Port has idea for harbor waste

EPA mulls cleanup plan that would store toxins on Willamette

By Ben Jacklet

The Portland Tribune, May 10, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Let’s say that you decide to clean up the lower Willamette River by digging up the most contaminated sediments in the Portland Harbor Superfund site.

Where do you put this stuff?

The Port of Portland has an idea, and it’s a big one. The preferred alternative in documents that the port turned over to the Environmental Protection Agency last week calls for turning Slip 1 at Terminal 4 into a 15-acre dump for 695,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediments.

The project would create a “confined disposal facility” within what’s now a rectangular moorage just north of the St. Johns Bridge. The facility would be separated from the river by a berm designed to withstand earthquakes and floods. It would be filled with contaminated sediments, capped and eventually paved.

Underneath the pavement would be high concentrations of the PCBs, DDT, heavy metals and petroleum waste that led the EPA to list Portland Harbor as a Superfund site in 2000.

Some of the hazardous waste Ñ but not all Ñ would come from the port’s nearby Slip 3. The rest would come from other businesses within the 6-mile stretch of the lower Willamette that makes up the Superfund site.

Because harbor businesses would have to pay to dispose of their waste, the deal could earn the port $10 million or more as the Superfund cleanup unfolds.

Cheryl Koshuta, the port’s director of environmental affairs, said the facility would be safely designed and carefully monitored.

“These facilities have been built for years, and there’s never been one where contaminants got through the berm,” she said.

There are no similar dumps in the Portland area. But many confined disposal facilities have been built over the past 10 years to help clean up polluted waterways such as the Great Lakes and Tacoma’s Commencement Bay.

“The ones that EPA’s overseen in other regions and in the Pacific Northwest have had some level of success,” said Sean Sheldrake, a project manager for the EPA. “We can’t say yet whether the technology would be appropriate here.”

Koshuta emphasized that the decision is far from final, and ultimately it will be the EPA that decides, not the port. The EPA will release the port’s documents in June for public comment, and eventually it will instruct the port which cleanup remedy to pursue.

Storing the dredged waste in an isolated portion of the harbor would have clear benefits over trucking it to a landfill, Koshuta said, such as fewer trucks on neighborhood streets and less risk of spills.

But skeptics argue that if the structure failed, the pollution could end up right back in the river.

“It’s a short-term solution that leaves the community at risk in the long term,” said Jane Harris, executive director of the Oregon Center for Environmental Health. “These are bioaccumulative toxins. They’re going to be there for years and years. They’ll have to keep monitoring that thing forever.”

1 | 2 Next Page >>

Facebook	Digg	Del.icio.us
Newsvine	Stumbleupon	Reddit