The Coast Range Association The Willamette River

Restoring the Willamette River
A Citizens' Plan

The Willamette River

It's official: the Willamette River - which runs within 20 miles of the homes of 70% of Oregonians, and was once held up proudly as a national environmental success story by Oregonians such as Tom McCall - has once again become Oregon's biggest sewer, and a growing embarrassment. In a recent, first-ever, comprehensive "State of the Environment" report, a panel of more than a dozen scientists concluded that "Oregon's greatest environmental challenge for this century lies in the Willamette Valley."

You can't eat certain Willamette fish because they're contaminated with mercury. On many days, you can't swim or boat in the river because it is full of sewage overflows. The Portland Harbor qualifies as a Superfund site. And far too frequently, the river and many of its tributaries reach temperatures that are too high to provide suitable habitat for fish and other river life. It's small wonder that 99% of the river's historical spring Chinook salmon runs are gone, and (along with steelhead runs) are now listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Thirty years ago, Oregonians responded to similar statistics by rallying around Governor Tom McCall to push for bold new policies and tighter pollution controls that successfully restored the river... for a time. But, as Governor McCall himself once said, "the lobbyist for pollution is indifference."

However, the news about the Willamette isn't all doom and gloom: there are two pieces of truly good news. First, Oregonians want to restore the Willamette River. We're proud of our heritage, and we want our children to be proud of our river as well. The second piece of good news? We know what to do. It will take political courage, but restoring the Willamette really boils down to 10 straightforward steps. These steps are summarized below, along with a few concrete examples of what we need, to do to move forward.

A Ten-Point Restoration Plan

1. End toxic discharges into the Willamette.

The concentration of toxic chemicals in Willamette River sediments is so high that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is moving to declare the lower Willamette a federal Superfund site. Persistent toxic chemicals, like mercury and dioxin, accumulate in the environment, in animals, and in human bodies over time: they are simply too toxic to keep dumping in our rivers. The public understands this better than politicians do: one Oregon poll found that 87% of Oregonians statewide would support a ban on all discharge of toxic chemicals into the Willamette. Governor Kitzhaber signed an Executive Order committing Oregon to eliminate discharge of key persistent toxics by 2020; now the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) needs to act on that order.

• DEQ should set total maximum daily load (TMDL) levels of zero for the 12 key persistent toxic chemicals, effective no later than 2010.
• Consumer products containing persistent toxics (e.g., mercury thermometers) should be labeled as such by 2003, taxed, and banned from sale no later than 2010.
• Fertilizers containing persistent toxic chemicals should be banned from sale by 2005.

2. Create pollution prevention incentives.

Polluters should pay for the damage they do to the Willamette. After all, any time an individual or business can pollute a public river without facing the economic cost, Oregon suffers from both economic waste and too much pollution. Our regulatory programs fight an uphill battle against these powerful market forces. One key solution is to incorporate environmental costs into the price of polluting. The success of Oregon's Bottle Bill is a prime example that even a modest economic incentive can have powerful impacts on behavior. Equally important, Oregon should provide incentives and rewards for polluters that voluntarily go beyond the minimum requirements of law.

• Water pollution permit fees should be raised to cover the full cost of processing permits, inspecting permitted facilities, and enforcing the law (which would require estimated increases of up to 142%). Permit holders who voluntarily reduce their pollution's volume or toxicity should qualify for lower permit fees.
• The current Pollution Control Tax Credit, which pays large polluters $9 million a year to comply with federal law, should be eliminated.
• Oregon should increase its existing fertilizer tax, and adopt a pesticide tax; both should rise gradually to 10% by 2010 with revenues dedicated to watershed restoration and cleanup.
• Polluters who break the law should be subject to mandatory minimum penalties that substantially exceed any economic benefit they gained through their violations.

3. Keep the Willamette wet.

Rivers need water; so do fish and wildlife, and so do people. Unfortunately, far too much water is being pulled out of the Willamette in the summer to meet the needs of irrigators, urban residents, and industry. Without enough water, the Willamette gets hotter; pollution is more concentrated; and key habitats are degraded.

• The Oregon Water Resources Department (WRD) should be given substantial additional resources to support field monitoring of water diversions to ensure withdrawals are legal and properly metered and reported, and to aggressively prosecute illegal withdrawals.
• Oregon should create a state revolving loan fund for water conservation projects, with lower rates or partial loan forgiveness if conserved water is allocated to remain in the river.
• Oregon should phase in a small tax on water use, with proceeds dedicated to water conservation, efficiency investments, and voluntary purchases of water rights.
• WRD should immediately stop issuing any new rights to withdraw water from streams that are polluted (water quality limited) until cleanup plans are in place for those rivers.

4. Protect and restore "riverlands."

Fully functioning floodplains and wetlands are key attributes of a healthy river, yet over 90% of the Willamette Valley's wetlands are already gone. We must end the destruction of these key "riverlands" and begin the task of identifying and restoring critical habitats for fish and wildlife, to make Tom McCall's vision of a Willamette Greenway into reality. There are no "expendable" habitats that can be sacrificed in the overall effort to restore the river; the health of the Willamette is dependent on the health of all its tributary streams, urban or rural developed or undeveloped. We must restore currently degraded riparian habitat, as well as preserve existing riparian ecosystems and riverlands throughout the basin.

• Oregon should acquire at least 50,000 acres of land or conservation easements in key habitats along the Willamette over the next 10 years, and put a moratorium on river channelization projects.
• Cities and counties should adopt local plans and ordinances, similar to Metro's Title 3 requirements, to restrict development in existing streamside wetland areas; severely restrict or prohibit development in floodplains; and steer development away from flood-prone areas.
• Oregon should inventory all the dams, culverts, and other fish passage obstructions in the valley; any found to prevent fish passage or harm fish should be modified to provide safe passage or removed within five years.

5. Protect public health.

People who live along the Willamette enjoy swimming, boating, fishing, and other recreational activities. Unfortunately, playing in the river can be dangerous to our health: sewage spills and overflows, contaminated runoff, and other pollution make water-contact recreation unsafe many days of the year. Anglers are at even greater risk: due to mercury contamination, the Oregon Health Division advises against consuming significant quantities of fish from the Willamette.

• The Oregon Health Division (OHD) should be given the staff and funding to create a comprehensive, coordinated monitoring system, allowing regular testing of fish throughout the river and of water quality in popular swimming and boating areas, to detect and avoid public health threats.
• OHD should also establish an active outreach program to quickly and thoroughly educate people about the health risks of recreation on the Willamette, and ways to minimize those risks. This effort should focus particularly on members of at-risk communities, such as immigrants and Native Americans who regularly fish in the Willamette.
• Portland and other cities along the Willamette must continue moving aggressively to eliminate raw sewage overflows, and OHD should move aggressively to force areas with failing septic tanks to connect to sewer systems.
• DEQ and OHD should not allow the Willamette to be tapped as a new drinking water source until a strong restoration plan has been implemented.

6. Restore wild fish and wildlife.

Passionate editorials aside, salmon are more than a symbol of the Pacific Northwest lifestyle. They are an integral part of the Willamette River's ecology, and of Oregonians' quality of life. Their threatened status is a wake-up call to the degradation that ultimately affects all basin residents. However, restoring the health of the Willamette River system isn't just about recovering endangered species of fish or any of the numerous bird species currently listed as sensitive, threatened or endangered species. It's about restoring aquatic and terrestrial habitats . The day salmon and other wildlife lose their threatened/endangered status will be the day we can celebrate not only the recovery of specific animal populations, but the recovery of the river, and of a key part of what it means to be an Oregonian. Because wild fish and wildlife are dependent on fully functioning ecosystems, all efforts to restore them should be designed to ensure the broadest ecological benefit to the widest range of fish and wildlife species.

• Oregon should lower the maximum acceptable temperature for the Willamette and its salmon-bearing tributaries to 64 degrees from its current target level of 68 degrees.
• Oregon should update its land use planning program to ensure greater protection for both urban and rural floodplains, riparian zones and wetlands, with increased emphasis on restoration of those areas.
• DEQ should tighten all water pollution discharge permits by 2005 to begin lowering the Willamette's temperature.
• Oregon should adopt a statewide law establishing scientifically defensible minimum requirements for protecting streams as well as wildlife habitat including minimum sizes for stream buffers and activities within those buffers.
• The, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife must implement hatchery modifications and harvest reductions to reduce the adverse effects of hatcheries and harvest on threatened and endangered wild fish.

7. Reduce polluted runoff.

Like most other streams and rivers in the United States, the Willamette's primary source of pollutants is runoff. Water flowing from agricultural lands, across streets and highways, off roofs and lawns contribute well over half of the Willamette's pollution. Pavement and other impervious surfaces, particularly in urban areas, increase both the quantity and the speed of runoff, physically altering stream charmers, destroying habitat, and robbing streams of cooler summertime flows during periods of low rainfall.

• By 2005, DEQ should establish erosion control standards for small-scale construction sites not currently subject to erosion control regulations.
• Oregon's Agricultural Water Quality Management Program for reducing the impact of agricultural runoff on water quality should be expanded to address salmon habitat, to include minimum performance targets, and to automatically trigger consequences for failing to meet those targets.
• Oregon should adopt a goal of "no net increase in pavement" and develop both financial incentives and regulations to minimize new pavement, retrofit existing areas, and better manage runoff quality and quantity.

8. Get better data.

We all know the Willamette is a sick river. However, there is shockingly little hard data available to document the exact scope and extent of the Willamette's decline, or to define areas that need particular focused attention. Oregon desperately needs reliable, timely, spatially explicit data and the resources to, analyze those data, including data regarding fish and wildlife populations.

• By 2005, Oregon DEQ should create a computerized database of permitted pollution discharges by watershed and by pollutant.
• WRD should require all water withdrawals in the watershed to be metered, monitored and reported, and that information should be analyzed and made available to the public.
• The Oregon Department of Agriculture must adopt miles implementing Oregon's new (1999) pesticide right-to-know law that ensure the data collected are detailed enough to protect water quality. and readily accessible to drinking water providers, watershed councils, and the public.
• Oregon should fund a single organization to serve as the primary information management point for all data about Willamette watershed health.

9. Set clear goals.

Over 25 years ago, the federal Clean Water Act set clear and reasonable goals: all our rivers should be safe to swim in, to drink from, and to fish from. It's high time we took these goals seriously. Furthermore, we want fish in the Willamette to fish for - specifically, wild salmon and steelhead - as well as healthy populations of wildlife. Once we agree to these basic goals, we need specific performance objectives, assigned to specific government agencies, with specific deadlines attached. Only then we can measure our progress and hold our elected and appointed officials responsible.

• Water quality benchmarks must include meeting or exceeding all federal and state water quality standards for the Willamette by 2020, with specific interim targets defined for how many stream miles will be clean by 2005, 2010, and 2015.
• Salmon recovery benchmarks must include recovering healthy, harvestable populations of wild fish by 2020, with specific targets for the number of salmon and steelhead that will return to each watershed by 2005, 2010, and 2015.
• One state agency should be given clear responsibility for achieving each of these goals, and required to report on its progress each year. Those responsible for these goals should face clear, automatic and direct consequences for failure to meet them. (For example, failure to meet water quality targets should result in automatic, mandatory tightening of permit requirements.)

10. Don't take no for an answer.

Recent efforts to restore the Willamette have produced a lot of reports, a lot of talk and a lot of flowery language. Meanwhile, we've continued business as usual, polluting and degrading the Willamette. For too long we've heard excuses. We've accepted the failure of industry, agriculture, government, and others to restore and protect the Willamette. Most importantly, we've made excuses for ourselves, for our daily decisions that pollute the Willamette. If we are serious about restoring the Willamette, we all must do our part. Enough excuses, and enough talk: now is the time for action. Please join us, and help do your part.

For more information about the Citizens' Plan, and what you can do to restore the Willamette River, please contact:

Karen Lewotsky, Director of Water Programs
Oregon Environmental Council
klew@orcouncil.org
www.orcouncil.org

Travis Williams, Executive Director
Willamette Riverkeepers
travis@willamette-riverkeeper.org
www.willamette-riverkeeper.org

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