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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (June 10, 2016)
Street Roots • June 10-16, 2016 Commentary alternative will cost about $746 million and take 7 years of construction in the river. As of 2013, the Lower Willamette Group had spent more than $100 million testing polluted sediments from the river and preparing reports related to its clean-up. exposed to air and water toxins, and being resources. excluded from the right to unionize. Other Longoria said the Willamette is the most working class groups have also paid dearly industrialized tributary to the Columbia for their time working in the shipyards.” River, and has been a long-standing concern “And now those who can’t afford food for local tribal fishermen who rely on the because of rising rent are eating toxic fish,” Columbia as a major source of food. In the added Ibrahim Mubarak, founder of Dignity mid-1990s, the Yakama Nation’s tribal Village and Right 2 Survive. “And those council even traveled to Washington, D.C. who can’t afford rent are living on to pressure the EPA to prioritize the river. contaminated shorelines, and are at risk of Several years ago the Yakama Nation being pushed even farther and farther to launched an even more aggressive effort, the margins of the cleanup as the process cataloguing all hazardous waste sites in the unfolds. Where can we go to? Where do Columbia Basin within a half mile from the they push houseless riverbank, then people constantly? prioritizing clean Into toxic land up plans for those where they’re sites with the "Polluters haw profited at the growing toxic greatest impact on expense of people who haw vegetables and marine habitat. suffered from centuries of slow eating toxic The Portland violence in the form of disease, vegetables, where Harbor, Longoria dispossession and displacement." said, was one of they’re washing up in toxic water, - CASSIE COHEN the largest they PHCCFOUNDER where, as one identified. young lady said, One fish of they’re getting particular concern rashes on their for local tribes is skin, and their pets are losing their fur. So lamprey - an important cultural and what can we do about this, but stand up ceremonial food which has been used by and fight for our rivers, together, as one?” local tribes for thousands of years. “Willamette Falls is one of the last few remaining sites to collect lamprey, and n April, the Portland Harbor Community Yakama members often travel there to Coalition delivered a letter to City Hall collect lamprey to bring back to long-houses with a list of demands, including full and feed the families, long-houses, at accountability for polluters, an end to the ceremonial events and so forth.” sweeps of riverside camps, permanent “There’s a lot of concern about lamprey,” affordable housing for anyone displaced by Longoria said, “because lamprey live in the clean-up activities, and Superfund job sediments for many years before they training for low-income Portlanders and migrate out to the ocean, and then come minority and women-owned firms, along back basically to migrate through that with agreements with impacted Superfund Site on their way to Willamette communities to guarantee such equity Falls. So there’s a lot of concern, and it’s promises are fulfilled. not very well understood how those Rose Longoria, a Superfund Cleanup contaminants impact lamprey.” official with Yakama Nation fisheries, said A video produced by the Columbia River that the Willamette is a major priority for Intertribal Fish Commission paints an even the Yakama Nation, as it is one of the most more dire picture: important sources of fish contamination in “The decline in these animals over the the entire Columbia basin - from the past 20 years is astronomical,” said Elmer Canadian border to the mouth of the river. Crow. “How do we let something that’s 450, “This is a one-shot opportunity to get the 500 million years old go extinct? Shame on clean-up done right, and done correctly,” us, the whole bunch of us, for not paying Longoria said, adding “it is very evident attention to what was going on.” now that EPA’s proposal is somewhat of a Based on recent meetings with EPA big-win for industry, and a big loss for the officials, Longoria said she is disappointed with what they’re putting in the clean-up general public, the tribes, and the n May 16, United Methodist Women organized a Rally for Clean Water outside the Oregon Convention Center to draw attention to the destruction of water through global environmental racism - connecting the Willamette River to poisoned water in Flint, Mich., indigenous water rights in Honduras and the struggle for food and water security in Mindanao, Philippines, where an extended drought this year has pushed farmers into extreme hunger. On April 1, Philippine state security forces fired on farmers and indigenous protesters in Mindanao who had blocked a highway to demand rice, leaving three dead, 116 wounded, and 87 missing. One woman who spoke at the Portland rally was a survivor of this protest, and shared her experience protesting “the plunderers of water,” saying “we indigenous peoples have, since time immemorial, believed that water is life. But today we are witness to what life is without water.” She was followed by speakers Ibrahim Mubarak and Cassie Cohen of the Portland Harbor Community Coalition (PHCC), a coalition of environmental justice and community of color organizations that includes Groundwork Portland, Right 2 Survive, Wisdom of the Elders and the Portland chapter of the American Indian Movement. “This city was built around the harbor, and it will be re-built around the harbor,” said PHCC founder Cassie Cohen. “Polluters have profited at the expense of people who have suffered from centuries of slow violence in the form of disease, dispossession and displacement Euro Americans settlers stole the river and surrounding lands from the Multnomah Indians, and thousands of other First Nations peoples who fished and traveled through the valley. Industry heads stole economic wealth and health from African American shipyard workers, whose families were segregated and forced to move and move and move again. All while being O I Page 9 plan, and Yakama Nation is requesting high- level consultation to insist on a more thorough clean-up. Currently, she said, EPA is looking to dredge just 8 percent of the Superfund Site, which means it is largely hoping that substances break down over the next few centuries, or slowly become covered by cleaner sediments from upstream. The only other option is a concrete “cap”, which PHCC leader Ibrahim Mubarak has called “a very heavy band-aid,” Another elder, Wilson Wewa, adds “They’ve been here for hundreds of millions of years, but it’s only gonna take a hundred years to wipe them out” Longoria said she is disappointed with the clean-up plan put out by the EPA, and that the Yakama Nation is requesting high- level consultation to insist on a more thorough clean-up. And Jim Robison, chair of the Portland Harbor Community Advisory Group, said that a thoroughly cleaned up river would not only address the injustice of poor families (and a significant number of communities of color) feeding themselves with toxic fish - it would also allow for a much greater fishery on the Willamette that could serve local restaurants - a definite boon to the local economy. The Willamette River is a repository of our past - first filled with fish and abundant life, now filled with poison and over 200 contaminants. In the last century the two rivers that defined Portland represented a hopeful future of industrial might and global empire. In our current age of drought, water scarcity and climate change, the city is hoping for something much different - a home rather than empire. Re-learning our own history, and listening to those who were most harmed by it, will be the key to unlearning those mistakes, and learning to live with the people who have always called this place home. Rose Longoria said she is hopeful that people will learn more about what is happening to the Willamette, and decide for themselves what should be done. “People have one bite at the apple to get it right, to get the site cleaned up.” “Somebody needs to be accountable for it,” said Art McConville, a Umatilla elder with the PHCC. “People can be healed; rivers can be healed.”
