Freshwater News, May 1991
ENVIRONMENAL GROUP TAKES ON CITY OF PORTLAND
By Nina Bell
There is a plaque installed by the Portland Development Commission overlooking the Willamette River near Portland’s RiverPlace Marina that states that the Willamette was made clean for swimming in 1972. It is more than ironic that just below this plaque is a “Combined Sewer Overflow” or CSO. The lingo masks the fact: this is a pipe from which raw sewage, sometimes mixed with storm water, flows into the Willamette River.
There’s a lot of raw sewage human excrement, industrial wastes, condoms, syringes, tampons, toilet paper and the toxic pollution from city streets- in our local rivers. The City of Portland discharges completely untreated sewage from over 56 pips and concrete bunkers into the Willamette River and the Columbia Slough.
The end result is that, contrary to the statement on the plaque, the Willamette never was made fit for swimming. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) data shows that the lower Willamette sometimes is, and sometimes isn’t, safe. DEQ calls this “partially supported” for water contact. What all of this really means is that you’ll never knows which days are safe and which aren’t. (Some days, it is a lot less safe than others!)
The fact is that river users are not told that these pipes are dumping raw sewage into the rivers and that they should be careful. Careful not to step on the syringes, careful not to touch the water, careful not to put hands to mouth after touching the water. And there’s an awful lot of water contact that goes on even if you aren’t swimming, wading or water skiing.
Not satisfied with polluting the Willamette River and the Columbia Slough, the City also dumps its treated sewage from its Columbia Boulevard sewage from its Columbia Boulevard sewage treatment plant into the Columbia River North Portland Harbor (also called the Oregon Slough). Or is it treated? It turns out that sewage isn’t always treated even when it gets to the treatment plant: on many rainy days the plant “bypasses” sewage that’s only partially treated.
This being Oregon, that adds up a lot of days our sewage system isn’t working. The City of Portland’s response to all of this? “It’s a great system, except when it rains,” Jeff Bauman of the City’s Bureau of Environmental Services (BES) told The Oregonian. It’s an awfully strange statement to make for the obvious reasons, but doubly so considering that the City dumps raw sewage into the Willamette and Slough even on bone dry days.
Needless to say, there are a lot of people-boaters, river lovers and residents of North Portland- who are sick of this mess. Some of them have been sick of it for a long time. They’ve gone to meetings, participated in committees, testified at hearings, talked to elected representatives. There are people who remember when, in 1972, the DEQ told the City to straighten out the whole mess by 1985. The City contemplated its options in 1977. And then? Promptly did nothing, not a thing.
But now they’ll tell you they’re really moving. They plan on spending lots of money to study the problem and then they’ll take the next twenty years or more to solve it. Or so they say.
Some people don’t have much hope that the City really means it this time, or that it will continue to mean it over the next two decades. Others wonder why, if other cities can do it in ten years, why the City of Portland can’t. So, on behalf of all of the concerned people who tried to rectify the problem over the last two decades and all of the people who use these rivers, a local environmental group has taken the City to federal court to try to solve it once and for all. Northwest Environmental Advocates’ (NWEA) lawsuit says that under the Clean Water Act of 1972 the City is dumping the sewage illegally, and that it’s got to stop.
The Environmental Advocates wants some other things, and wants them done before the City solves the really big problem. These include: notification of boaters where sewage is discharged so that these areas can be avoided, notification of the general public when the general public when the water in the river is not fit for contact recreation, and the screening out the most aesthetically offensive large objects before the sewage hits the rivers.
Unfortunately, what you see is only a part of what you get. There’s a lot of invisible- and toxic- water pollution in the Willamette and the Columbia Slough. Can’t say about Multnomah Channel and the Columbia River because the Oregon DEQ has never bother to test that water and those fish.
Boaters and people who fish need to be more aware of the state of the rivers they use. They should also participate in actions that will help protect these waterways because nobody wants to contract hepatitis from swimming or get cancer from eating contaminated fish.
Now is the time to call or write your elected representatives and tell them what you think about the Portland sewage problem. You can also contact Northwest Environmental Advocates and find out what other things need to be done to put an end to this primitive illegal situation. The organization invites your participation and support on other issues affecting water quality and fish and wildlife habitat on the Willamette and Columbia Rivers.
