Update on Portland Harbor Superfund Site

Suzanne Lacampagne
Miller Nash LLP
Portland, Oregon

In the first year since the Portland Harbor site in Portland, Oregon was added to the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL), two significant events have occurred:

• A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between the EPA, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), three natural resource trustee agencies, and six tribal governments. Under the MOU, DEQ will be the lead agency for cleanup work along the banks of the Willamette River, while EPA is the lead agency for in-river work.
• EPA negotiated a cleanup agreement with a coalition of businesses and public agencies known as the Lower Willamette Group. The agreement describes the process by which the boundaries of the cleanup site will be determined and sets forth the initial tasks to be performed in designing the cleanup. The agreement launched the Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study (RI/FS) to assess the nature and extent of contamination in Portland Harbor. Actual remediation will begin after completion of the RI/FS, and may involve dredging, sediment capping, or some other remedy.

The Portland Harbor is a six-mile reach of the Willamette River that was added to the NPL in December 2000. EPA and DEQ have preliminarily identified several contaminants at the site, including PCBs, dioxins and furans, pesticides (including DDT), petroleum hydrocarbons, heavy metals, and semivolatile organic compounds. Many of these contaminants are the result of historic pollution of the Willamette River, in some cases extending as far back as 125 years.

Besides being the last major Superfund site to be designated by the EPA under the Clinton administration, the Portland Harbor site is significant because of the daunting technical and political issues that will accompany a major remediation effort.

• The cleanup will require close coordination between five regulatory agencies and six tribal governments, each of which may have different objectives.
• The Portland Harbor site encompasses a very busy commercial harbor. Cleanup work is likely to significantly disrupt commercial activities on the Willamette River for an extended period, at a time when Oregon has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.
• Endangered salmon and other species must pass through the Portland Harbor site during their life-cycle. There is concern from some parties that cleanup activities in the Willamette River will harm endangered species and degrade the river habitat in the short-term. Other parties believe that fish habitat in the Willamette River will only be improved in the long run by removing the contaminated sediments in the river.

Efforts are now underway through the RI/FS process and biological surveys to better understand contaminants in the Portland Harbor site and to design a cleanup that does not damage fish populations or unnecessarily harm Portland's river-based commerce.