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Portland Harbor Conservation Chair: Scott Chapman scott.chapman@oregon.sierraclub.org To find out more about how you can get involved, please go to the Sierra Club's Portland Building Environmental Community Campaign web page.

Background for the Portland Harbor Superfund Site

The Portland Harbor is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund Site, and will eventually be cleaned up after years of study. Study is expected to take until 2008. The Sierra Club is following the progress of the Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study, and early efforts at cleaning up the harbor.

The initial study area for the Portland Harbor cleanup consisted of 6 miles of the Willamette River, starting at Swan Island and extending to near the Columbia. The ISA has been extended to approximately 9 miles in length, starting at the Sellwood Bridge. The Harbor area is considered a Superfund toxics site, so the EPA and Oregon Department of Environmental Quallity (DEQ) are requiring the polluters to stop polluting the harbor and get out the toxics that have been dumped or spilled. For years, industrial polluters dumped toxics into the Willamette River, and the city released sewage that the sewer system did not contain.

Superfund sites like the Portland Harbor are determined by CERCLA, a law which requires that polluters pay to clean up their big messes. The site is on the National Priorities List (NPL); The EPA has made a serious commitment to cleaning up these sites. The DEQ had already made some plans to clean up the harbor, and now is in charge of ending upland source contamination. We are urging the EPA to include the DEQ's cleanup plans in early action decisions. In other words, if the DEQ already planned to get some toxins out of the river, the EPA should go ahead with making the companies involved do so.

The Portland Harbor site includes several smaller cleanup sites, all the result of various industrial activity over the past century. A range of industrial enterprises used and abused the harbor and left toxins. Much of the activity is over, but some remains.

Toxic substances in the Willamette include dioxins, PCBs, heavy metals, and many others. This pollution is harmful to fish, and the Oregon Department of Health Services (ODHS) is warning against eating resident fish. The Lower Willamette Group (LWG) and ODHS have also studied how much people get exposed to the river. People are getting cancer because this cleanup hasn't happened yet. People get exposed to the toxins in the river through drinking the water and activities like swimming, bathing, and diving to repair boats.

Portland Harbor Fish Advisory

The Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) recently issued a new fish advisory for the Portland Harbor. The advisory is based on significant research into the toxics in the harbor and in the fish that live there. Fish consumption was identified as the most significant source of exporsure to toxics in the harbor.

The pollution in the Portland Harobr includes metals, plastics, petroleum products, pesticides like DDT, solvents, and PCBs. The Oregon DHS found that the fish that live in the Portland Harbor contain a great deal of PCBs.

According to the DHS, the State of Oregon Fish Advisory Recommendations for the Portland Harbor, spanning from the Fremont Bridget to Sauvie Island, are as follows:

• Women of childbearing age, particularly pregnant or breastfeeding women, children and people with weak immune systems, thyroid or liver problems, should avoid eating resident fish from Portland Harbor, especially carp, bass, and catfish.
• Healthy women beyond childbearing age and healthy adult males should restrict the amount of resident fish eaten from Portland Harbor to no more than one 8-ounce meal per month.
• Non- resident fish, such as salmon and steelhead, and considered an excellent high-protein, low-fat food source andhave no restrictions on the amount eaten from Portland Harbor.

Various Early Actions announced in the Portland Harbor Superfund project

Thank you! to the City of Portland for building the Big Pipe project, which will treat 96% of the sewage which now gets flushed into the Willamette untreated. The City of Portland recently completed the West Side of the Big Pipe, and the City is well underway building the East Side Big Pipe. Until the Big Pipe Project, some of our combined stormwater and sewage spilled into the Willamette untreated, in Combined Sewage Overflows (CSOs). Most CSOs will be prevented by the more adequate sewage system being built.

Some companies have already proceeded with early actions. Northwest Natural and ARKEMA (formerly Atofina), have removed pollution, both in the ground water and in sediment, from their sites. The companies that do early actions (hotspot cleanups) will pay less than they would otherwise when the overall big cleanup happens.

NW Natural/GASCO

Northwest Natural started their cleanup last summer, and we welcomed the early action. However, Northwest Natural made big mistakes. The contractors used the wrong type of barrier around the tar they were removing, against advice from the Sierra Club and other local environmental organizations, and large quantities of toxics spilled into the Willamette and washed downstream. See the EPA GASCO site.

ARKEMA/Atofina

The ARKEMA cleanuphas not gone as planned either. Take a look at the EPA site for ARKEMA to see what happened when ARKEMA injected chemicals to clean up their groundwater. The EPA site gives links to ARKEMA documents and photos.

Port of Portland

The Port of Portland owns some polluted waterfront on the Willamette River, including shipping slips at the Portland Harbor. The Port of Portland submitted ideas to the EPA for the cleanup of their Terminal 4, which is on the Harbor. They included a plan to have contractors build a Confined Disposal Facility (CDF) at the Port's Terminal 4, Slip 3. Although the CDF was only one possible solution proposed by the Port, the EPA approved a Confined Disposal Facility at the Port of Portland.

The CDF would hold contaminated sediment from the Port's property, and from other properties along the Willamette. They will block a shipping slip with a sand and gravel berm, then start adding polluted toxic sediment. At the end of each summer season, the Port's contractors will put sand on the top. Meanwhile, rainwater and groundwater will enter the area with the toxics from above and from the sides, and rinse through the CDF into the Willamette River.

This leaves everybody asking what can safely be put in the CDF. What isn't going to rinse through with a strong enough storm or just enough water and time? What happens when there's an earthquake, and the berm cracks or breaks?

Other PRPs in the Portland Harbor

There are many PRPs who haven't agreed to sign the AOC (Administrative Order on Consent) to the EPA. Signing an AOC would commit PRPs to paying for the cleanup of the pollution for which their companies are most likely responsible.

There are a few Superfund sites within the Portland Harbor's 9 miles. One is the McCormick & Baxter site, which was cleaned up a couple of years ago. Another is the Harbor Oil Superfund project, which is just getting started.

This page last updated Monday, April 30, 2007

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