The North Coast times-eagle., June 20, 2000, Page 3, Image 3

PAGE 3
THOMAS GIANNI
DEATH OF THE DEEPENING
BY PETER HUHTALA
"I know of no better barometer or report card on
where we stand as caretakers of our environment than the
Columbia River."
-JIM OYALA
Environmental victories may be the most difficult to
celebrate Sure, you shut down an obsolete nuclear reactor, but
not before dozens of workers' lives were shortened by avoidable
leaks; you reduced the size of an old-growth timber sale, but only
to watch slightly fewer species disappear from the earth each
day. Even the classic victories, like Love Canal, are bittersweet
as we mourn for the children who suffered and lost their health
to the blind stupidity of greed. So I struggle to find a way to savor
the demise of the Columbia River channel deepening.
In too many ways, it was preposterous that the channel
deepening was even suggested. Okay, a decade ago even some
intelligent people like Senator Mark Hatfield were ignorant about
the importance of the Columbia estuary to the salmon of the
region Perhaps Hatfield and other could not comprehend the
meaning of the continuing decline of wild salmon. Did they think
that the Endangered Species Act (ESA) did not apply to fish?
More likely the politicians were misled by projections of economic
benefit painted in broad strokes of lobbyist rhetoric.
Ships were getting bigger in the late 1980s, at a pace that
frightened some inland ports Rather than being located close to
deep water — as was the case in Puget Sound and Long Beach,
California — many ports were dependent on the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers maintaining a channel pathway to their facilities.
Portland, Oregon, is 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean. The 40
foot deep by 600 foot wide shipping channel to Portland was
already one the most difficult routes to maintain in the entire
United States. The Corps orchestrates the dredging of over
eight million tons of sediments from the mouth of the river to
the channel of Portland every year
Most of the huge newships carried those modular
containers that are seen on trucks and trains, and piled high
on ships. Almost any product could be loaded in the containers
Portland commanded less that 6% of the West Coast container
business, but saw channel deepening as a way to at least remain
competitive. The Port of Portland appealed to Senator Hatfield to
ask Congress to see about a deeper channel
The project was huge; the feasibility study that Congress
authorized the Corps to perform took nearly five years and seven
million dollars The Corps, in late 1998, finally came up a way to
deepen the channel to 43 feet, at a base cost of about 200 million
dollars Unfortunately, by this time the new generation container
ships were looking for ports that had depths of over 50 feet. To
many of these specialized shipping companies the new 43 foot
channel would be laughable
The Army Corps of Engineers is supposed to be a
public agency. They have civilian oversight through the Assistant
Secretary of the Army. Although they operate under a military
chain of command, most of the nearly 35,000 Corps employees
do not wear a uniform The Corps is even an environmental
agency, responsible for issuing fill permits in a manner that
protects America's wetlands. Instead of making objective
decisions to protect the environment while seeking to enhance
commerce, they created a blueprint for the greatest environ­
mental disaster the Northwest has recently faced They seemed
to forget vtfiom they worked for When the Corps makes a
feasibility study for a project like this, funds derive half from the
federal government and half from local sponsors The sponsors
in this case were several ports on the lower Columbia and
Willamette Rivers. Laura Hicks was named the Corps' project
manager for the deepening In the fall of 1998 Brigadier General
Robert H Griffin, Commander of the Northwest Division of the
Corps of Engineers, spoke at the Propeller Club convention
(a maritime industry conference) and commended Ms Hicks,
saying, "So we are in this together Laura Hicks is the kind
(that is) the new Corps the kind of person we need as a project
manager who can work wth all these groups to be the honest
broker and work for you the customer That's v/iat we re all
about" (I just had to put that in italics because it clearly highlights
the reality the Corps does not always work for Congress and the
American people, they often act as agents of special interests
Here a high-ranking officer describes the Propeller Club as
customers Pretty damn clear)
Digging and blasting a deeper channel was a simple
engineering problem The Corps could handle this Getting nd
of the enormous amounts of extra sediment was a problem, but
friendly cohorts from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
could be persuaded to designate a handy area of the Pacific
Ocean for some free dumping. Besides, ports like Vancouver and
Portland wouldn't mind stockpiling some sand for future wetland
fills as they expand facilities This could work. All the Corps really
needed to worry about was making the economic justification
appear reasonable Oh yes, they also needed to comply with
environmental regulations. This shouldn't be a problem as long
as supportive politicians could keep the natural resource agen­
cies in line The ports and their corporate allies set the lobbyists
to work on senators, congressmen and governors. The stage was
set.
The Corps released a draft feasibility study and environ­
mental impact statement (EIS) in late 1998. They would deepen
100-plus miles of the Columbia and about 12 miles of the Willa­
mette River through Portland Harbor. Hypothetical projections for
future container ship traffic added with benefits to multinational
corporations like Archer Daniel Midlands and Conagra to show a
net positive in the cost-benefit analysis.The Corps also concluded
the project would have 'no significant impact' on the environment,
even on the ESA-listed salmon. They utterly refused to consider
the negative consequences to the fishery-dependent economies
of estuary communities They refused to look at how this project
would harm tribal members with treaty rights to salmon.
To make the project cost-effective, dredging would have
to proceed year-round for over two years straight. This caught the
attention of the already-skeptical commercial fishing industry.
Timing work in the river to avoid migrations of salmon and other
species was a long-standing fisheries management practice.
Every port district, town and private party had to abide by these
restrictions, which were enforced by the Corps Now the agency
was claiming they were exempt from these rules?!
The Corps also couldn't afford to deal with contaminated
sediments in any special way. They said in their environmental
impact statement that a "Higher Authority has instructed us not to
calculate the costs" of alternative handling of chemically contam­
inated sediments Yes, they capitalized Higher Authority' in true
military/deistic fashion
Willamette River sediments in the project zone were
already known to be severely contaminated with chemicals that
could cause cancer, developmental deformities and suppression
of the immune system. The Corps' analysis: "Willamette channel
sediments are acceptable for unconfined in-water disposal." Give
me a reality check!
TONY'S TAVERN
1313 MARINE DR., ASTORIA
(503) 325-5069
COLUMBIA RIVER
MARITIME MUSEUM
1792 MARINE DR., ASTORIA OREGON
(503) 325-2323
Columbia sediments were duly certified as pnstine, wth
EPA complicity It looked like the project could be built wth a
reasonable budget. At least that’s the way it was presented to
Congress Senator Ron Wyden and his staff masterfully pushed
consideration through committees and obtained federal author­
ization for the deepening before environmental evaluations were
complete The caveat was that the Chief of Engineers had to be
satisfied by December 31, 1999, that his agency's work was
acceptable The Chief predicated his report in good part on
receiving an opinion from the National Marine Fisheries Service
(NMFS) that the deepening would not jeopardize endangered
salmon
When the final environmental impact statement was
issued, the Corps suggested that they would have to "phase" the
Willamette River portion of the project Right, they finally caught
a clue that the same sediments they had no worries about were
the basis for declaring Portland a Superfund Absurdly, while
offering no estimates of the cost of dredging and blasting through
the contaminated harbor they still included the economic benefits
of a deeper Willamette in the cost-benefit analysis
By all reasonable standards this project should have
been falling apart It was inevitable, even if the Corps refused to
acknowledge it and the upriver ports to accept it, that there were
serious Clean Water Act violations here that Washington State
and Oregon would be compelled to reveal. The already shaky
economic analysis would collapse under the most modest con­
ditions.
It got worse.In early December 1999, the Oregon Depart­
ment of Land Conservation & Development found the deepening
plan inconsistent with many Oregon laws and planning goals.The
Corps could ignore the hundreds of complaints from scientists,
environmental groups, fishery organizations and governments of
the estuary. They could not ignore the official statement of the
LC&D, a state agency with authority granted under the Coastal
Zone Management Act (CZMA). But it seems they did
It appeared that the one agency that Corps would take
seriously was the National Marine Fisheries Service. During
November of 1999, according to documents the Columbia
Deepening Opposition Group obtained under the Freedom
of Information Act, NMFS informed the Corps that their draft
'Biological Opinion' was that the deepening would "jeopardize the
continued existence" of a dozen listed salmon and steelhead in
the Columbia Basin NMFS scientists pointed out that the estuary
is critical habitat for every listed fish Juvenile salmonids rear in
the estuary until ready to transform into saltwater creatures. Adult
salmon also make vital life adjustments here before journeying
upstream to spawn. The scientists had a long list of ways the
deepening could definitely or possibly harm salmon. NMFS could
not allow the project to go forward as planned
In yet another bizarre twist, the National Marine Fishery
Service's jeopardy opinion turned into an okay to proceed, albeit
coupled with non-mandatory promises to restore thousands of
acres of estuary wetlands. The promises were neither specified
nor funded Carefully, the tens of millions in investment that
NMFS was looking for were not tied directly to the deepening.
If they were, Wyden might have lost his pre-authorization.
The Corps leaped on the no-jeopardy opinion and issued
a 'Chiefs Report' on December 23. If the project was to be stop­
ped administratively, it would be up to Oregon and Washington to
enforce the Clean Water Act and the CZMA The political leaders
of the states were not inclined to push for strong agency action
They basically favored the project
Early in 2000 both the "Green Scissors" report put out
by USPIRG and others, and "Troubled Waters" issued by the
National Wildlife Federation and Taxpayers for Common Sense,
listed the Columbia River deepening as an extreme example of
environmentally harmful and wasteful spending. During two trips
to Washington, D C., I met dozens of influential individuals from
across the country willing to help stop the deepening. There was
some possibility of bringing this to a political end, but the lobby
was entrenched.The corporations involved wield immense power.
On Valentine's Day 2000, the National Marine Fisheries
Service was sued in federal district court in Seattle Northwest
Environmental Advocates, along with Pacific Coast Federation of
Fishermen's Associations, American Rivers and Trout Unlimited
filed one suit, represented by Earthjustice. CRANE (Columbia
River Alliance for Nurturing the Environment) filed another. Both
charged that NMFS has abdicated their responsibility to protect
endangered salmon by issuing the 'Biological Opinion' allowng
the deepening to proceed
Later in the Spring, a House subcommittee refused to
appropriate the initial funds to begin the deepening. It looked like
the project could at least be delayed
Finally, this August the boondoggle unraveled. The
Columbia Riverkeeper and Astoria-based Salmon For All had
intervened on behalf of the plaintiffs in the NMFS suit. The Port
of Portland had joined on the side of the Fisheries Service. The
Earthjustice and CRANE suits had been consolidated in the
courtroom of U.S. District Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein.
On August 4, Judge Rothstein dismissed the NMFS motions to
dismiss the case or, if not. move it to a Portland court The case
was ready to move swiftly to summary judgment and odds were
excellent that Judge Rothstein would throw out the December
Biological Opinion' Days later Mike Thome, executive director
of the Port of Portland (and a major champion of the deepening),
resigned from his $194,000 per year job
The other shoe dropped on August 5 NMFS sent a
letter to the Corps withdrawing their Biological Opinion' This is
the death of the project, at least for a very long time This is the
victory I'm trying to celebrate
I guess one good way to celebrate is take full advantage
of the situation There is still a huge issue of irresponsible main­
tenance dredging and disposal I am asking the National Marine
Fisheries Service to take another look at their Biological Opinion'
for this work Now is the time to get some improvements ordered
Flov^ane disposal needs to be phased out. Ocean dumping needs
to be reduced, not new sites designated. Sediments need to be
more carefully tested for contaminants The Corps should be put
on a program of annual mitigation for past and current degrada­
tion of the estuary We want the ecosystem improvements NMFS
suggested, they might actually help improve conditions — with
the deepening abandoned
Okay, we won The people of estuary conservation and
restoration won The salmon and smelt and sturgeon and lamprey
won Small communities that value sustainability won over
monster corporations A grassroots campaign prevailed over a
big-budget political machine I really don't know how it happened
We knew we were right for a long time, but that didn't mean we
would succeed Oh well, luck or providence — I'll take it, bask in
it for a minute, use it to advantage and move on
Peter Huhtala is executive director of the Columbia
Deepening Opposition Group He lives in Astoria and can be
reached at the CDOG offices at 325-8069 or e-mail huhtalaQ-
teleport com