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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 5, 2000)
Willamette continued from page 1A last year that it would seek to add to its national Superfund list a five and one-half mile stretch of the lower Willamette River, which runs through Portland’s northwest industrial area. In the upper Willamette, run ning through Eugene about 160 river miles south of the proposed Superfund site, the environmen tal health of the river is not as bad, but experts aren’t sure how good it is, said Dennis Wentz, the project chief for the United States Geological Survey’s Willamette Basin Natural Water Quality As sessment Program. “There’s so many issues it is hard to say if [the quality] is bet ter or worse,” he said. Chip Humphrey, a Superfund project manager for the EPA, said the Portland site could be offi cially added to the Superfund roster by July, but the agency would have to first receive a let ter of concurrence from Governor John Kitzhaber and accept public comments. Industry in the area includes the Port of Portland ship maintenance plant, a rail car factory and a chlorine pro duction facility, Humphrey said. Created in 1980 by an act of Congress, the Superfund list names the most environmentally damaged sites in the nation. These sites are a top priority for the federal agency to investigate and clean. Once the clean-up is done, polluters who created the problem foot the bill. Department of Environmental Quality spokesman Jim Gladson said gauging the health of the Willamette is a tricky issue. In ar eas like Portland Harbor where there is a multitude of polluted sites left over from years of use by the shipping, ship-building and manufacturing industries, pollutants are easy to track back to a specific source. But in the Eugene section of the Willamette River, where most of the pollutants are leeched into the river from run-off and ground water, a specific polluter is diffi cult to find. “What we are doing now is moving on to the next level of work, the unseen pollutants,” Gladson said. Improved detection technolo gy is also finding new pollutants that were missed in earlier stud ies. “The more we know, the.more complex it gets,” he said. These pollutants have always been in the Willamette, Gladson said, but it is just now that they are being discovered. The new discoveries don’t mean the river is getting sicker, he said, and in some ways it is healthier. "People boat and swim in the river and there’s fish," he said. “In the ’50s and ’60s whole areas of the river were devoid of life so in that sense the river has im proved.” A U.S. Geological Survey’s re port on the water quality of the Willamette’s tributaries from 1993 to 1995 found the fish com munities and habitats of the river were degraded compared to oth er national sites, but the amount of pollutants was low to medium in comparison with the rest of the nation. One way pollution reaches the upper Willamette River is through groundwater tainted by pesticides and nitrates. Ross Pen hallegon, an Oregon State Uni versity extension faculty member who serves on the Lane County Water Quality Advisory Group, which monitors groundwater in Lane County, oversaw testing in the area for pollution. He said his group determined agricultural runoff wasn’t re sponsible for the pollution. Pen hallegon said he examined sam 44 There's so many issues it is hard to say if [the quality] is better or worse. Dennis Wentz U.S. Geological Survey project chief pies from 20,000 agricultural sites in rural Lane County that were suspected to have been the source of pesticides, and discov ered that only three sites had trace amounts. The group then looked at pos sible sources for nitrates in ground water and found a close connection between concentra tions of nitrates and septic tanks. Penhallegon said the levels of ni trates, which cause health prob lems, are under control, but he said he didn’t know how long that would last. “Groundwater is extremely good right now,” he said. “But as we continue to put in septic sys tems and continue to make changes it will turn around and bite us in the future.” [Z66800 SWING INTO SPRING! SPRING RATES M*Th $16 [9 hole*] $29 {18 holes] $20 anytime with Student ID. 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