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
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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.”