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DANGEROUS SEDIMENTS
BY PETER HUHTALA
As I reflect on the Port of Astoria Commission election
on May 1 7 ,1 observe a curious lack of personal disappointment.
This was my first run for public office and I campaigned with
enthusiasm and confidence It seems I would have felt some
letdown when I lost.
I lost by 500-odd votes to the incumbent President of
the Commission, Larry Pfund. I criticized Mr. Pfund aggressively
during the race, but never attacked him personally. I congratu
lated him on his win, and thanked him for being willing to serve
our county. But I didn't grieve defeat. Odd.
Certainly I could take pride in running a clean campaign,
and in raising awareness of significant issues surrounding the
Port. This was all part of an extraordinary group effort involving
Rose Priven and Tom Brownson, the two courageous candidates
with whom I participated in an electoral coalition. Hundreds of
individuals donated money or time to this passionate effort. I am
truly thankful for this experience.
The primary issue of the campaign was the manner in
which the Port held private meetings with representatives of
Calpine Corporation to deliberate the merits of granting a long
term lease for LNG import — outside of the public view.
Certain other issues derive from this Calpine lease.
Many contend that this was a consummately bad deal from a
financial point of view, considering the outrageous profit potential
for the corporation. In addition, granting control of the property
for such a controversial purpose was categorically irresponsible
because the Port retained no option to withdraw from the lease
should the Commission deem the consequences to our area to
be unacceptable.
The Port Commissioners rationalized their abdication of
local control of the LNG development by saying there would be
many opportunities for public process, that Warrenton and the
State of Oregon would need to approve use of the property and
issue numerous permits. As it turns out, the Port’s claims were
disingenuous.
When Calpine asked the City of Warrenton for an allow
able use determination that would bypass an important part of
public involvement in a zoning change, did the Port of Astoria
insist on full public process? No, the Port sent comments to
Warrenton supporting the contentions of Calpine’s attorneys.
As the U. S. Congress considered legislation that would
place sole authority for LNG import terminal siting with the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (the Senate declared
states had no rights in LNG matters), did the Port of Astoria
Commission stand up for the rights of states? Have they even
sent a letter to Congress asking for any state or local authority
over LNG terminals? Of course not.
Meanwhile, overshadowed by the Calpine mess, another
Port problem emerged.The Port Commission succeeded in keep
ing their contaminated sediment nightmare pretty much under
wraps during the election. However, this is a problem that is not
going away.
The Port needs to dredge sediment that accumulates
in its mooring basins and docking berths. Much of this material
contains toxic chemicals, most of which originated at locations
far upstream. Regardless of the source, if the levels of contam
ination in the sediment exceeded certain levels, then the mud
can’t be dumped back into deeper areas of the river (the cheap
est means of disposal). Most of the stuff from this year's dredg
ing was not acceptable to put back into the river.
This February and March, dredged material was deposit
ed near Pier 3 at the Port of Astoria under permits granted by the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Oregon Department of State
Lands, and Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. The
Port of is charged with violating all of these permits.
A series of Notice of Non-compliance and Cease and
Desist Orders were issued in late March. A fine was assessed
in early May and other civil penalties are possible.
It was the concentration of the pesticide DDT and
associated chemicals that compelled the agencies to require
the Port to dispose of the dredge spoils on land, and to prevent
water from the land-based holding pond from returning to the
estuary until tests showed that contamination was at a low
enough level The chemicals are associated with the silt
suspended in the slurry and, given time, settle and leave the
water clearer. The Port didn’t wait.
DDT is a human carcinogen which is also linked to
developmental deformities and is associated with neurological
and immune system disorders. According to the state and
federal agencies, the Port of Astoria continuously discharged
untested water from their holding pond between February 21
and March 16 (until they were caught).
Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality refers
to these as “illicit discharges" and says “it appears these
violations were intentional," in an April 11 letter to the Corps
of Engineers. The agency also reports that sampled discharges
into Young’s Bay contained excessive levels of Mercury and
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), additional chemicals that
threaten human health and aquatic life.
Why would the Port deliberately dump these dangerous
chemicals into our waters? Why would they risk fines, civil
penalties and lawsuits? Were Port Commissioners privy to
the decision to blatantly violate the permits? If they weren’t, why
haven’t they questioned the decisions of their executive director?
Long-term solutions that protect the environment and
human health need to be developed for dealing with this toxic
material The alternative is allowing the cruise ship berths and
commercial and recreational moorage to silt in.
Whether or not the delays in working through this
challenge was politically motivated, it has been time wasted.
The Port Commission should forthrightly get to work on this
issue before it costs more than fines.
Perhaps my lack of disappointment in losing election to
the Port Commission is something like that of a fly who narrowly
missed landing on flypaper.
Peter Huhtala is a member o f Salmon For All and
works in the field o f marine conservation, advocating on the
West Coast and nationally in support o f sustainable fisheries
and healthy coastal economies He is an Astoria native with
family ties to the lower Columbia River that stretch back a
century
The artists on this and the following three pages,
Roger Hayes, Tom Burgess, Roger McKay and Kim McCarthy,
live in Astoria.
ROGER HAYES
‘WHAT THEY DO TO US, THEY WILL DO TO YOU’
BY HARRY BROWNE
While media attention focuses across on arrests in
relation to the London bombs, five men from Mayo in the west
of Ireland have spent most of the last month in a Dublin jail.
Their crime is that they tried to block the Shell Oil
Company from building a natural gas pipeline across their land
— and kept trying even after Shell got a court injunction against
them. That put them in contempt of court, and in prison until
they “purge their contempt."
While the President of Ireland's High Court heaps
some of his own verbal contempt on them, and responsible
opinion tsks-tsks about their tactics, the men have caught the
imaginations of much of the public, and an increasingly spirited
campaign has grown in support of them — with hundreds of
people picketing Shell stations and a “solidarity camp” set up in
Mayo on the pipeline route. As the IRA fine-tunes its “war-is-
over” commitment, its political wing, Sinn Fein, has come to the
aid of the men and their campaign. More “respectable” politicians
have been forced to follow.
The negative publicity has begun to get to Shell, which
has started to back down in the. latest court appearances, and
the Irish Government has been keen to find a compromise. But
the men and their supporters are in no mood for compromise,
because the story of Shell Oil in Mayo is a disgraceful history of
suspected corruption and indifference to local safety concerns.
The campaign has the potential to highlight corporate greed and
rapacity in a country where neoliberal precepts have taken on
Biblical status after a decade of “Celtic Tiger" prosperity. Need
less to say, Tom Friedman didn't appear to notice it when he
was in Ireland in June to write idiotic paeans of praise in The
New York Times tor Ireland’s economic performance.
The story has obvious international dimensions. The
rape of Ogoni lands in Nigeria by the self-same petro-giant has
already been highlighted by campaigners (it’s just 10 years since
the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others in Nigeria), and
eyebrows have at last begun to be raised about the sweetheart
deal that brought the company to the Mayo coast.
“I lecture to my students about the way Exxon Mobil rips
off Equatorial Guinea, with the country getting only 12% of the
revenue from its own oil," a development-studies academic in
Dublin told CounterPunch. “But here's Shell in Ireland getting
a deal to extract Irish gas and the Irish State and people get
Cannon Beach, O regon
absolutely nothing.” Campaigners wonder if some relevant funds
might be sitting in a politician’s offshore account.
The gas in question comes from under the sea, the
Corrib field, off the Mayo coast. Instead of processing it offshore,
Shell has gone for the cheaper option of pumping it at high
pressure across part of the Erris peninsula to a terminal at
Bellanaboy, in this boggy beautiful corner of Ireland. It's that
cost-saving decision, never fully subjected to local scrutiny and
safety assessment, that brought Shell into conflict with some
residents.
From a PR perspective they certainly messed with the
wrong people. The Rossport Five' can’t possibly be portrayed
as hippie blow-ins or tree-huggers; they’re not outside agitators.
Most are landowners of long standing, and most attention has
focused on 65 year old MicheSI 6 Seighin, a retired teacher
and local historian. As journalist Lorna Siggins notes, his “most
serious offense to date has been a £2 fine for not having a park
ing light on his car outside Healy’s Hall in Glenamoy in 1965."
He recently had a heart-bypass operation, but was
upbeat when he got a brief chance to speak to the media in his
last court appearance: “As a cousin of my wife's said — who's
a doctor — ‘at least he had his bypass before he came in so he
won’t get a heart attack.'"
According to The Irish Times: “Asked if he had met any
‘notorious’ prisoners, Mr. 6 Seighin replied: 'Only ourselves.'"
Despite placatory talk from their opponents, the men (Brendan
Philbin, Vincent and Philip McGrath and Willie Corduff are the
others) appear ready to stay in jail until a full hearing of the
injunction in October, and with contempt at stake the High Court
is unlikely to give them an easy way out. Meanwhile, continuing
protests back in Mayo have insured that Shell isn't getting any
work done on its terminal or its pipeline.
While the terminal has passed through the planning
process, the pipeline itself is in a regulatory black hole where,
it seems, all that is required is consent directly from the Minister
of Marine & Natural Resources. It has already got “rolling
consents" for prepatory work, and the rest would have sailed
through except for the protests — indeed Shell has already gone
beyond what was authorized. But now the Government is under
pressure to carry out a credible safety assessment.
Even the Minister admits this sort of pipeline in unprece
dented, and it passes close to people's homes. At its maximum
design pressure it would have a “burn radius” of more than half
a mile. There is a school and a pub near the terminal.
The five men said in a statement: "Pipelines rupture. No
pipeline engineer Intends this to happen but it does with sicken
ing frequency. The outlandish pipeline proposed to be forced in
close proximity past our houses is the stuff of nightmares. What
they do to us, they will do to you."
The campaign has exposed the hazards of “business
as usual" in the relations between companies and governments.
As the Irish Times reports: “The first review commissioned by
the Minister was carried out by BPA, a company half-owned by
Shell, and a second review, published in the Minister's website,
was written by AEA Technology, a company that does business
with Shell." With more gas and oil exploration in Irish waters still
to come, the outcome of this dispute will set an important
precedent.
The message is getting across to the public, as the
Rossport Five draw on a long Irish tradition of jailed resisters
to imperial power. 6 Seighin tapped straight into that tradition
and threw in some class consciousness when he cited support
they are getting from their “ordinary” fellow prisoners in Cloverhill
Jail: "They have a tremendous, very accurate sense of right and
wrong that is slightly missing in more exalted society.”
Harry Browne lectures at Dublin Institute of Technology
and writes for Village magazine, from which this is a reprint.
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