13505 S.E. River Road
Milwaukie, Oregon 97222
September, 12 1988

Mike Houck
c/o Audobon Society
5151 N.W. Cornell Rd.
Portland, Oregon 97201

Dear Mike:

Thanks for calling back today. I am enclosing a copy of part of a Portland map showing some of the Columbia slough area. As I am very familiar with this part of the city, I would like to give you my input about my feelings of what has happened over the last 50-plus years. I feel very deeply about it, even though I do not live in the area any more, and haven’t since 1952.

We first came to Portland in December of 1919, and moved into the Kenton area in the spring of 1920. From about 1927 or 1928, the slough area below Kenton was my hunting and fishing area. The slough was badly polluted even then from the sewers that emptied into it from about 14th Ave., down to Kenton. There were not only sewers emptying into it, but several hog feeders and a number of slaughterhouses from Union Avenue westward to at least Greeley Avenue. It was not unusual for the surface of the slough to be dotted with bubbles, and during high water large chunks of the bottom deposit to be floated up by the gases generated in this material.

When I became a teenager my horizons expanded and I became familiar with the slough from one end to the other. The upper portion above Union Avenue especially was where I did most of my fishing because it was cleaner, only one sewer outfall east of Union Avenue, There used to be a boat and canoe rental about 1/4 mile east of Union where the Vancouver Street car crossed the slough on a bridge. We would rent a boat and go above the first sewer that dumped into the Slough where the water was clean, coming in through the flood-gate at the mouth of the slough adjacent to the Columbia Edgewater Golf course. Many times we would hunt golf balls in the shallow part of the slough just above the Drainage District pumphouse, also this was a great place to swim and fish.

After a number of years that a Sewer Charge had been levied (as it still is) on our water billing, the City finally started a project that had been in the planning stage for many years. A large trunk sewer was installed along Columbia Boulevard to pick up all of the sewers emptying into the Slough and consolidating all this sewage and treating it in a treatment plant located near the west end of what is now Delta park (west). At that time I thought “Hooray, This will clean up the slough, and fishing, boating and swimming would be possible anyplace along it.” It so happened, however that the Army Engineers (apparently) took this opportunity to fill in the upper end of the Slough, which effectively blocked it from ever becoming a beautifully clean stream. It has been many years since I have been on the upper part (East end), but from viewing it from the highway as I travel to Seattle, I can see that it is becoming more and more stagnated. If there are any fish left in it, I would be greatly suprised.

I certainly hope that something is done about this monstrous plug in the source end so that the slough can clean itself out, It would probably require a 10-foot diameter conduit to give a water flow that would have any effect. It would be an expensive project to tunnel though all that sand up to the Columbia River.

I have indicated on the map the sewer outfalls as I remember them along the Slough from the Drainage District pump house to Kenton, about Brandon Avenue. I have also indicated some of the other areas that have been changed over the years — areas filled in with junk and dirt and in some cases with “sanitary fill”. These are indicated by cross-hatching as follows:

Triangular area of Union Avenue
Former Spawning ground for carp, catfish, Bass, crappies, etc., west of Union Avenue
Triangle between Union and Vancouver Avenues and Slough
Small sanitary fill west of Vancouver Avenue near Slough
branch of slough where Fenwick Street outfall enters Slough
Former Smith Lake and Bybee Lake

Mike, I hope this will prove to be of interest to you and may give some information that was not available from people on the commission.

Very truly yours,

Norman C. Smale