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.”
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