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street roots
Oct. 24, 2014
The largest sources o f water pollution in Oregon aren’t monitored well, i f at all
B Y EM ILY GREEN
STA FF W R IT E R
The Clean Water Act of 1972 made it a lot
harder for industrial facilities to dump large
amounts of toxic materials into U.S.
waterways with the institution of a .
permitting process with limits oh toxic
releases - it put a stop to many of the
activities that led to Portland Harbor’s
designatiori as a EPA high-priority
Superfund Site - but gray areas in the act
and the limited nature of resources used to
enforce it could leave the Willamette River
and other waterways across Oregon
susceptible to a slew of continued
contamination long after the harbor is ;
cleaned up.
Studies repeatedly show that Oregonians
identify water quality as their top
environmental priority, but Oregon
Department of Environmental Quality
(ODEQ) assessment^conclude that many
Oregon waterways are far below acceptable
water quality standards. The Willamette and
Columbia rivers both contain harmful levels
of arsenic, dioxin and other chemicals and
have above-normal temperatures.
While tests of water samples taken from
Oregon rivers, including the Willamette,
indicate industrial pollution has declined,
industrial facilities that have obtained
federal wastewater permits continue to
legally release treated wastewater into
Oregon rivers. While ODEQ is tasked with
monitoring permit holders, almost all the
oversight and reporting required to ensure
the facility’s wastewater doesn’t exceed its
toxicity limits is performed by the facility’s
staff. According to Burkhart, an ODEQ
water quality inspector, his office performs
on-site inspections of each permit-holding
facility at a rate of once every two or five
years, unless a facility is under enforcement
action.
“A lot of people are surprised to find out
that under the Clean Water Act, self-
monitoring is a very big part of the
program,” says Burkhart “There is no way
the city, EPA or ODEQ has the resources to
go out there ónce a week. We rely on self
monitoring.”
With official regulators lacking the
resources necessary to visit facilities on a
weekly basis, it’s left to employees at each
permit-holding facility, or a contractor hired
by the facility, to collect the required weekly
samples of wastewater for testing. In each
case, the samples they collect are sent to an
independent lab for testing. The lab sends
the-test results directly back to the facility
from which the sample canle. It’s then up to
a facility employee to surtmarize the lab
report in a separate document, which he or
she then signs and forwards to ODEQ. The
original lab reports are kept on-site at the
facility, and not sent to ODEQ. Upon its
inspection every two or five years, ODEQ
will conduct “quality control,” says Burkhart,
by randomly selecting certain entries to
make sure the facility staff are conducting
the sampling arid summarizing correctly. '
Burkhart says that if a facility staffer
really wanted to manipulate the numbers in
a lab report, they could, but his department
knows the little things to look for. He says
people have falsified reports in the past, but
he believes it’s a fare occurrence. “Usually
we find they just weren’t doing it right
Either using the wrong instruments of
taking water from the wrong location,” he
says.
But if a staffer diluted a water sample on
its way to the lab, the toxicity levels would
come back much lower. Burkhart says, “It
wouldn’t be obvious if someone diluted a
sample, but it would be a huge risk because
they would probably go to jail. It happened
more frequently in the past, but it’s quite
rare now.”
According to Portland Harbor Community
Advisory Committee Chair Jim Robison,
“ODEQ has a limited amount of actual
investigative work that they can do.” He
says they often rely on complaints
submitted by private citizens and watchdog
groups to know what to investigate.
Siltronic, located along the Willamette in
Northwest Portland’s industrial district,
made headlines earlier this year when the
EPA ranked it as the number one polluter of
Oregon waterways in 2012 when it legally
dumped more than 350,000 pounds of
nitratë compounds. That might seem like a
lot, but it’s just a drop in the bucket
compared to the amount of nitrates released
into waterways from agricultural sources,
and these sites are receiving far less
attention than Siltronic as they are barely
monitored, if at all. High levels of nitrates in
drinking water can causé serious health
problems^ According to 2011 a risk
assessment of Oregon public water systems
conducted by ODEQ, nitrate contamination
is an ongoing problem that’s “increâsing in
severity.”
While industrial facilities are required to
purchase wastewater
and storm water
permits under the
surprised to fin d out that
Clean Water Act, no
such permits exist for under the Clean Water Act,
agricultural
self-monitoring b a very big
landowners. According
part el the program ," says
to ODEQ inspector
Robert Burkhart,
Burkhart. "There is no way
before 1972, most
the city, BPJt or O B I® has
pollutants were the
the resources to go out there
result of industry
wastewater, but today once a week.
the bulk of pollutants
m o n ito rin g /'
in Oregon waterways
come from
unpermitted and urimonitored sources like
agricultural runoff, which can carry with it
pesticides, herbicides, animal waste,
fertilizers and even banned pesticides like
DDT that bind to sediment and can fall off
with erosion when bank-side (riparian)
vegetation is removed.
In 1993, the Oregon State Legislature
passed the Agricultural Water Quality
Management Act, requiring the Oregon
Department of Agriculture (ODA) establish
a plan to prevent and control pollution from
agricultural lands and achieve water quality
standards. The departments plan aimed to
educate farmers about the water quality
program and standards and to control
pollution, but that plan has fallen short
According to Allison Hensey, Director of
Sustainable Food and Farms at Oregon
• ■ ”
Environmental Council, “For the first 20
years of the program
See RIVER, page 5