Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Hayden Island

The Importance of Whale Poop

A study finds that whale poop plays a major role in the health of the ocean, here.
No, there will not be a cocktail recipe for this one.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Springwater Trail Parts 2 and 3



You can enter Oaks Bottom from the north or the south. I’ve always avoided the main entrance to the north because I associate it with death. When I was in college, a kid I knew disappeared, and I remember them searching Oaks Bottom for him (they later found his body in the river). Years later, someone else I knew drowned there. But I’ve been walking Jackie along the bluff above Oaks Bottom and down through the southern part for many years as well. There are lots of birds there, including blue herons, osprey, and at certain times of the year, a pair of bald eagles.

For the sake of the project, I finally parked at the main entrance and walked down trail I’d been avoiding. It’s a perfectly nice, lightly wooded area, with a paved trail that links up with the Springwater trail.

I continued south, past the gigantic mausoleum, until I got to Southeast Spokane Street, and then I went back. There’s a mural on the mausoleum wall that faces the marsh, with native birds painted much, much larger than life. I wrote an article about it once, and interviewed the head muralist. Well, it turns out that he is also dead — he died in a snowmobiling accident this spring.

A few days later I parked near Spokane and took the next segment of the trail, including the part that hasn’t been built yet. You walk on surface streets for about half a mile, heading west away from the Willamette, until you get back to the trail. As you can see in the photo, it’s not quite as fancy as the main entrance from Day One.

We walked through Sellwood and crossed three bridges: one over Johnson Creek, one over the highway, and one over some railroad tracks. If you were leading a group hike, you could work in a little commentary on the history of transportation here.

From here on out, Johnson Creek will be a regular presence. It’s the one remaining of a huge number of creeks that used to run through the city of Portland (or where the city was to be.) For some reason Johnson Creek was never paved over — one of those examples where neglect is beneficial for the environment in the long term. Johnson Creek runs through some of the sketchier parts of Portland. Along with its obscene name, the creek brings to mind trailer homes, abandoned cars, dumped tires, and blackberry brambles.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The Springwater Trail, Phase 1


The goal: hike the Springwater Trail.

That’s right, 21 miles of un-punishing trails and non-rugged terrain in a climate where temperatures can gradually plunge to below 50 degrees. Each non-grueling stage of the journey will last from two to five unexcruciating miles.

One thing about old railroad beds — they’ve been graded to a perfect flatness. Work on the Springwater Trail in 1996 and it is mostly, but not entirely, completed. It begins where the Eastbank Esplanade ends and continues east all the way to Boring, following a route that was the route of a passenger train from 1903 to 1958.

During the first stage of the expedition, I discovered that the bike- and foot-path closest to my house, and which I’d never been on before, is really cool. You pass by wooded areas, great views of the river, weird industrial scenes, and picturesque homeless camps. Since I don’t have someone dropping me off and picking me up, I actually have to hike the whole trail twice over. On the first day, I got to Milepost 2.5 and then returned.

An osprey's nest


as seen from the Springwater Trail

A side channel of the Willamette River


as seen from the Springwater Trail

Monday, October 18, 2010

Down with Dudley


Republican candidate for Oregon governor Chris Dudley is an one-man environmental disaster. His biggest donor, in fact, is a timber company. And his economic policies are likely to cause serious problems for the enforcement of basic environmental rules. When the Oregonian did a piece on the two candidates’ views on the environment, Dudley blew off the reporter. Oh, yeh, and he’s not convinced that global warming is caused by humans. I couldn’t bring myself to make a cocktail for him, so instead, I made one in honor of his opponent, Oregon’s dashing former governor, John Kitzhaber (endorsed by the Sierra Club. The candidate, I mean, not the drink.)

Kitz cocktail:

1 shot bourbon

1 teaspoon maple syrup

splash of pepper vodka

Combine ingredients in a shaker without ice and stir. Add ice and shake. Strain into your most attractive cocktail glass. This is a close race, but the more you drink, the more votes Kitzhaber will get.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Drink your beer from a bottle

Aluminum production is not cool, especially when something goes wrong, as it just did in Hungary.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Gas Pipeline Safety

Here's a New York Times article on gas transmission pipelines. Scary- don't read right before bedtime:

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Fish kill

Here's a creepy photo from Louisiana:

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Oregon Public Broadcasting's new blog

OPB has a new environmental blog: Ecotrope
I really wanted that job! Oh well.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Road Trip: Washington D.C.


Look, it's the National Pond Scum

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Hanford: Now even more contaminated!

For years, the Hanford site on the Columbia River has been known as the most contaminated nuclear site in North America.

Now the New York Times reports that “the amount of plutonium buried at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State is nearly three times what the federal government previously reported.”

That doesn’t mean that the site is three times as contaminated as previously thought — sigh of relief — since plutonium is just one of the deadly, poorly contained toxins at the site. But with a half-life of 24,000 years, it’s a concern. Cleaning it up will be a complex process, “perhaps requiring technologies that do not yet exist,” the Times reports whimsically.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Cocktail Photomicrography

A lab at Florida State University has been taking photos of cocktails at the microscopic level. In addition to the colorful, crystalline formations, they've included useful recipes and fun facts. The Long Island Iced Tea, for instance, "usually gets us commode-hugging drunk." Sounds like a good party school. See images here:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cocktails/index.html
You can even buy them as posters!

Monday, July 19, 2010

Cocktail Recipe: The BP

After several failed attempts, I have concocted a drink in honor of the Gulf oil well disaster. This is not a celebratory cocktail, although the flow has currently been stopped. But with massive amounts of oil and dispersants still swirling around out there, this is the kind of drink that you drink because things are really, really bad.

It’s strong and sweet. The egg whites give it a frothy texture, and a faintly off odor. And it leaves a scum behind.

The BP

1 shot gold rum

½ shot Kahlua

White of an egg, or 2 tablespoons pasteurized egg whites

Combine with ice in a shaker. Shake thoroughly, strain, top with unsweetened cocoa powder.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Palomar Pipeline Delayed Indefinitely


When the Bradwood Landing LNG project was cancelled, the folks behind the Palomar Pipeline, which would have linked Bradwood to the existing natural gas pipeline system, claimed to be moving forward. All along, they had insisted that the pipeline and the LNG terminal were two separate projects. But now they are citing Bradwood's bankruptcy as a major reason for putting Palomar on what I am guessing will be a permanent hiatus.
The Palomar Pipeline was an environmental nightmare. Here's hoping competitor Oregon LNG's pipeline follows it into Oregon's fascinating mausoleum of terrible ideas that never saw the light of day.
Photo: Mount Hood, where a new natural gas pipeline will NOT be cutting a swath of destruction.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Reindeer's Tears


The other day I was sitting in a bar with some friends, drinking a vodka and cranberry. One of my friends said, "Oh, you got a reindeer's tears."
No one else had ever heard the drink called that before. She used to live in Alaska- I think that's where she got it.
Looking it up online, I found several variations on the recipe, but none was just a vodka-cran. In fact, a reliable-looking account said the whole thing was a Finnish joke: you pour a shot of vodka, put in a single cranberry, then drink the vodka. The cranberry adds nothing.
At any rate, it always seemed to me that vodka and cranberry should have a name. And I'm sure there are plenty of sad reindeer out there, what with the global warming and all.
Photo: Ironically, it makes a good summer drink.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Sea Lion Season Ends

When I first went out to Oregon City to look for sea lions, I didn’t know much about the issue. Now I’ve seen the lions at both Willamette Falls and the Bonneville Dam. I’ve done a lot more research and I’ve thought it over carefully.

I now totally oppose the killing of sea lions at Bonneville Dam, and I’m pissed that the authorities are now seeking permission to kill sea lions at Willamette Falls as well.

The spring Chinook salmon season is over, now, and the sea lions have gone off to their coastal mating grounds (except for the 12 that were killed.) The issue won’t come up again until next spring, when more sea lions will be killed. That’s despite the fact that, according to the Oregonian, the killing of sea lions at Bonneville failed to reduce the number of salmon being killed by the sea lions.

In other words, culling doesn’t work. Or in other words, it would only work if they killed ALL the sea lions at the dam.

Forty years ago, that’s what they would have done. Until the late 1960s, there was a bounty on sea lion heads in Oregon. And that’s an important backdrop to this story.

Back then, they thought that removing predators would increase the number of salmon, just as fishermen in Japan slaughter dolphins, thinking that it will increase the number of fish they catch.

We now know that removing top predators from a food chain in bad for the entire ecosystem. But this plan to kill sea lions isn’t intended to protect the ecosystem. It’s intended to protect fishermen — and that in only a short-sighted, short-term way.

The influence of the sport fishing lobby has often been good for the environment, but here I feel they’ve totally lost their heads. There needs to be a long term goal of increasing the numbers of wild salmon, not preserving individual fishery salmon so that they can be caught on lines instead of eaten by sea lions.

Vengeance should have no place in this equation. Neither should a certain bizarre and outdated way of describing these animals as if they were people — bad people.

The Oregon City News, for instance, quotes Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt (D-Clackamas):

“The sea lions grab the fish right out of the water and take a bite out of them in plain view before they throw them away,” he said. “Fundamentally, they’re bullies.”

Over and over again, the sea lions are portrayed as interlopers, gluttonous, belligerent, obese creatures who don’t play by the rules. Actually they’re just doing what they’ve always done, or at least, what they always did, before we nearly wiped them out, just a few decades ago.

Photo: A flyer posted on the bulletin board at Bonneville Dam

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Road Trip: Bend


Busch is the official beer of litterbugs everywhere. Along country roads and scenic viewpoints and the high water marks of beaches, cans of Busch certainly aren't the only garbage, but look around and you'll see what I mean. That glinting silver in the sagebrush or seaweed or ferns? It's almost always Busch. This photo was taken in the lava rocks at the base of Mount Bachelor near Bend, Oregon.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Drink Review: The Atomic Cocktail


So I finally got around to making an Atomic Cocktail, and it was disgusting.

The Atomic Cocktail was invented in the 1950s in Las Vegas, when nuclear explosions at the nearby Nevada Proving Ground were being promoted as a tourist attraction. This was a drink specifically designed to toast the mushroom cloud, so it should be the favorite drink of this blog.

Unfortunately, if appropriately, it tastes like rocket fuel. The drink starts out traitorously with vodka, which is mixed with an equal part brandy and a splash of sherry. Shake, strain, top with Champagne. It’s sharp, aggressive, and mean, and you start to feel a buzz almost immediately.

I don’t recommend it, although I do recommend its predecessor, this 1945 song by Slim Gaillard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6492gMX0tAY

(presented here with a weird and excellent montage of atomic memorabilia.)

As Slim says, “Take one sip, you won’t need any more.”

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The Oregon LNG project is a dead end

Photo: The Skipanon Peninsula, proposed site of the Oregon LNG terminal, Oct. 2009

I have decided to remove the Oregon LNG liquefied natural gas terminal from my list of looming environmental disasters. It’s still a terrible idea, but I just don’t see any way that it’s really going to happen.

Some of my reasons:

1. The bankruptcy of Bradwood Landing LNG. You might think the loss of its biggest rival would be good news for Oregon LNG, but like Bradwood, Oregon LNG is backed by investment bankers, and they like a good, safe investments. When an almost identical project goes bankrupt, red lights start flashing.

2. In the May election, three non-incumbents were elected to the five-person Clatsop County Board of Commissioners, and all three are opposed to LNG, including one candidate who was a high-profile anti-LNG activist before running.

3. Peter Hansen is an ass. Hansen is the CEO of the project as well as its main spokesperson (which looks kind of sketchy right there), and he’s managed to piss off pretty much everyone. He’s also stopped speaking to the Daily Astorian.

4. Oregon LNG still doesn’t have it’s FERC certificate, and the Bush era of rubber stamping these things is over.

5. Oregon LNG relies on an extremely controversial pipeline that will be causing headaches for years to come. I just don’t think it has the legs to weather both local opposition to the terminal and something like 200 separate eminent domain court battles.

6. The anti-LNG coalition is focused, experienced and emboldened.

For these reasons I have decided to stop obsessing on Astoria politics and instead to dedicate my neurotic energy to the oil spill in the Gulf.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Road Trip: Las Vegas


Although not as popular as the sexy sailor-and-siren review at the Treasure Island Casino, the Atomic Testing Museum draws a fair number of Las Vegas tourists. We took a cab from the ridiculously opulent entrance of the Venetian, past the gondolas and the campanile and the winged lion, and pretty soon we were on a godforsaken, dusty stretch of Flamingo Road.

In the parking lot of the Atomic Museum, you feel like you’re really in the desert.

The Nevada Proving Ground (now known as the Nevada Test Site) is about 65 miles away, to the northwest. The museum, an affiliate of the Smithsonian, documents the various stages of atomic testing in Nevada, first above and then below ground.

During the above-ground tests, which lasted from 1951 until 1963, the mushroom clouds were visible from Vegas, and were actually a tourist attraction.

Las Vegas began billing itself as Atomic City. At the Sky Room in the Desert Inn, tourists drank Atomic Cocktails and took in panoramic views of the desert and the nuclear explosions in the distance.

The Atomic Testing Museum does a good job of merging the pop culture aspects of the atomic age with the science, the military history and the spectacle of the Bomb. A big disappointment is that photography is not allowed — I can’t remember all the stuff in the glass case dedicated to products branded with rockets and explosions. The candy Atomic Fire Balls was one of them.

There’s a recreation of a 1950s living room, with a mannequin family and nuclear safety films playing on the vintage TV. Nearby are slides of all the tests done on mannequins in the desert, with before and after photos.

There are big pieces of equipment, video displays, and interactive bits like a Geiger counter and a set of half-life projections that are compared with how long the planned containment systems will last (example: the former 30,000 years; the latter, 100 years).

The museum is a manageable size and has a great gift shop.

The main event is a 10-minute film in a small theater about the history of the testing site. The film is fairly balanced, although several talking heads claim that America’s nuclear weapons program was necessary because it ended the Cold War. (Really? I thought that was the Cold War.) The overall impact of the film is chilling.

As it ended, there was a strange silence in the room. “Should we clap?” asked my friend.

Among other things, the film touched on the Downwinders, the residents in the path of fallout from the tests whose communities had high cancer rates in the years to follow. Several people from the testing program said that they felt terrible about it, they didn’t know the effects could be so deadly and far-reaching.

But this is Las Vegas. It’s pretty easy to believe that they were deluding themselves all along.

Cocktail Recipe: The Atomic Cocktail

1 ½ ounces vodka

1 ½ ounces brandy

1 teaspoon sherry

1 ½ ounces dry Champagne

Shake first three ingredients with ice and strain into a martini glass. Top with Champagne. (This is the original Las Vegas recipe, I haven’t tried it myself yet.)

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Bradwood RIP Update

NorthernStar Natural Gas, the parent company for the Bradwood Landing project, has filed for bankruptcy. Among its creditors is the Palomar Pipeline project, which is owed $17.2 million according to the AP.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Bradwood Landing RIP

I am totally stoked to report that NorthernStar Natural Gas has pulled the funding for the Bradwood Landing LNG terminal. After having spent $100 million dollars and almost six years trying to get the project off the ground, the company finally had to admit that it just wasn’t a good investment. In a bitter press release reminiscent of the Lou Rawls song “You’re Gonna Miss My Loving,” the company blamed red tape and the economy for the withdrawal. “In particular,” reads the press release, “the challenging regulatory environment gives investors pause, especially considering that Bradwood Landing would have such a positive impact on the Northwest’s economy and environment.” In other words, look out, Oregon, you’ll be sorry for your evil environmental laws some day! The company also continues to maintain that the building of the terminal has no bearing on the Palomar Pipeline. But I predict that plans for the pipeline will be history soon enough. Bradwood was the first stop on my LNG tour of Oregon last fall. After having visited all three proposed terminal sites, I feel that while the whole project of importing natural gas to Oregon is a dumb idea, Bradwood’s location made it the worst of the three proposals.

Next up: So far I’ve been too depressed about the Gulf oil spill to come up with an appropriate drink recipe, but I’m working on it.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Bradwood Landing LNG Update

Aside from volcanic eruptions and 100-year floods, most of the major events that shape our environment occur in appeals courts. Pretty much every approval for every aspect of every LNG proposal in Oregon has been appealed, causing years of delays. Sometimes the delays alone are enough to stop a project, especially when they coincide with a radical regime change like the switch from Bush to Obama. That is why it turns out that Clatsop County wasn’t doing Bradwood Landing a favor when they let Bradwood’s application sail through the county approval process in 2008. Now, two years later, an appeals court has returned the decision back to the county for a second time, because, after all this time, no one has successfully defined the terms “small,” “medium,” and “large.” (I blame Starbucks for the confusion.) Laws protecting the Columbia River state that only small to moderate-sized developments can be approved. I mean, obviously a 55-acre development is large — if you’re opposed to it. On the other hand, it could be medium, or even small. Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, for instance, is 2538 acres. The funny thing is, this issue could turn out to be the one that sinks Bradwood Landing for good.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Farmers vs Oregon LNG


Access to information was at the crux of hearings held last week to clarify conflicts between landowners and Oregon LNG and the Oregon Pipeline. The hearings were ordered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and held over three days in Astoria, Forest Grove and Portland.

I attended the final day, Thursday, at Portland City Hall. Administrative Law Judge Bobbie McCartney was a breath of fresh air, asking sharp questions, putting witnesses at ease, and bringing some humor to the necessary tedium of this kind of thing. She was very understanding of the fact that a lot of the testimony was a little vague. Two and three years ago, when landowners first started hearing that a natural gas pipeline might be passing through their land, they weren’t writing down dates or labeling documents. Their statements were also constrained because their central concern — that a liquefied natural gas company is planning to lay claim to swaths of their property — was outside the scope of the hearings.

The repeated complaint within the scope of the hearings was lack of information. Landowners have had a hard time getting detailed pipeline maps, and frequently were not informed about public hearings. During a tour of the pipeline route conducted by Oregon LNG and FERC, a farmer and her sister followed the tour van around all day in their car because no one would give them the tour’s itinerary. Later when the judge asked this farmer to put an aerial map into evidence she refused to let it go, clutching it like treasure map.

It’s likely that many affected parties didn’t know about the hearing I attended. In a follow-up column written the next day, Joyce Sauber of the Hillsboro Argus writes, “To this date, there are still hundreds of property owners in our Gales Creek Valley and along the two proposed LNG pipeline routes, who do not know there have been hearings, meetings and site tours, or that one of these two proposed LNG pipelines will cross their property.”

After the hearing there was an LNG protest outside City Hall. I milled around, taking photos and trying to gauge the reaction of passers-by. Somehow this protest felt different from protests I’ve attended on other issues. It took me a while to figure it out. It was the informational quality of it — at least in Portland, an LNG protest isn’t about registering opposition, it’s about registering that the issue exists at all.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

History/ Drink Recipe: The Angry Sea Lion

A terrible thing happened in May of 2008.

The Fish & Wildlife service announced that six sea lions at Bonneville Dam had found their way into two open traps and been shot to death by unknown attackers.

The news was widely reported. From the New York Times: “State and federal authorities set up traps to humanely catch and remove them from the dam, to be shipped to zoos and wildlife parks. But over the weekend someone shot and killed six of the sea lions as they lay in the traps.”

Things had been tense on the river for a while. Fishermen were noticing increasing numbers of sea lions at the dam, and the sea lions were aggressive, eating a lot of fish and even stealing salmon right off the fishing lines.

In March, Oregon and Washington had received federal authority to remove the sea lions, lethally or non-lethally. In April, the Humane Society of the United States had negotiated a temporary hold on sea lion killing while the society argued the case in court. Also in April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared a “fishery failure” for the Pacific Coast salmon fishery.

And now four California sea lions, including a pup, and two endangered Steller sea lions were dead.

Clearly, someone had decided to take the law into their own hands.

Or not.

A few days later a correction was released. The sea lions had not been shot to death. They had died of heat stroke after entering the open traps, which had somehow closed behind them while the staff was gone for the weekend.

How accomplished of a forensics expert do you have to be to determine whether or not an animal has been shot to death? Actually, the autopsies found that two or three of the sea lions had been shot, non-lethally, at some previous time. Ultimately, the whole thing was written off as an accident.

The Angry Sea Lion

  • 1 ounce Black Seal rum
  • ¼ ounce hot pepper vodka
  • orange wedge and orange peel
  • ginger ale

Pour rum and vodka over ice. Squeeze in the juice from a quarter of an orange and trim a bit of peel over the glass, then add. Top with ginger ale.

Serve on the rocks!

Or replace the ginger ale with Coke and the orange with lime and call it a Sea Lion Libre.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Bonneville Sea Lions



The Bonneville sea lions are national news again this year. An Associated Press story from March 8 was picked up in salmon-less places like Dallas, Texas, and Madison, Wisconsin. I think people are intrigued by the conundrum of endangered species vs. endangered species, or else they like to get worked up by the killing of sea lions, who are, arguably, the cutest of all predator species.

So far this year, at least eight sea lions have been killed at Bonneville Dam. The idea makes me feel kind of sick, especially after I went up there on Saturday and saw them for myself.

Bonneville Dam is a major source of power for the Northwest, and it’s also a minor tourist attraction, both for the dam itself and for the migrating salmon that you can watch through special underwater windows. For some reason, fish ladders have been deemed an edifying pastime for very young children. I was taken to several as a small child, and found them a real snooze. This weekend, my friend and I were surrounded by families with unimpressed little kids.

Watching the occasional Chinook struggle past the mossy window is a lot more interesting if you care about stuff like politics and sushi.

The kids would probably rather be watching the sea lions, but that is not encouraged. There is an informational plaque inside the visitor center, from which I learned that sea lions have always swum up the river to hunt, since long before there were dams. Somehow I had gotten the impression that this was a new thing — (“They learn,” said an Army Corps of Engineers biologist in the AP article.)

The visitor center is on an island. To the north is the main dam, all roaring water and billows of mist. To the south is a smaller dam, the locks, and a main entrance to the fish ladders. We walked a little ways down a mossy road on this side of the island, where the water is much calmer.

There we saw a little black head in the water, then two and three. Sometimes they would dive with a splash of their tail flippers. Sometimes they would just kind of splash around. They were too far away to get a good photo, or to tell if any of them caught a fish. Overall, there were between eight and ten in this area.

I couldn’t tell if they were Steller or California sea lions, although some of them were enormous. The smaller Stellers are endangered and only the California sea lions are being killed. The historic range of these sea lions is from Mexico to B.C., so I’m afraid the name California brands them unfairly as invaders.

After I came home from Bonneville, I read up a lot more on the sea lion issue, and found two things online that I want to mention.

First, there is an activist network dedicated to the Bonneville sea lions. The Portland branch of In Defense of Animals (famous for their foie gras and fur protests) is involved, and there is a Sea Lion Defense Brigade ( http://sealiondefensebrigade.org/) that has been monitoring the sea lions 24 hours a day from an RV on the Washington side of the river. They had a party this weekend and Tre Arrow provided musical entertainment… so somehow I feel like we’ll be hearing more from these folks in the future.

Second, in trying to find out who all was involved in the initial request to allow killing the sea lions, I came across the website of the Oregon Anglers (http://www.oregon-anglers.org/).

They sound like a reasonable bunch, at first: “Oregon Anglers was formed to find ways to meet the needs of both the state’s diverse wildlife, and the practical and economic needs of the communities that depend on the fishers and hunters.”

But scroll down to the part about sea lions, and they completely lose their cool:

“Since 1999 the California sea lions at Bonneville have had their way with spring salmon and steelhead runs. Now in 2009 they have arrived in even greater numbers.”

Then, in large, bold, underlined letters:

“Now we can begin to even the score!”

Had their way? Even the score? Sorry, Oregon Anglers, you just lost my sympathy.

One final note: Full Sail’s brewpub in Hood River has a nice view and great beer but it feels kind of corporate and the food is pretty expensive.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

In like a lion?



I headed up to Oregon City yesterday to look for sea lions.

What’s that, you say? Sea lions live in the sea? That’s how they got their name?

I know, but every spring, sea lions follow the Chinook salmon runs upriver. For years, there’s been all kinds scandals surrounding the issue of sea lions at Bonneville Dam. The dam creates a sort of vertical bottleneck that makes the salmon much easier to get ahold of than they are in the open ocean, and the sea lions are eating them by the hundreds.

To protect the salmon, the Fish & Wildlife Service has tried scaring them away with fireworks and underwater noise bombs. They’ve sent some offending sea lions off to join the marine mammal circus (Sea World), and they’ve killed others.

Like Bonneville Dam, the locks and fish ladder at Oregon City create a barrier that causes migrating salmon to pile up in the Willamette River south of Portland. The Oregon City News ran a pretty thorough piece on the issue last week (http://www.oregoncitynewsonline.com/news/story.php?story_id=126997866815858600).

These sea lion are often portrayed in the news humorously, with reporters using words like “buffet” and “feast” to describe the salmon that sea lions “chomp” and “munch” and “gobble.” One Seattle Times headline reads “Snacking sea lions scarfing up sparse Columbia Chinook run.”

I question whether the jokey tone is appropriate, since this is an issue that drives people apoplectic with rage. Some people are foaming at the mouth that more isn’t being done to stop the sea lions from damaging the fish run. Others are flipping their wigs that the Fish & Wildlife Service is killing innocent mammals. At one point, killing of lions at Bonneville was halted by the Humane Society.

There aren’t currently any plans to kill the sea lions at Willamette Falls, but Fish &

Wildlife is planning to start trying to scare them away. I was hoping I might be able to see or hear them in action, but it didn’t work out that way.

Willamette Falls is one of the biggest waterfalls in American, not in height but in width. In fact, its broad horseshoe shape makes it the seventeenth widest waterfall in the world, according to the World Waterfall Database (http://www.world-waterfalls.com/home.php).

These falls really are an awesome sight. There was a time when men came to this remarkable natural wonder and rubbed their eyes in amazement, unable to believe that there could be such a perfect place to build a paper mill. And so, part of what makes Willamette Falls such an awesome sight today is the rusty, rickety labyrinth of buildings, tanks, steaming chimneys and rushing torrents of wastewater that overlay the natural geography. It’s really impossible to tell where the paper mills end and the falls begin.

A scenic path runs along the east rim of the river gorge, providing epic views — most of it is closed right now, though. I took the second photo on this post from that path last summer. There’s also a bit of scenic pathway running right along the river, attached to the upper path by a scary metal staircase. But all this is on the wrong side of the river to see the locks or the fish ladder.

I poked around on the west side of the river a little, but I didn’t find a good way to get near the water.

My best view was from a turnout along Highway 99 (across the street from a very nice bar called the Highland Still House, FYI). There were at least two other people there looking for sea lions, and a few others that were probably tourists.

It was windy and raining.

A bit further south is another, smaller viewpoint. From there, I saw a sleek little black head in the water. It was near the small blue building in the first photo.

The sea lion was swimming against the current, and quickly went underwater. I saw it a few more times, or else some other sea lions, in the rough grey water below the mills. I started thinking about how long it takes to drive from Portland to Astoria. This sea lion swam farther than that — over 100 miles, against a strong current — to get here.

I’m not going to try to resolve the sea lion issue, but I do think they deserve a little more respect, if not from Fish & Wildlife, then at least from the people who write about them. There’s a hint, in many accounts, that the sea lions are somehow not playing fair. And no one’s talking about what happens out in the ocean, where pollock fishing is killing tens of thousands of salmon every year (http://www.yukonsalmon.com/whatwedo/Fact%20Sheet%20Salmon%20Bycatch%208-08.pdf).

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Toxic River Update

Could both the mayor and the state department of environmental quality be reading my blog? Or is it just a total coincidence that emails from both Sam Adams and the DEQ arrived in my inbox yesterday having to do with the issue of pollution in Portland rivers?

Well, it’s just a total coincidence. There’s no way the city of Portland could have developed a master plan for cleaning up and developing the North Willamette Reach in just this past week. Adams announced the plan in a “can’t-we-all-just-get-along” editorial in the Oregonian, which he also sent to everyone on his mailing list. The plan identifies key “pearl” sites in which to focus environmental restoration. This kind of gives me the creeps. I mean, pearls are usually pretty small, right?

Meanwhile, the DEQ is revising its water quality standards based on a new fish consumption rate and separately is releasing a report on persistent toxins in Oregon waterways. One hundred and eighteen different toxins are identified in the report. This also give me the creeps, obviously.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Toxic fish


I asked this girl to hold up this fish so I could take a picture. I’m feeling pretty guilty now that I didn’t tell her to get the hell away from it instead. This fish is contaminated with industrial waste that causes cancer and learning defects, and on top of that, it’s been swimming in raw sewage.

A walk on the beach at Swan Island



On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, a regular procession of pickup trucks backs down the Swan Island boat ramp, past the raw sewage warning signs, to deposit small boats into the water. The ramp slants down into one corner of the Swan Island Basin, the body of water that separates Swan Island (really, a peninsula) from the mainland.

I’m here because the area is part of the Portland Harbor Superfund site. Everyone else is here to fish.

Most of the boaters have fishing gear with them, and a few people are fishing from narrow strips of sandy beach to the north and south of the ramp, as well. They are less than half a city block away from signs reading “Fish from these waters may be poisonous to eat,” and “Warning! Sewage Spill. Avoid water contact.” (Keep in mind, the sewage warning is seasonal, but the fish warning is year-round, and relates to the decades-long buildup of industrial toxins in the river, a totally different issue from the human waste problem.)

The whole place has a nasty, lingering stench that clashes strangely with the sparkling sun and the gently lapping water.

I’m intrigued by a small boat that’s floating near the beach — it looks like the aquatic version of a homeless person’s shopping cart. It’s fortified with plywood and covered with tarps. A small lopsided raft tied to its side is piled with junk: recycling bins, bottles, scrap wood.

Beyond that is a broken down dock and about the foulest-looking drainpipe you could ever hope to see.

The main sewage outlet, though, appears to be on the other side of the boat ramp, about three yards from where an old man is fishing. His grandchildren are playing nearby.

Heading north, I pass them and continue up the beach until I reach a toxic roadblock. Something opalescent and bright orange is oozing out of the sand here and draining into the water.

Out in the channel a ridiculously small tugboat is parked in the middle of a floating island of scrap wood. Its captain is aboard, poking around as if for something worth towing. His black lab watches him.

On my way back, Grandpa offers me a seat on his blue plastic bucket. I can see he’s fishing with worms, and using a sort of homemade looking getup. I ask him what he’s catching. He doesn’t speak English; gestures to his granddaughter, who is pouring water from the channel into a big black plastic tub. The tub turns out to have live fish in it, four big ones. They have small whiskers, so I take them to be catfish. I ask her to hold one up for me, so I can take a picture.

I ask her if she’s going to eat them. She laughs and shrugs, as if she’s embarrassed.

Swan Island warnings





The Swan Island boat ramp is covered in warning signs, and it's right next to a big drainpipe. Down the way is the day-glo part of the beach. The Navy, Freightliner and UPS are all nearby, but I couldn't find a bar.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Dockside Tavern


Nothing reminds you that you’re just a speck in the eye of Industry like getting stuck at a train crossing.

Freight trains cross Naito Parkway in the northern part of downtown Portland, near the river. Once you (eventually) cross those tracks, you’re in the Northwest Industrial district.

I’m headed for the Dockside Tavern, a crooked box of a building that looks like it was built out of driftwood, a long time ago. It used to face an industrialized stretch of the river; now it faces a long line of condos. I’ve always been intrigued by the place, but my goal today is to investigate it as the place in Portland where you can get a drink in closest proximity to the Portland Harbor Superfund site. I’d actually already had a few beers at the Dockside a few nights before, but I wanted to come back during the day so I could walk around and look at the river.

It’s Sunday and the new Riverscape Street, a sort of frontage road for the condo project, is lined with Mercedes-Benzes, which I assume belong to real estate agents.

On the other side of the condos, a wide esplanade has been constructed along the river. It runs about a quarter of a mile from the base of the Fremont Bridge north along the line of townhouse-style Riverscape Condos towards their crown jewel, the luxury Pacifica Tower. The whole development is partially built and partially occupied. At the north end, where the path peters out, someone has put in a little herb garden marked off with river rocks and raw construction boards.

The selling point here is simple: river view.

It’s a wide sweep of water, with a panorama of Industry on the other side: trains, smokestacks, crumbling docks and giant silos holding who-knows-what, far enough away to look kind of romantic. The water is green and blue, reflecting the sky. It doesn’t look toxic.

Oh, but it is. It’s contaminated with enough heavy metals, PCBs, dioxin and pesticides to qualify it for the Superfund list, designating it one of the most polluted spots in America. (There are about 1200 sites on the list.) The Superfund was envisioned as a way to clean up abandoned deposits of hazardous waste; the petroleum and chemical industries were taxed to create revenue for the program. Those taxes are no longer being collected, and the fund is no longer so super. That must be why my most recent water bill includes a $4.06 charge for the Portland Harbor Superfund.

Actually, it was that water bill that inspired me to seek out the Dockside. I envisioned it as the haunt of rugged Scandinavian longshoremen in watchcaps who would occasionally break out the grappling hooks if someone cheated at shuffleboard. Inside, it looks pretty much like any neighborhood bar, or rather, a little nicer, if a little more lost in time. The hanging lamps are the kind of stained glass things that used to be popular in the 1970s. There are beer signs and TVs and a menu that looks the way all menus used to look when I was a kid: multiple different kinds of burgers, clam chowder, fries, grilled cheese.

On the back of the menu is a history of the place, which has been a bar or restaurant since the 1920s. Before it was the Dockside, it was called What’s Up Doc. Before that it was called Dottie’s Sternwheeler. It became nationally notorious during the Tonya Harding scandal after incriminating evidence was found in the bar’s outside garbage receptacle.

It’s a nice enough place to have a beer, although it closes quite early. I went for happy hour with a friend one night, and then decided to return to the scene of the crime in the afternoon, when I could walk around with my dog and look at the water.

Just south of the bridge, I saw a man fishing. I wanted to know what kind of fish he was catching, and whether he would eat it. (State guidelines indicate that it’s OK to eat resident fish from this part of the river, occasionally, in small amounts, as long as you’re not pregnant, nursing, under the age of 6, or have a compromised immune system.)

When he saw my dog, he said, “That’s a nice dog.”

I said, “Thanks. Catch anything?”

“What kind of dog is that?” he asked. We talked about the dog some more. Then I said, again, “Catch anything?”

“Well, OK, then,” he said. “Have a nice day.”

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Riverscape Condos


I don’t like condos, but at least I have to admit that condo developers aren’t the ones who have spent the last 150 years dumping sewage and toxic chemicals into the Willamette River. And unlike industrial users, condo builders like to make nice esplanades along the waterfront so that people like me can poke around and take photos.

Pacifica Tower


This could be your view from the balcony of a luxury condo in the Pacifica Tower. The water here is so contaminated by industrial pollution that it was declared a Superfund site in 2000, meaning it is on the EPA’s National Priorities List of contaminated sites.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

The Cleveland Disaster of 1944

LNG technology isn’t new, but it was new in 1944, when the only serious LNG-related disaster to strike the United States occurred.

It was a Friday afternoon, October 20, when one of the four storage tanks at the East Ohio Gas Company, on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio, began to leak. Facing increasing demand, companies had just begun condensing natural gas by cooling it, so that more could be stored in less space. The Cleveland plant was one of the first LNG storage facilities in America, and the tank hadn’t been built strongly enough.

At 2:30 p.m., the liquid began to seep from the tank. It returned to a partially gaseous state, appearing as a white fog. The winds from Lake Eerie blew the gas vapor into the surrounding neighborhood. Some of the vapor hung low in the air, travelling along gutters, sinking into storm drains and collecting underground in the sewer system.

Then, something ignited the gas. Manhole covers were blown sky-high. Jets of fire shot up from under the street.

There wasn’t a single explosion, but many. The leaking tank exploded in the initial blast, around 2:40 p.m., and a second tank at the facility blew up around 3 p.m. Fireballs from the exploding tanks could be seen for miles around.

People who had left their houses during the initial explosion returned home, only to be incinerated as a series of new explosions occurred, with ignited gas coming up through the drainpipes and engulfing homes in flames within seconds.

Images of the scene show fire and smoke shooting high into the sky, and afterwards, workers sifting through the rubble, looking for bodies. Piles of loose bricks filled the streets, and trees were reduced to burnt stumps. A square mile of the city was destroyed, including 70 homes, two factories, and the underground infrastructure.

About 130 people were killed, including 61 who remained unidentified at the time they were buried. Approximately 225 people were injured. Husbands and children returning home from school and work found their homes completely blown away, mom and all.

The Cleveland Memory website has an amazing archive of photos from the disaster here:

http://images.ulib.csuohio.edu/cdm4/results.php?CISOOP1=exact&CISOFIELD1=subjec&CISOROOT=all&CISOBOX1=East+Ohio+Gas+Co.+Explosion+And+Fire&CISOSTART=1,1

Could this happen today? Not exactly the way it did then, no. Storage tanks are much stronger, and all kinds of additional precautions are taken.

However, LNG itself is as dangerous now as it was then. If it does happen to escape, there’s no containing it and no way to predict how it will mix with surrounding air, wind, and worst of all, sparks. One commentator notes that the spill that caused this disaster was about five percent of the volume of gas held by a modern LNG tanker.