Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Smoke signals. (Grand Ronde, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 2003)
2 OCTOBER 1, 2003 Smoke Signals 2003 water feature Water: A Battle Fought On Many Fronts Editor's Note With the importance of water resources growing globally, nationally, region-wide and locally it becomes crystal clear that water is the new gold. If you follow the news, and even if you don't, you know that water is one of Mother Earth's most precious commodities. Last summer, the whole world watched as Klamath Basin farmers and local Indians fought a modern-day war over water. At home, prosperity means new construction. But, that construction has been delayed as we do the water dance with the local water authority. Living in the great Northwest where it rains almost everyday, it is easy to take for granted the importance of our water resources. Here, we took a look at water from many perspectives locally and state-wide and we invite you to look at your own views on water. All stories by Ron Karten The indigenous way of life in America has long had a romantic side to it. Not that the romance was all that romantic as it was being lived, but a century of European culture has certainly dropped in with a dose of reality. A look at what's happen ing to water, not only here in Grand Ronde, but throughout the region, across the country and around the globe, provides a sobering update. Twenty five hundred years ago, the Chinese sage, Lao Tsu, wrote, "A sound man, like water, serves as he goes along." But as the saga of the American West unfolded, Sagoyewatha, Chief of the Seneca People, discovered that serving like water also meant the undoing of the Native way of life. Much of that way of life fell as the dominant culture moved west across the continent, but Indians never let go of their connection to fishing and theirrespect for the waterways that provided for them for so many cen turies. That connection to the riv ers is proving itself to have been superior to the stewardship we see today. Untold challenges neverthe less remain. As Native peoples rise again across America, many are working to bring the waterways back to life. They face a shrinking supply of Your forefathers crossed the great water and landed on this is land. Their numbers were small. We took pity on them and they sat down among us. We gave them corn and meat. They gave us poison in return. -Sagoyewatha (Red Jacket), Seneca. water. It is over-committed to elec tricity and farming, often leaving fish without. Increasingly, water supplies are also falling into private hands and sold for profit, even as public needs remain unmet. Po table reserves in many parts of the world are literally unaffordable in poor and indigenous communities. In the face of all that, Tribal ef forts here in Grand Ronde have se cured enough water for the commu nity today with room to grow. And the Tribe is participating in plans to develop a regional supply that will provide enough water for the whole area for the foreseeable future. There is still much to be concerned about. Hardly a day goes by that we don't get another news report about the abysmal state of the world's water supply. A recent BBC story reported that in the last 18 years, the Aral Sea in Central Asia "has virtually split in two and a great white expanse of salty desert has claimed the seabed re vealed by the contracting waters." With fishing villages now miles from shore, the story goes on to say, "The independent states of Central Asia are now joined in an associa tion to manage the waters that feed the Aral but in practice there is little agreement among them on how best to share the resource." Too far from home? How about a Reuters story that said, "Farmed salmon, which Americans are scarf ing down because it is supposed to be healthy, may actually be carry ing high levels of cancer-causing chemicals called PCBs...." The fish tested came from Washington, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. It is at once frightening to see how poorly we humans have managed this resource, but also hopeful, when you look at the long record of the indig enous peoples of the world, and see how many are rising again to adapt the old ways to our new problems. Filthy Habits Local waterways and groundwater are at risk. In Sheridan and at the Portland Harbor, two areas of interest to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, the Environmental Protec tion Agency (EPA) has established "Superfund" sites or those envi sioned by President Carter in 1979 as "hazardous waste dump sites, which threaten public health or the environment." Over the years, these sites have been contaminated by companies and even government agencies dumping toxic substances right into local rivers or into ground reposito ries. As of July 2000, 60 percent of 1,238 sites across the country had "all cleanup construction com pleted," according to the agency. The Taylor Lumber site in Sheridan, which was added to the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Superfund List in 2001, broke its owners. They were spending mil lions of dollars on the cleanup just as the bottom fell out of the timber market. Testing showed that contami nants including arsenic, creosote, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and pentachorophenol (PCP), dioxin and mercury, accord ing to the EPA were "found in high concentrations in the soil, groundwater, and drainage ditches surrounding the facility." Forty-two hundred tons of con taminated soil was removed from the property. "To prevent further move ment of contaminated groundwater, EPA also built a slurry wall and an asphalt cap around the main treat ment plant," an EPA fact sheet said. A second asphalt cap was built in the treated pole storage area. "Both caps will limit airborne dust, which contains contaminants such as arsenic." In addition, the walls, which extend down into im permeable rock, are designed to (though monitoring continues), but in Portland, the Harbpf .ite still has a long way to go, according to Rod Thompson, Water Quality Special ist, who monitors water issues for the Tribe. At the harbor, the EPA continues to evaluate which companies are responsible for which contami nants, and what responsibility each company holds in paying for the cleanup, said Thompson. The EPA recently selected 11 sites nationwide to clean up for the com ing year indicating that it was not allocated the money to either select more or clean up more of those pre viously selected. m r 'Wilt S tM,-sj,v f jf ill ij lZZZrzz' xr::zf rrrzr - J t,iifcwttiit -j O ' :';"'',; .. .. ... a. In Your Backyard The Taylor Lumber and Treating Superfund site in Sheridan (above) is now owned and operated by Pacific Wood Preserving Companies, a privately held company with facilities also in California, Arizona and Nevada. The Environmental Protection Agency called Pacific Wood Preserving "the largest treater of low-environmental-impact wood in the United States." keep the contaminants from mov ing, possibly to the South Yamhill River nearby, or into local sources of ground water. The Sheridan area was fortunate that the Taylor Lumber and Treat ing plant has its problem capped Polluting industries used to be taxed to pay for the cleanups that offending companies either declined to clean up or could not clean up be cause they had gone bankrupt or disappeared, but the tax on these industries lapsed under heavy pressure from industry lobbyists in 1996, when the fund had reached $3.8 billion. Today, the fund is below $30 mil lion, and the Bush administration has explicitly declined to reinstate the tax on industry to continue funding the 30 percent of cleanups that companies decline to handle. That leaves fewer sites being named, fewer being cleaned up and for those that are named and cleaned, the tax payer is picking up the tab. An internal EPA study of the pe riod from 1999 to 2001 found that "about a quarter of the nation's larg est industrial plants and water treat ment facilities are in serious viola tion of pollution standards at any one time, yet only a fraction of them face for mal enforcement actions," according to the Washing ton Post. Even when fined, these companies paid only about $6,000, the newspaper reported. Before laws were passed in the early 1980s regard ing the disposal of haz ardous wastes, thousands of companies routinely and legally dumped these problem substances into the ground and water and released them into the air. There are now 11 Superfund sites in Oregon and 81 others being watched for potential list ing. Three have been cleaned up. Two have been formally proposed for listing. Ten have groundwater contamination and 44 percent of Oregonians rely on groundwater for drinking, all accord ing to information collected from the EPA by the state Public Interest Re search Groups and the Sierra Club.
