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Portland Harbor: Citizens Pay Twice for Toxic Waste - First With Their Health, Then With Their Taxes Lyudmila Blashchishena and her son Jack stand over the Willamette River. Lyudmila worked diligently to educate the Russian community of the dangers associated with eating fish from the Portland Harbor. Greater Portland is home to more than 55,000 Russian immigrants, many of whom rely on sustenance fishing for their livelihood and survival. Around the city, it is quite common to see Russian-speaking people selling fish caught from Portland Harbor out of the trunks of their cars. Unfortunately, in the last few years, eating fish caught in Portland Harbor has become more and more dangerous. In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) listed the harbor as a Superfund industrial toxic dump site, contaminated with arsenic, mercury, volatile organic substances (VOCs), and several pesticides,1 making the fish caught there hazardous to consume. Lyudmila Blashchishena, a community outreach specialist with Russian Oregon Social Services, moved to the United States with her family five years ago from Russia. For the last year, Lyudmila has been actively educating Russian-speaking people about the dangers associated with eating fish caught in Portland Harbor. She has coordinated an extensive outreach program which included educating people on Russian radio talk shows, speaking at churches, and even talking to women in salons while they get their hair and nails done. "I told the men to give the brochures to their wives and to think about their children," says Lyudmila in describing her tactics. "I think it worked!" The longer Portland Harbor remains polluted, the greater the environmental risks and the potential for people to come into contact with contaminated water, sediment, or fish. In addition to the Russian population, Portland is home to numerous other ethnic communities such as Hispanic, Hmong, Vietnamese, and African-Americans, who rely on Portland Harbor for recreation and sustenance fishing. Many of these people remain unaware of the toxins that are in the water, soil, and fish that they consume from Portland Harbor. There are few signs posted near the harbor warning people about the risks of eating the fish, and where there are signs, they are usually printed in English (and sometimes Spanish)-clearly a problem for non-native residents who lack proficiency in English or Spanish. Spanning six miles of the Willamette River from Swan Island almost to the confluence with the Columbia River at Sauvie Island, Portland Harbor has a long history of uses that have contributed to its toxic contamination. The bottom of the harbor has been extensively dredged over the years to maintain a 40-foot deep navigation channel used by ships and barges as they approach the city or head out to sea. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) has released warnings alerting residents that crayfish taken within 1000 feet of the property lines of the former McCormick & Baxter site-an adjacent Superfund site located south of the Burlington Northern Railroad Bridge in Portland Harbor-should not be eaten. The Oregon Department of Human Services (formerly the Oregon Health Division) has also released warnings to residents for the entire main stem of the Willamette River which have been in place in one form or another since the mid-90s. These warnings advise limits on fish consumption not only for children and women of child-bearing age, but also for healthy adults. Residents are warned to reduce their consumption of fatty fish parts as well as skin and eggs.2 In 1997 the Army Corps of Engineers conducted a sediment study and found that soil in Portland Harbor contained high concentrations of contaminants considered dangerously toxic to both animals and humans who come into contact with them.3 To date, the EPA has named 69 industrial operations that are potential sources of contamination to Portland Harbor. However, there is an ongoing investigation of other potentially responsible parties (PRPs).4 A partial list of identified PRPs includes railroads, gas companies, oil companies, steel mills, municipalities, and timber companies. The Superfund law was put into place in 1980 to make polluters pay for cleaning up the messes they created. When no responsible party can be found, or when the responsible party lack the necessary cleanup money, a fund collected from a fee on polluting industries pays for the cleanup. So far, however, only 10 of the 69 PRPs put on notice by EPA are paying for the initial studies and investigation. Except for these early cleanup actions, no cleanup of the rest of the Portland Harbor site will happen for several more years. Today, the Superfund program is drastically underfunded, forcing sites included on the National Priority List to compete for less money. Because the "polluter pays" fund was not reauthorized by Congress in 1995, funding for the cleanup of Superfund sites has continued to decline. Since President Reagan signed Superfund reforms into law in 1985, only the current Bush administration has opposed the polluter-pays fees. As a result, taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill. Portland Harbor contains or is adjacent to many smaller contaminated sites that have unique histories of their own, including the McCormick & Baxter Superfund site-one of more than 10 sites nationally that were denied funding in fiscal year 2003. This lack of cleanup money negatively affects the overall cleanup of Portland Harbor because waste from sites like Baxter & McCormick continues to contaminate the harbor through its tributary waterways. Slowly but surely, Lyudmila's efforts seem to be paying off. But the real solution is to adequately fund the cleanup of Portland Harbor and other Superfund sites desperately in need of attention. For more information contact: Rhett Lawrence, OSPIRG (503) 231-4181, rhettlawrence@yahoo.com Lyudmila Blashchishena, Oregon Russian Social Services (503) 777-3437, lblashchishena@emoregon.org Joe Keating, Community Advisory Group (503) 234-2613, keats@teleport.com www.epa.gove/superfund/sites/npl/nar1606.htm http://www.dhs.state.or.us/publichealth/fishadv/index.cfm www.williamette-riverkeeper.org/superfund/ www.portlandharborcag.org/PRPList.html Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use | © 2008 Sierra Club