The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said it was placing part of the Bonneville Dam complex in the Columbia River on the list of national superfund sites prioritized for cleanup.
The listing is the culmination of decades of effort by the Yakama Nation, elected officials, environmental groups and others to get the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dam, to address one of the most contaminated sites in the Pacific Northwest.
The designation ensures independent federal oversight of cleanup of some 262 acres of Bradford Island, the central of three islands in the Columbia comprising the hydroelectric dam near Cascade Locks. But the timeline for action remains unclear, with 13 other sites in Oregon and 1,333 nationally already designated as superfund sites, according to information on EPA’s website.
For some four decades ending in the 1980s, the Corps used Bradford Island and the neighboring stretch of the Columbia River – traditional fishing grounds for the Yakama – as a dumping ground for electrical equipment and other waste. The dumping contaminated soil, groundwater, stormwater and river sediment with polychlorinated biphenyls, petroleum hydrocarbons, heavy metals such as mercury and lead, and other chemicals, according to previous assessments of the site.
That in turn left resident populations of fish and other aquatic species with the highest levels of toxic contamination in the Pacific Northwest, and it created a major public health hazard for anyone consuming sturgeon, bass, walleye, crayfish and other species that remain in the same part of the river for long periods of time.
At a news conference Thursday announcing the listing, Yakama Nation Tribal Council member Gerald Lewis said the tribe’s fish consumption rates are significantly higher than that of the average American, that members are at a much higher risk of toxic contamination and that their way of life is being degraded.
“Our hope is more than getting EPA’s involvement,” he said. “Our hope is to secure a gold standard for engagement at the site. Unfortunately, the Corp’s leadership changes regularly and these promises are soon forgotten. Today’s announcement brings us hope and starts to move us in the right direction. Our goal is simple: clean healthy fish that are safe to eat.”
The Army Corps of Engineers has been leading a fitful process to investigate the pollution and clean up the site since 1998. In 2002 and 2007, it removed some electrical equipment and contaminated sediment from the site. But the scope, timing and funding of that cleanup has been the subject of almost constant controversy. Under the Trump administration, the Corps gutted funding for cleanup investigations and in 2020 sought to recover cleanup costs previously agreed to under a voluntary cleanup agreement from the state of Oregon. The state sued.
In July 2021, members of Oregon and Washington’s congressional delegation urged the EPA to add the site to the National Priorities List, saying the Corps had been unable to prioritize decisive action and that additional oversight and engagement by the EPA was critical to ensure that meaningful remediation took place.
The new designation on the list puts the EPA in charge of overseeing the Corp’s cleanup work. It will result in more tribal and public input, more scrutiny by EPA, and tighter legal controls on the cleanup. Lauren Goldberg, a lawyer for Columbia Riverkeeper, said the new designation will give EPA control over what standards are being used in the cleanup for public health and wildlife protections, and ensure the Corps is not policing itself.
Michelle Pirzadeh, EPA’s acting administrator for the region, said there was no specific timeline or dollar estimate for the cleanup, but now that Bradford Island had been added to the priority list, it would remain there until it meets the conditions for removal. The next steps, she said, would be developing a formal agreement for the cleanup, assessing the full extent of the contamination and developing risk assessments and alternative cleanup scenarios.
Such cleanups can drag on for decades. Portland Harbor, the biggest problem in Portland, has been on the list for 20 years without deep remediation of the site apart from “early-action” cleanups of hotspots in what is a 10 mile stretch of the lower Willamette River.
A number of participants in the news conference Tuesday, including the governors of Oregon and Washington and several members of Oregon’s congressional delegation, stressed the need to move forward decisively.
U.S. Rep Earl Blumenauer, D-Portland, said he’d worked on the issue for his entire tenure in Congress and that there had been too many false steps and reversals over the years.
“This is an encouraging sign,” he said, “but after 26 years, it’s clear to me we cannot afford to relax.”
-- Ted Sickinger; tsickinger@oregonian.com; 503-221-8505; @tedsickinger