Eugene weekly., December 18, 2003, Page 13, Image 13

A Throw-Away Creek?
Public perception of the creek as a ditch
worries Cindy Thieman, projects and mon-
itoring coordinator for the Long Tom
Watershed Council.
“One of the problems with Amazon
Creek is that it’s not at this point a very aes-
thetically pleasing creek for most of its
length,” says Thieman. “I think people
don’t have the urge to protect it because it’s
something that they’ve just kind of thrown
away in their minds as a resource.”
Nevertheless, some residents care
enough about local waterways to partici-
pate in the Watershed Council, a voluntary
grassroots group that brings together people
with diverse perspectives on watershed-
related issues. The organization carries out
restoration projects throughout the water-
shed, including on Amazon Creek. More
than 100 active council members include
farmers, government officials, representa-
tives from the forest products industry and
concerned citizens.
Thieman says that the watershed council
has given people a platform for non-con-
frontational dialogue. “There have been a fair
number of acquaintenceships, if not friend-
ships, struck between people who wouldn’t
otherwise talk to each other,” she says.
While she praises the city’s approach to
creek maintenance, Thieman is troubled by
the amount of pollution in the Amazon
Creek. Most of it, she emphasizes, comes
not from industry, but from non-point
source pollution — all of the contaminants
running off the streets of Eugene. And the
responsibility for it falls on the shoulders of
every resident.
Pavement’s Price
In a natural system, rainwater filters
through layers of soil before reaching a
body of water. But when the ground is
paved, water rushes straight to the nearest
storm drain, which carries it untreated to
local waterways. For west and south Eugene
residents, that means Amazon Creek.
“You can think of a watershed as sort of
like a sponge,” explains Thieman. “If you
shellac all over the sponge, it doesn’t have
the holding capacity it did.”
And Eugene has been shellacked. Every
paved street, driveway, and parking lot in
town is an impervious, or impenetrable, sur-
face. So when it rains — and Eugene gets an
average of 54 inches of rain a year — the
water picks up a stew of pollutants. These
include fertilizers and pesticides from peo-
ple’s yards, moss retardant used on roofs,
oils from cars, sediments and soaps hosed
off driveways, and domestic animal wastes.
“It’s really death by a thousand cuts,” says
Taylor. “And each individual homeowner,
and each person, has a role to play there.”
What frustrates Thieman and Taylor
about impervious surfaces is that without a
concerted effort on the part of the citizens,
there’s not much that they can do to
decrease the flow of pollution to the creek.
Not that the city hasn’t tried. Eugene’s
Stormwater Management Program was
launched in 1993 after the completion of an
ambitious management plan to protect resi-
dents from floods, improve water quality,
and protect natural resource values. The
program is financed by monthly stormwater
user fees, which are based on the quantity
of impervious surfaces at all households
and businesses in Eugene.
Still, Thieman is not convinced that the
creek is getting healthier. The amount of
paved surfaces is increasing, and residents
are still contaminating them.
“If everybody’s adding pollutants from
their own property, and it ends up in the
creek,” she says, “there’s nothing you can
do to the creek itself to be able to clean all
that water.”
by identifying activities that could impact
stormwater runoff and developing a strate-
gy to eliminate or minimize the exposure of
pollutants to stormwater.
Twice a year, industries with 1200-z per-
mits are required to sample and analyze
stormwater runoff for contaminants listed in
their permits as “benchmarks.” If contami-
nants exceed suggested “benchmark” levels,
industries must review their stormwater pol-
lution control plans and identify additional
ways to reduce pollutant levels.
“Industries are doing a pretty good job.
They can always do better,” says Gary
Cloyes, industrial source control technician
for the city of Eugene’s Wastewater Division
of Public Works. “The regulations are going
to get stricter all the time in the city.”
But industries whose stormwater runoff
violates water quality standards have plen-
ty of chances to reform. If an industry vio-
lates a condition of its permit for the first
time, the city sends a “request for corrective
action” letter. If a second violation occurs,
the city sends the industry another letter and
refers the violation to the DEQ, which then
issues a notice of noncompliance. The first
notice is a warning, says Cloyes, and “more
could result in penalties.”
Eugene’s most notorious case of
stormwater contamination involves the J. H.
Baxter wood treatment plant on North
Baxter Road. In February1999, the compa-
ny’s monitoring report showed that
stormwater discharge concentrations of four
pollutants exceeded the permitted limits.
Arsenic and suspended sediments were
sampled at twice the permitted concentra-
tions, zinc was sampled at 14 times the per-
mitted concentration, and copper was sam-
pled at 49 times the permitted concentration.
“It is unacceptable to have 1.2 pounds
per day of copper and 3.3 pounds per day of
zinc released into the environment from a
facility that is under an NPDES permit
which is supposed to be limiting and con-
trolling these parameters,” wrote Peter
Ruffier, the wastewater director of the city
of Eugene, in an internal memo.
Under pressure from the city and its res-
idents, the company installed more monitor-
ing wells around the plant and improved its
stormwater collection and treatment system.
The monitoring report for October 2003
showed the contaminants in Baxter’s
stormwater to be within the permitted limits.
On the DEQ’s List
Meanwhile, the concentration of arsenic
in Amazon Creek has caught the DEQ’s
attention.
Oregon’s DEQ maintains a list of the
state’s stream segments that fail to meet
water quality standards. Called the 303(d)
List because it is required by section 303(d)
of the federal Clean Water Act, the list is
updated every two years.
Amazon Creek is on the 2002 303(d) List
KERA ABRAHAM
ditches,” says Taylor with a laugh. “But we
have a stream-ditch.”
Industrial Pollution
Both city officials and representatives of
the Watershed Council say that residential
industrial stormwater discharge is a mini-
mal threat to the health of the creek
because, unlike residential runoff, it is reg-
ulated by federal law.
Certain industries, such as textile mills,
printers, and makers of wood and metal
products, have been identified by the EPA as
having the potential to contaminate
stormwater runoff. If stormwater drains from
the property of such an industry into a public
waterway via a point source, like a pipe or a
catch basin, the industry is required to obtain
a 1200-z National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System (NPDES) permit from
the state of Oregon’s Department of
Environmental Quality (DEQ).
The 1200-z permit requires its holder to
create a stormwater pollution control plan
A T OXIC C HANNEL
A stream adjacent to Amazon Creek runs through the industrial flats of west Eugene
from Seneca Avenue to Meadowlark Prairie, draining the lots of 166 businesses. It’s
called the A-3 Channel, and it’s one of the most toxic waterways in the state of Oregon.
In 1997, the DEQ launched a project to improve water quality in the channel by
encouraging local businesses to keep pollutants from reaching the stream. Although
80 percent of the companies complied, a biological survey showed that the A-3
Channel was still highly degraded and had almost no habitat value.
The A-3 is listed on Oregon’s 303(d) list of water quality limited streams for six
parameters: dichloroethylenes, tetrachloroethylene, arsenic, lead, mercury, and E.
coli. “That’s from a legacy of industry along the A-3 Channel,” says Cindy Thieman of
the Long Tom Watershed Council, “before there were the types of regulations that
there are today.”
This is not good news. Dichloroethylenes affect the growth, tissue structure, and
mortality of fish. Tetrachloroethylene, a known carcinogen, affects the behavior and
mortality of fish, kills insects and worms, impacts the biochemistry of phytoplankton,
and impairs the reproduction of zooplankton. Arsenic, a known carcinogen and devel-
opmental toxin for humans, can kill amphibians, fish and zooplankton. Lead, also a
known carcinogen and a developmental toxin, has negative effects on worms,
Andy Gilmore
amphibians, fish, mollusks, insects, aquatic and terrestrial plants, phytoplankton and
zooplankton. Mercury, a developmental toxin, is highly toxic to amphibians, crus-
taceans, fish, nematodes and zooplankton. And E. coli, a bacteria commonly found in
the intestines of humans and animals, is identified as an emerging cause of food
borne and waterborne illnesses.
One way to reduce the movement of pollutants is to encourage sedimentation. A
weir structure controls the flow of water from the A-3 Channel, allowing for the dep-
osition of sediments in the flooded Meadowlark Prairie. The A-3 flows into the origi-
nal Amazon Creek channel several hundred yards south of this structure.
But the city does little else to deal with the pollution in the A-3 Channel. “The toxic
issues along A-3 we’re not currently addressing,” says Trevor Taylor of the Parks and
Open Space Division. “Most of the toxins are heavy metals, and a lot of the heavy metals
bind with sediment. For us to remediate them, we’d have to dig them out and send them
to a special toxic materials landfill.” The city chooses not to do this, says Taylor, because
disturbing the sediments would kick up the heavy metals and cause them to start flow-
ing down the creek. “Our hope is to really not disturb them,” he says. — Kera Abraham
For more information about the A-3 channel and other waterways on Oregon’s
303(d) list, visit the DEQ’s website: www.deq.state.or.us. To learn more about the
hazards of specific chemicals, check out the Pesticide Action Network’s chemical
information database: www.pesticideinfo.org.
DECEMBER 18, 2003 13