey, who\u2019s running the campaign.<\/p>\n On March 17, Harvey sat in the Portland City Council chambers and told a meeting of the Latino Network that people should not eat too many Portland Harbor fish.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem with the fish,\u201d Harvey told the Latino Network, \u201cis if you eat fish over a long period of time: 30, 40 years. You won\u2019t get sick right away.\u201d (A translator repeated his words in Spanish.)<\/p>\n Some of the partnership\u2019s materials imply there are other things that might be done with all the money that would otherwise be spent cleaning up the harbor. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen you think about the Willamette River in the metro area,\u201d one survey asks, \u201cwhat improvements, new developments or enhancements would you like to see in or along it in the next 10-20 years? (Examples might include things like a park, a downtown beach, better access to the river for boats and kayaks, fishing piers, a community and education center, or redevelopment of vacant land. Be creative! We want to hear your ideas!)\u201d<\/p>\n The partnership has been paying some organizations to help it find people in the community to talk to about the harbor. The Urban League of Portland confirmed to WW that it received a $20,000 contract with the Partnership. The Latino Network said it has a $10,000 contract. And the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization received $12,500.<\/p>\n Kamar Haji-Mohamed, a community services coordinator for IRCO, says the organization has set up forums with Vietnamese, Russian, Chinese, Somali and Tongan groups.<\/p>\n \u201cThese communities are not asked for their input much,\u201d she says. \u201cSo it\u2019s great for them to feel that they\u2019re part of Portland as well.\u201d<\/p>\n