Willamette Week| News| Environment

Mike Thorne and Erik Sten insist they're getting along just fine these days, but don't expect them to go canoeing off into the sunset anytime soon.

Correspondence between the two shows that the Port director and city commissioner have been feuding for more than a year. At issue is the cleanup of the Columbia Slough, the bedeviled body of water that moves lazily through the heart of industrial North Portland--including huge parcels owned by the City and Port.

On one side is Commissioner Sten, who wants to create a comprehensive plan for the entire slough watershed. On the other stands Port director Thorne, who says he doesn't have the inclination--or money--to clean up problems not directly tied to Port activities.

In the middle lies the Columbia Slough. Once meandering through much of North Portland, from Fairview Lake to the Willamette River, it is limited today to a narrow channel in the back yard of the industrial district. For decades the slough has been little more than Portland's toilet. Combined sewer overflow--which includes human wastes and storm water runoff with toxic compounds--has run into the ditch unchecked.

These days, thanks to a lawsuit filed by Northwest Environmental Advocates, the Department of Environmental Quality is preparing to hold the two governments, along with other landowners along the banks of the slough, responsible for the quality of the water.

One of DEQ's first steps has been to establish maximum daily limits for several toxics that enter the slough. The first compound they went after was glycol, a de-icing material that runs off airport runways into the slough. The Port has agreed to a schedule that reduces glycol output into the slough over the next five years.

Glycol is a relatively straightforward problem--everyone agrees that it comes from airport operations. But after that, things get murkier. Water from the slough also contains cancer-causing PCBs and herbicides such as DDT, both banned in the '70s. It also has lead, which could have come from gasoline of the '60s or brake-pad dust of the '90s.

Regardless of their sources, DEQ wants these toxics stopped before they find their way into the slough through the storm-water system. As the two biggest landowners along its banks, the Port and the City will shoulder the bulk of the task. And that's where Sten and Thorne's philosophical split comes into play.

The tiff not only demonstrates two different approaches to a complex task but also provides insights into two of the city's most powerful men and the agencies they oversee. Sten, who relishes the public limelight, has displayed smart politics and sound policy as he pushed the Bureau of Environmental Services from its historical role as a sewer agency into more of an environmental advocate. Thorne, by contrast, has kept an amazingly low profile in his nearly eight years at an agency increasingly viewed his agency as a threat to the environmental ("Err Port," WW, March 11, 1998).

The two men had an initial meeting in the fall of 1997 to talk about how their responsibilities to clean up the slough were about to intersect. In December of 1997 the BES, under Sten's oversight, sent a draft of an intergovernmental agreement to the Port proposing a "watershed approach" to the slough.

The draft outlines eight steps, many of which the city has already started under a $10 million EPA grant (which runs out in June), including habitat restoration, various means of storm water control and widening culverts on the slough to increase flow. Also included in the proposal was an education and public outreach program the city said are "critical to the goal of a citizenry responsible for their resources." The Port's price tag under the agreement would be $2.5 million.

Three months later, Thorne sent back his response: thanks, but no thanks. He said the Port has its hands full dealing with the $20-$40 million glycol problem. Besides, he said, the Port is limited by regulatory constraints. "Any Port investment in slough restoration efforts must be directly related to our business," he wrote. "We're not a granting agency. We just can't give money."

In October David Lohman, the Port's director of policy and planning, followed up with a detailed proposal, offering to help BES revegetate about three miles of Port property along the slough. The Port, Lohman said, was willing to kick in about $250,000--a tenth of what Sten had asked for.

Given that his initial conversation with Thorne had been promising, Sten says he was shocked. "On every front I was disappointed. It wasn't much of an idea; it was some small things," he says. "What I was asking was, 'How can we clean up the slough?' They came back as if I was trying to extort money or ask for a favor."

Sten then went over Thorne's head. He wrote a letter to the Port commissioners in November, lamenting the lack of progress on the clean-up plan and asking to meet with them to move things along.

Again, Sten was stymied. Al Gleason, president of the Port Commission, wrote back saying that any business the city has with the Port should be conducted through Thorne.

Since then, Sten and Thorne have met twice. The first meeting was heated. "Our voices got up a little bit," Sten admits.

For his part, Thorne denies there is a clash of cultures between the two governments. He says the Port is working closely with the City. "We've come to an understanding, and I think our relationship is better. I've come to know Erik better, and as a consequence we have a better working relationship."

In response to the increasing attention to environmental issues required by the Port, the agency is hiring a new environmental director. That, Sten says, is a positive direction.

Of course, Sten isn't going to have to worry about patching things up. That task will fall to incoming City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who was assigned the Bureau of Environmental Services by Mayor Vera Katz. Of the tiff between his predecessor and Thorne, Saltzman says, "My sense is it wasn't pleasant for either of them."

With a background in environmental engineering, Saltzman considers himself more an environmentalist and agrees with Sten's vision for the slough that goes beyond just responding to regulatory slaps on the hand. "My job will be that the Port and I come to terms on our vision."

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Willamette Week | originally published January 13, 1999