Narrator: Susan Barthel
Interviewer: Donna Sinclair
Date: Feb. 16, 2000
Place: Portland State University
DS: This is Donna Sinclair from the Center for Columbia River History. Today is February 16, 2000 and I’m interviewing Susan Barthel of the Bureau of Environmental Services in Portland, Oregon at Portland State University.
DS: State your name, date of birth, and place of birth.
SB: I’m Susan Barthel, born in Port Washington, Wisconsin on June 18, 1952.
DS: And how did you come to this area?
SB: I came to Portland because I’d met some friends while traveling in Central America who were from the Portland area and they encouraged me to come out for a visit and I never left.
DS: That’s interesting. Before we start talking about the Bureau of Environmental Services and the slough, I wanted to ask you if you could tell me a little bit about how your environmental consciousness was formed.
SB: Ok. I grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, a farm that’s been in my family since 1839 and in a community that was established at the same time; both my parents came from that community, and so I think one of the things that becomes more and more clear to me is that although I choose to live in the city I have a very close connection to land, and wind, and sunlight, and trees, and vegetation. Water was new for me; I didn’t know much about rivers, I certainly didn’t know much about the slough when I first started working on it. But the transformation of land, either by natural forces or development, I think, has always intrigued me. The place I grew up is now very suburban and urbanized also, so although my family farm still exists, it’s surrounded by “McMansions” and suburbs primarily.
DS: You started working for the Bureau of Environmental Services in 1993…
SB: 1993, right.
DS: … and I’m wondering how you got involved with Columbia Slough issues.
SB: Well, when I was first contacted about working for the bureau it was to work on emerging water issues for Environmental Services, and they indicated to me that work needed to be done either in the Johnson Creek Watershed or the Columbia River Slough and I thought the slough sounded interesting, and they needed someone, so that’s how it happened. They needed someone, they said, who was willing and able to talk to a lot of people and translate scientific information into information people could understand, and so…
DS: What made you qualified for that?
SB: [Laughs]. Well, I have a rather unusual background. I’d worked in the juvenile delinquency field for a couple of years working with kids who had been in jail and were kind of reemerging into society, I worked in alternative high school education, I worked, here in Portland for a few years, with young students age five through ten who were underachievers in the public school system. And then I began a career of fourteen years working as a professional puppeteer. And so my business was communication and entertainment. I was also a small business person. We had up to two hundred contracts a year in my little company, and negotiated services of various kinds and we had a small publishing business and so I came from both a family business background and also a self-employed person’s small business background and had skills in education. I’d worked also in some of the early public information in the Portland area in the recycling field and that’s also part of what the Bureau of Environmental Services does. So, it’s kind of an unusual skill set perhaps, but being able to juggle a lot of tasks and move projects forward independently, and interpret information is basically what people were looking for.
DS: So they called you and asked you…
SB: Well, I had applied for another job and had had an interview with the Mid-county Sewer Project, which was a project to build sewers in mid-Multnomah County — didn’t get that job. My name went back on the list and about nine months later I got called to find out whether I’d be interested in this position. And I went down and talked and that was the beginning of it. It was a temporary job at first — very, very temporary and then became a six month temporary, and [since] then it’s become a full time job.
DS: So what was your first introduction to the slough? Do you remember?
SB: Yes, I was taken on a tour of it by the then watershed manager Liane Scull, and I was totally lost because we crisscrossed north Portland, northeast Portland, and we’d stop at bridge crossings or, she would say’ There it is’ and I’d look and say ‘Where?’ because much of the slough is hidden and there’s not much public access to it. So, it was really the first of many visits by auto, and you know, we stopped here and there, twenty, twenty-five different places, but it wasn’t until much later, months later really, that I started to piece it all together. But Liane gave me my first introduction to it.
DS: Have you gone canoeing?
SB: Oh, I have now. I hadn’t been canoeing on the slough, although I had been to Kelly Point Park to swim and to have coffee and read the newspaper on a Sunday morning previous to working on the slough. So I’d been to that part of the slough, but I don’t think I had any idea that in addition to being on the Columbia River that it was also on the Columbia Slough, and Willamette. That’s the only time I can think of really being aware of it.
DS: So you weren’t really aware of it before you started?
SB: Only what I’d read in the paper, occasionally, you know, something about that dirty old Columbia Slough. Yeah.
DS: Can you explain what role the Bureau of Environmental Services has in managing the Columbia Slough and how that’s changed since you’ve been in this position?
SB: Ok, um, when I first started in 1993 what was driving the bureau’s involvement in the slough was, uh, an agreement, a legal agreement that was being formulated to deal with the combined sewer overflows on the slough. And to examine whether or not there was going to be a full-scale clean-up of the slough. Now this lawsuit, which was going to be filed by Northwest Environmental Advocates, under provisions of the Clean Water Act, moved the bureau along in a program to start significant clean-up. Prior to that though, there’d been many other efforts. There are documents that date back to the ’50s and ’60s and there are drainage district records and city engineer records which refer to the City of Portland sewage system and drainage system people making various efforts. For instance, in 1920, the City Canal, now also called the Peninsula Canal, was built. The intention was to improve drainage of the Columbia Slough by providing another opening to the Columbia River.
What had happened was when sewers were built in north Portland that drained into the slough, of course the sewage sloshed back and forth in the slough with the tidal effect, and [with] the slough’s being cut off from the Columbia River with the construction of the levees, the slough became a really stinky, foul place. So the engineers decided they were going to build another opening to the slough. Unfortunately it didn’t work; even though it was heralded as a solution, it didn’t work, and the city was involved in that. Well, after the Vanport Flood the City Canal was allowed to be closed because it hadn’t functioned very well anyway. Um, in ’51 or ’52, the next major piece of city infrastructure was the development of the Columbia Boulevard Sewage Treatment Plant, Portland’s first sewage treatment plant. That was taking sewage and treating sewage which previously had just been discharged directly into the slough. Well, over time, with development and infill in the city, that facility is no longer able to handle storm water plus sewage and so it’s outdated and we once again have very, very frequent combined sewage spills into the slough. So it’s outdated and up to about one hundred fifty times a year we have foul discharges into the slough.
So this situation was looked at for instance when Bob Koch was a city commissioner and there are records from the late ’80s about his plan to improve the slough and then there were sporadic attempts by the Port of Portland previous to that. They had decided at one point that the answer to some of the pollution problems in the slough was to just cut it off from the Willamette River, so the Port of Portland and the Corps of Engineers together were talking about just filling in the slough at the junction with the Willamette. Now I’m not sure of the chronology of that, but there’s a long history of it.
Ok, so to get back to 1993. At the time we were [at] Environmental Services about to announce what our environmental and sediment program for the slough was going to be. And that’s when I came on board and one of the things we were about to do was start both a technical advisory committee and a citizens’ advisory committee to direct and oversee the various scientific programs and monitoring programs, and outreach programs to deal with not only the sewer overflows, but also legacy contamination problems. And also we knew that the slough was wildly out of compliance with Clean Water Act standards, it’d been listed as a 303D, a water quality limited stream by the Department of Environmental Quality and it was listed for a number of different things, for toxics, for temperature, for, eutrophication, which is a lack of dissolved oxygen in the water, and various other water quality problems. So in 1993, like I said, we were gearing up to try and address these problems by doing scientific work, studies, monitoring, and put plans in place after that to deal with whatever it was we discovered and the path of solving those problems. So that’s where we started — we put together these technical committees that had both people from the community, and consultants, and agency folks, and also a community advisory committee, and people were free to attend both — they were all open public meetings. And at the same time the Columbia Slough Watershed Council was forming and although one of the big drivers was the city’s program, to get this Columbia Slough Program water quality sediment project plan going, there were other opportunities that seemed to be presented by having a watershed council form too, and so, I could tell you about that I guess if you want.
DS: Actually I would like you to. I just read the latest newsletter and they said you’re the glue that keeps everything together in the Watershed Council.
SB: [Laughs]
DS: So I was going to ask you what part you have had from the beginning; if you were involved in the formation of the council.
SB: Yeah, the impetus began in early 1993 when some people like Pam Arden, and Mike Houck, and Don Frances, and the watershed manager of our bureau, Steve Hawkins, and Deanna Hinton, who preceded me in doing some outreach met a few times and said “You know there is so much going on in the slough watershed, we really need to have some kind of master coordinating group.” And at the same time the governor’s office, through his Natural Resources staff, was promoting the idea of having watershed councils. Well, there were five or six meetings, I think, during the course of 1993, and when I came on board in November of ’93, there were a series of very large, very rowdy meetings and there was kind of a steering committee of people, someone from the East Multnomah Water and Soil Conservation District, myself and my watershed manager, Anne Nickel from the Columbia Corridor Association, Chris Noble from Fairview Lake area, Greg Malarkey from Malarkey Roofing on the lower slough, Chuck Harrison from the Halten Company, and perhaps a few more people who formed kind of a guidance committee to figure out if we should really try and organize these meetings to fit the Watershed Council mold.
The City of Portland and other sponsors came up with about $30,000, a bunch of seed money, and this administrative committee said they wanted a couple of things. We wanted a sense of how many different projects, a quick survey of how many different projects were happening in the watershed, both major public and major private projects. We also wanted a suggestion on how a council would look, how would it be organized, how it would function. And so McKeever/Morris Company was hired to do some work on this, and they came back in about a month and a half and had done a very quick survey which indicated there were something like one hundred twenty-eight different public works and private projects happening that really should kind of be tracked and coordinated. And then they also had a proposed structure, and although the words made sense, it incensed some of the community members because it proposed that people who didn’t live in the watershed, but were quote only “concerned about it” didn’t have as much right to be at the table as other folks. So, for instance, some of the environmental advocacy groups were particularly disturbed [with] the first proposed structure. It didn’t seem like they’d have the same amount of clout.
There was literally, I think from maybe May of 1993 until 1994, I think June, perhaps, I’ll have to check the dates for you, about a year’s worth of discussions about how to try and organize. And then there was a vote on bylaws, I’m sorry I don’t have the chronology, a vote to try and organize as a watershed council, which meant it should be all inclusive, it should include government, it should include community people, neighborhood folks, and everyone else who thought they had to be there, and so then those discussions started, and eventually that led to a formal request of all the government entities and requests of neighborhood associations to select some delegates. There were people who identified themselves as being interested in representing the hiking, biking community, the canoeing community, there were folks who said, “Hey I live in the in the upper watershed — I wanna be there, I’ve been concerned about this.” And we had some formal kinds of nominating sessions in three different areas too. So that happened, and then we had a struggle for about a year to establish bylaws [laughs]. At the same time, we’re always having these informational meetings and what we ended up doing was having meetings from about 5 o’clock to 8 o’clock at night with a break for lunch, and there was kind of an uneasy tension between – do we have information or do we work on bylaws? Eventually we solved the problems, but not until we hired a facilitator to help us get through it. Um, Pam Wiley was that facilitator and that’s another whole long story which I don’t know if you want to hear or not, but…
DS: Maybe sometime. It sounds like an interesting one, it’s one that I’ve heard referenced a few times.
SB: Right. Well, also for your information there’s a kind of a chapter in a book coming out by the International Dispute Resolution Organization which is going to document some of those early days. So I can get you a copy of it when it comes out.
DS: There were a couple of years of real conflict and tension, and so it was originally partly due to inclusion. I wondered about that. There are a lot of people who are involved in determining what happens on the slough who don’t live on the slough.
SB: Right.
DS: Um…
SB: There are many absentee landlords for instance, commercial property is a huge part of who’s in the Watershed, or who borders the slough.
DS: And has there been a lot of involvement in the council from commercial interests?
SB: Well, what surfaced at the beginning, and still is the mechanism for involving those people, is through the Columbia Corridor Association and its delegates. So I guess I’d say yes, there’s a voice.
DS: Does it seem that all parties who have an interest in the slough are represented on the council?
SB: I think so, but I probably have a jaded view [laughs], you know, it’s been my life for six years [still laughing].
DS: So it’s been your life for the last six years? You’re really involved even outside of your work day in slough issues, or is it something you can leave behind at the end of the day?
SB: Oh I’m better at leaving it behind, they just tend to be long days. It’s been a part of the job descriptions so that’s what’s been nice about it.
DS: What would you say is the Watershed Council’s biggest success?
SB: [Pauses] Well I think one of its successes is that it actually meets regularly, it has active agendas, there are lots of people from agencies who solicit its opinion, endorsement or suggestions. The Council actually gets many more requests for involvement than it can handle. The challenge is that this is an urban area, so there are a lot of challenges and there’s a lot happening and the Council is a group of volunteers. But I think that even in the limitations in agreeing that it’s going to be a consensus-only decision making group, and that brings its own stress. We do make decisions and come to agreements and I think it carries some weight.
DS: How does that happen?
SB: [Laughs] Well. . .
DS: If you have someone who disagrees, I mean is there peer pressure? Um, how do you…
SB: Well, there have been situations where there’s been “an agreement to disagree” and so no action or limited action is taken. One of the things we developed was guidelines for how people are going to represent opinions that are theirs or their member organization, the organization they represent or their constituency, as opposed to what is the Watershed Council’s position, and we have very clearly defined that if it’s a Watershed Council opinion it will have been adopted by the consensus of the members, and it’s a hundred percent consensus. There have been items in which there has been agreement on some and disagreement on others and sometimes that’s what the written record then states, you know, we were unable to agree about these issues, that the outstanding issues are, um, however we recommend this or that on other things. So… it’s been tricky.
DS: So what would you say is the Watershed Council’s biggest drawback?
SB: [Sighs]. Um… there’s still too much to do. For instance, the State now expects Watershed Councils to guide watershed improvements, and that’s a huge task. And although there’s a certain level of funding available, I think the Council could use another staff person, just to accomplish it’s work plan….
DS: There’s only one staff person…
SB: There’s one staff person, and we have an Americorps volunteer this year who’s available for us. Our members come to us expecting all kinds of programs and projects, as well as a great deal of policy input and policy tracking, and so there are huge expectations, I think.
DS: What kinds of projects has the council accomplished?
SB: I think one of the best things is it does partnership things and that’s where my link comes in again, and again, and again. With the Council we’re doing jointly sponsored events, plantings, clean-ups, Saturday on the Slough events, which we’ve been looking at businesses and looking at greenspaces, so business places and greenspaces at the same time in the same neighborhood. Canoeing events, seeing the neighborhood from water level. Walking the Forty Mile Loop trail events, classes and workshops, and virtually all of them have been in conjunction with a number of partners. So we’re trying to kind of leverage everybody’s resources. For instance, the Slough 101 class has been offered, I think, six or seven times and it’s in conjunction with the Bureau of Environmental Services and the Drainage District or the Water Bureau depending on what the topic is.
DS: So that’s why they call you the glue, because you sort of manage to put all these things together?
SB: [Laughing]. I guess, yeah.
DS: [Indistinguishable]… received an award.
SB: [Laughing]. Right.
DS; You mentioned the lawsuit by Northwestern Environmental Advocates, and I recall you telling me about the campaign to put the pollution signs on the slough. What was your involvement in that? Can you talk a little bit about that?
SB: Sure, the slough Fish Health Advisory has really kind of had a couple of phases and the first one started before I had even begun to work on the slough. Uh, Northwest Environmental Advocates together with um, the Black United Front posted warning signs that said “don’t eat the fish,” essentially, and that was based on results of testing fish that were caught on the lower slough, primarily around the St. John’s Landfill. And contaminant levels registered higher there than FDA regulations. So, they, as organizations posted signs in a couple of places along the slough, I’m not sure, maybe six or ten places, Kelly Point Park being one of them, warning signs. Then there was a campaign to distribute some hand to hand brochures, and I think they contacted some anglers who were fishing down at the slough directly with information. When I started the warning signs were being replaced by BES, by official city signs and we not only had it posted in English, but we had it translated into Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Lao. We posted in thirty-two, I think it was thirty-two different locations. And we also brought on board the International Refugee Center of Oregon to help spread the word for us within the various immigrant communities. Starting in 1994 and ’95, we had field workers who were out in the field who were contacting anglers directly. They were there, or at least two or three times a week at various times of the day… [end of side A] [Begin Side B, Tape 1 of 1]
.. kinds of fish were being caught and who was likely to be eating them. The Oregon Health Division and the Multnomah County Health people helped us to fashion this study so they could get a sense of – are kids- or adults eating them, and how much are they eating and how much of a risk is this? So it was part of our Columbia Slough Sediment Project to, um, get that information. So like I said, these surveyors were out three times a week, I think is what the schedule was and then they talked directly to people too and gave them information. And during the rest of the year we were doing some media events like speaking on fishing shows and we did some cable TV shows and then we asked our non-English speaking contractors to do the same kind of thing in their communities, wherever it would be most appropriate. So the Russian language outreach worker was working with the churches and pastors trying to get information out. The Asian communities were doing house classes and were doing various kinds of newcomers classes too, you know, just giving information to people about what they should do if they’re going to fish at the slough, how to diminish the risk as well. So that effort actually still continues.
DS: Are the same groups still involved in it?
SB: Well, this past year we’ve had the Hispanic Access Center and International Refugee Center of Oregon involved.
DS: And so did you actually go out and talk to people who were fishing on the slough?
SB: I mostly did agency stuff. I’ve been out only two or three times talking to people, and, for instance we’ve done targeted work to, what’s the housing project in North Portland? . . . Columbia Villa. So we did like a Saturday when we did a knock on all the doors and give information to people, I’ve done that more often, and we worked at Clara Vista, Villa Clara Vista up in Cully neighborhood in a kind of neighborhood fair, I’ve done more of that work than survey work.
DS: What kind of responses do you get when you’re out there talking to people?
SB: Well, a lot of people still don’t know where the slough is. They think it’s that arm of the Columbia River that’s next to Jantzen Beach, or maybe they know and they just want to know — are they gonna get sick from eating the fish? One of the things that we’re doing now is we realize that there were some people who were harvesting fish and either giving them away or selling them at modest cost, and so we in our outreach effort also talked about ‘Well, if somebody’s giving you these fish, or you’re getting fish from the store and they might be from the slough, here’s another way to prepare them to reduce the risks.��
DS: Which is…?
SB: Well [laughs], I should get you a copy of it.
DS: To remove the fat…
SB: Remove the fat, grill ’em, fillet ’em, let the fat drip off, don’t use the drippings, don’t eat the innards ’cause there are some groups of people who would eat the entire fish.
DS: I haven’t seen it yet, but I heard that there was a study from OHSU recently that, I haven’t had a chance to do the research for it, I don’t know if you know anything about it, that said that, um, it was more significant to meet nutritional needs than to worry about pollutants
SB: Right, right…
DS: … um, in fish.
SB: Well, that’s what the Multnomah County Health Department was advising us when we did the revision on the fish advisory brochure. They too are concerned that people get enough protein, especially expectant women, and they said there is a risk, but they are concerned about the basic nutritional needs being met. And one of the other things that’s been kind of interesting is that work done on the Mississippi River says that it’s rather more important how the fish is prepared — if you’re using a lot of oil, you know, frying fish or deep frying fish, probably that is more health detrimental than any pollutants in the fish. So… it’s not a clear cut case.
DS: You do have some literature on this?
SB: Uh-hum, uh-hum.
DS: I’d like to get that please.
SB: Yeah, sure.
DS: So what factors do you think have most affected the communities around the slough in the time that you’ve been involved? Or that you’re aware of?
SB: Well I think on the east end there’s rapid development — hundreds and hundreds of acres are no longer farmland. When I started in ’93 there was very little between 122nd Street and Fariview Lake, and now there’s at least sixty blocks of warehouses, and service industry buildings, and, you know, the vacant land is fast disappearing. That’s a huge change.
DS: That’s all within the urban growth boundaries…
SB: Oh yeah, yeah. And in the late ’80s the land along Airport Way was zoned as an “industrial sanctuary” and so that meant that the City allocated extra infrastructure dollars to putting transportation systems, and sewage, and storm water systems and they encouraged industrial development that would take advantage of the fact that the railroads and the airport were there. There’s not supposed to be retail development — there’s a fair amount of retail as well. So that I think was a real tipping point in terms of development. The airport is expanding and developing its developable land with partners very, very quickly and in its parcels both around the airport and down in Rivergate, there’s been huge development in Rivergate, so at both ends of the watershed vacant land is being developed very quickly. In the central part of the watershed, for instance the Bridgtown neighborhood, is moving from three hundred households to three thousands households in a couple years time, I mean there’s tremendous development going on there and there it’s mostly residential. I guess that’d be the main thing, yeah.
DS: Because the lower slough is dealing with the same kinds of issues, the pollutants and the CSOs that they’ve been dealing with for quite a while… I mean…
SB: Um, I’m sorry
DS: … in terms if the factors that are effecting the slough. The communities along the slough, the river communities are still dealing with…
SB: Right. Well, I think one of the reasons development in the upper watershed is so significant is that it has changed the character really of how water flows into the slough. There’s so much more impervious surface that the Drainage District had to float a huge bond measure to buy and upgrade pumps; because instead of having rainfall manifest itself in the slough over the couple of days after a rainfall all of a sudden in a couple of hours they’ve got this huge gush of water into the slough proper and all of its auxiliary drainage ways. Since it’s sixty miles, it’s not just the eighteen miles of the slough — there’s really actually sixty miles of waterways that are the slough system. So that is one of the subtler, but also very costly direct consequences of having that land developed is all those MCDD fee payers have to pay for pumping the water faster.
DS: And are they paying fees, development fees that contribute to funds that go to manage the slough for there drainage district?
SB: The Drainage District itself levies a yearly fee and although I don’t know the formula, it’s a formula based on elevation of your land and amount of imperviousness, and that dictates what your fee is gonna be. Now…
DS: Are there any incentives to have, for example, parking lots that have drainage ways rather than asphalt…
SB: [Laughs] Well, it’s…
DS: Are there any kinds of incentives or any kinds of regulations that are…
SB: That’s actually. . . the new thing coming out of the city of Portland is that we are, uh, starting to encourage and require treatment of storm water runoff before it goes to your nearest water body. I wish I could cite chapter and verse, but in lots of places along the slough, the upper end now, people are putting in swales or detention facilities so that they are in compliance with these new regulations. However, you know, there’ still kind of this “flashy urban stream” thing that’s happening. And they still nonetheless pay a fee to the Drainage District for pumping water and keeping them from flooding. And under discussion right now with city council is a revision of how the city collects fees from landowners for storm water management city-wide. The people who are within the Multnomah County Drainage District One and Peninsula Drainage Districts One and Two have not paid the city any of the fee for the city having a drainage system in its streets, for instance. About seventy percent of all storm water comes from streets. It’s a complicated story and maybe we don’t want to go there [laughs], I don’t know.
DS: I know that the combine sewer overflows are, that that situation is being resolved.
SB: Right.
DS: Can you talk a little bit about that.
SB: Um hum.
DS: About how that has come about. I know when you started in ’93 you were working on it.
SB: Right. The simplified terms, the agreement to deal with combined sewer overflows to the Columbia Slough was that the overflows would be captured by a giant pipe called the Big Pipe, and that this pipe would stretch 3.5 miles. Now when the volume of runoff becomes large enough it triggers an overflow [and] what’ll happen instead is that all this combined sewage will go to this big pipe instead and be metered out to the sewer treatment plant on a slower basis. So we have spent on the order of about a hundred and forty million dollars to not only build this system of pipes and this giant pipe that’s up to twelve feet in diameter to collect the runoff, but also the additional facilities to handle all this extra sewage. And that should be on line by the end of December of the year 2000.
DS: So it’s the new Wastewater Treatment Plant that’s…
SB: The expanded Wastewater Treatment Plant, yeah.
DS: Expanded Wastewater Treatment Plant that’s by the St. Johns Landfill.
SB: Yeah, yeah, um-hum.
DS: What do you think is the most critical issue on the slough? If it’s possible to identify one or two.
SB: [Laughs] Are you asking for my perspectives as a BES employee?
DS: No, actually I’d prefer your perspective as someone who’s involved with the slough, if you don’t mind.
SB: Sure. Well I think there are a couple of things. Water quality is very, very important for the reason that it’s an urban stream, it’s been identified for a hundred years as a greenspaces resource. The original Forty Mile Loop Trail identified the slough as a desired greenspace. In social terms it’s a place where people can gather. In terms of wildlife it’s a very well-known and well-documented kind of urban haven that attracts some a hundred and some plus species of birds. There are river otters right across from Costco on Northeast 138th, there are beaver, there are nutria, there are freshwater clams, there are great horned owls, black crowned nigh herons, you know, various kinds of wildlife and animals and birds that live along the slough, and even though it’s an urban area, it runs through neighborhoods. There are people who identify themselves over, and over, and over again as having an interest or having a history with, with the slough. They come and watch racing at the Portland International Raceway and they also are going to walk in the trail next to the slough; I mean it’s kind of a, not only a neighborhood resource, but I think a regional resource. I’m quite interested in the fact that The Seattle Times, for instance, this fall had the Columbia Slough as an excursion destination, you know, it’s not just folks in our town. The lower slough is also a place where small salmon rest during flood events, and so it’s part of a kind of a timeless history. On another level the regulatory agencies, the EPA and various advocacy groups are telling us “You must be mindful of waterways, you must clean them up. You have a responsibility to your children and grandchildren and to your friends and neighbors.” So I don’t think we can walk away from some of our obligations.
DS: So water quality.
SB: Yeah, water quality…
DS: It connects to everything else.
SB; Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. The language of, I’m not sure if its Clean water Act language, but the Water Quality Limited Designation talks about beneficial uses of the slough, or of a water body. And one of those beneficial uses is aesthetics. A criteria, one of them is that it should be fishable and swimmable. Another says that it should be accessible for other kinds of recreational uses. Water can be used for irrigation — it is now — it should continue to be available for those purposes. So there are many different aspects of our legal obligations too.
DS: What do you see as your greatest personal success on the slough:
SB: [Laughs]
DS: The one thing that you’ve done that has been perhaps the most challenging, or, um, most fulfilling.
SB: [Pauses] Well, I’d like to think that one of the things I’m able to give people is an appreciation of the slough as a place that’s been a challenge, but that with some care and some concerted effort it can be a resource that people enjoy. I take great pride in the fact the the Watershed Council exists and we’ve had impact on thousands of people who have done something with us, or heard about us, or come to think of the slough differently. Yeah. I think we’ve done good science too and we’ve been told that the Columbia Slough Sediment Project, which was reviewed by peer reviewers across the country, that it was a very, very solid scientific program, and we’re going to use that information as we deal with the Willamette River and with Johnson Creek, um…
DS: Are you involved with those areas also?
SB: Just peripherally, yeah, yeah. At this point.
DS: What do you find is the biggest obstacle in working with all of these different groups?
SB: [Pauses] Um [sigh], hmm. Well, I think there are probably two answers to that. In terms of the Water Quality and Sediment Project the good news was that the water quality wasn’t as bad, nor the sediment quality, as bad as we feared. The flipside of it is it still doesn’t meet water quality standards, and it’s gonna be a long, slow process to meet the standards… and it’s hard for people to understand that, and to see that progress is being made. Now people who are involved on an at least once a month basis probably have a sense of that but I’m not sure a tax, or a rate payer in the City of Portland would understand that to be true. I think we were fairly successful in sharing with people “Yeah, you know, there’re some problems out here.” That’s a little harder to share with the also successes; you know, water quality has improved a lot by doing some different kinds of water pumping regimens. Nonetheless, there’s still groundwater pollution from all the cesspools in east county. It’s gonna take forty, fifty years until there isn’t as much fertilizer for the algae, and the algae makes it stinky, so that’s, was the question about success or challenges? [Laughs]
DS: Um, obstacles actually, but that’s okay, that’s okay it’s good that you see those obstacles in terms of successes and challenges.
SB: [Laughing still] I think that’s, and it’s very expensive. . . we don’t want to spend, for instance on the Sediment Project people would say, well why do you have to take so many samples? We started out with three hundred some samples, and then in the spots that ranked the highest for potential problems, we did a lot more sampling and the samples might cost and thousand dollars a piece or more at the lab to get them analyzed, and so it’s not an inexpensive process, but if you don’t spend that kind of money then you spend more money because you clean up more stuff that possibly doesn’t need to be cleaned up. Some of the proposed solutions are also maybe just leave the sediments alone, don’t do anything to make it worse, but just leave it alone because some of the problems will eventually right themselves as the, as the ecosystem finds a better balance, so uh…
DS: Is that likely to happen with all of the development that’s taking place there?
SB: It’s a real challenge. It’s a real challenge. Yeah. One of the things we know is that there’s always sediment coming into the system, so one way to address that is to have better erosion control on construction sites, or commercial sites. It’s pretty indirect, but it’s also, that’s the only way you can address that problem.
DS: What would you vision for the future of the slough? How would you like to see it managed?
SB: [Pause] Well, I’d like to see, and I expect to see in my lifetime, water that is clean, much more public access, places where people can get out of their cars and throw a canoe in, or get out of their cars and walk. You know, there are really only two or three places now where access is available for people and I think “familiarity breeds commitment” for a lot of people. I would hope to see that the many, many people who work in businesses and industries around the slough, come to enjoy it, come to know that it’s there and come to enjoy it. And I expect that… we will do a better job eventually of preventing small industrial spills, and will prevent people who don’t care dumping stuff into the slough, so aesthetically and water quality-wise the kinds of small but cumulative illegal dumping that happens might be diminished too.
DS: So you see regulations as…
SB: It’s not even so much as, well yes, I mean there is regulation, I mean my bureau has industrial source control people who are out actively working with industries that need permits for safer handling of materials, or better spill containment possibilities, or maybe they need to start washing off construction equipment differently or, you know, store chemicals differently. We have a very active program designed to prevent those pollutants from washing down into somebody’s drainage pipe and directly out into the slough. And part of that is definitely driven by the need of corporations, and businesses, and commercial establishments to meet permit requirements. But, we also know that everybody’s got a certain responsibility, and so for pesticides the high levels come from residential areas, and it comes in on soil particles. . .
DS: Are there efforts to educate people about the use of pesticides in their yards?
SB: There are. We do a bit of media effort every year and we’ve got brochures and there’s a little bit of it I think on our Clean Rivers Website. But. . . people don’t necessarily connect their rose spray, or their fertilizer, or their dog poop in the gutter with water pollution problems at the end of a pipe a couple of miles away. So it’s kind of that consciousness raising that takes a while.
DS: But those things are beginning to…
SB: Yeah, yeah, I think so.
DS: Well do you have anything else that you’d like to add? You��ve got to get back to work?
SB: [Laughs] I don’t think so, no.
DS: Okay.
[Interview Ends]