When Dan Saltzman pitches the BES' new CSO plan to fellow
City Council members this week, don't be surprised if
the DEQ, EQC and NMFS say it should be the CWA, not the
ESA, that guides the CRP.
Got that?
You're not alone.
Even the most experienced policy wonk gets acronym-induced
vertigo when faced with the complex issues facing the
Willamette River these days. If it's too much for policy
makers to digest at once, how is the average Portlander
supposed to understand?
We're here to help. Let's take it a chunk at a time.
The two most pressing acronyms floating around the
Willamette right now are the CSO (Combined Sewer Overflow)
and the ESA (Endangered Species Act).
The CSO project is a holdover from earlier in the decade
when environmentalists sued the city for not meeting
pollution limits established by the federal Clean Water
Act. Specifically, the city was slammed for allowing
raw sewage to combine with stormwater and flow into
the river and Columbia Slough nearly every time it rains.
The city responded by making plans to build big pipes
to manage the sewage.
The ESA is the more recent federal fish listing. Earlier
this year the feds put a slew of salmon and chinook
runs throughout the West on the endangered species list,
including four that travel smack through the middle
of town in the Willamette.
So what's the CSO-ESA connection?
It depends who you talk to. It would seem to make sense
that sewage running into the river isn't good for fish,
but that isn't necessarily so.
Peter Lavigne, director of the watershed-management
professional program at Portland State University, says
that while sewage bacteria is bad for people, it's not
hurting fish. We'll get E. coli and other such
nasties if we swallow the tainted water, but the fish
will swim on through. "Salmon are built to take an enormous
bacterial load in the river," he says.
That means we could spent hundreds of millions of dollars
stopping the sewage overflow and it won't do jack to
bring back the salmon.
Saltzman, who oversees the city's Bureau of Environmental
Services, says that's stupid.
This week, Saltzman will hold the first public hearing
on his new Clean River Plan, which responds to the state
mandate to reduce the sewage flow into the Willamette.
The city has been ordered to reduce the number of days
sewage flows to the river from the current level of
about 100 days a year to around five and to do it by
the year 2011. Estimates are that the original "big
pipe" plan to do that would cost around $664 million.
Saltzman, however, want to to scrap the old plan and
fundamentally shift the thinking on CSOs to a greener
solution. Rather than simply building massive pipes,
he wants to plant trees, improve flood plains, restore
streams such as Johnson Creek and increase the riparian
zones along the rivers. His thinking is that these natural
water catchers will reduce the overflow going to the
pipes, thereby reducing the size--and cost--of pipes
that need to be built. In addition, they'll help the
salmon.
To carry out his plan, he needs a chunk of money and
is looking to the CSO budget to get it--to the tune
of $110 million. He also needs more time; he wants to
extend the deadline nine years to 2020.
Saltzman has to convince the state's Environmental
Quality Commission, which oversees the state order to
reduce the CSOs, to give him an extension. If he gets
it, he says, he'll be able to reduce CSOs and
improve salmon habitat.
In a way, the idea of going green to solve the CSO
problem seems visionary. If Portland could bring the
salmon runs back, it would be as historic as the original
cleanup of the Willamette in the early 1970s.
Still, he has a hard sell.
Nina Bell, of Northwest Environmental Advocates, which
brought the lawsuit that forced the city's original
CSO plan, thinks Saltzman is simply stalling.
"Is there any reason to extend the deadline for green
purposes?" she asks. "No."
Bell says the city sees the money allocated for the
CSO project as a pot of gold they can tap into for fish
recovery.
Bell and other critics say Saltzman hasn't yet provided
hard data to prove that his green solutions will increase
the salmon runs. They also say that money to help fish
shouldn't come from the CSO project, which will be funded
by skyrocketing sewer and water fees.
Finally, critics note that the city doesn't have to
recover the fish--National Marine Fisheries rules simply
say that we can do no further harm to the fish. While
better habitat and healthier runs may be desirable,
massive recovery efforts proposed by Saltzman will not
be dictated by the feds.
Politically, Saltzman may find himself a victim of
the state Department of Environmental Quality's new
desire to look hard-nosed so that the feds won't list
the northern Willamette River as a Superfund site. For
years, the agency has suffered criticism that it's too
soft on industry and Portland. Langdon Marsh, director
of DEQ, reacted quickly and fiercely to Saltzman's proposal,
saying the original deadlines must be met.
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Willamette Week | originally
published November 23,
1999
