The Portland City Council is weighing a new agreement with the state of Oregon concerning the clean-up of the city’s harbor.
Recently city commissioners were given a plan for dealing with the Portland Harbor Superfund site to consider. Per the proposed plan a fund would be provided to begin planning and designing of cleanup projects. The site is a 10-mile length of the Willamette River located between the Sauvie Island and the Broadway Bridge.
Sediment on the river bottom along the Willamette River superfund area is contaminated with more than 100 years of pollutants deposited by historic industrial use. Responsibility for cleaning up the pollutants is spread out among 150 groups, one of which is the City of Portland.
Many group faced with a cleanup project use either brochure printing or flyer printing to raise awareness of their goal and acquire funds or manpower to complete it.
The state and Portland would each provide $12m to be drawn on by group to develop cleanup designs. The funds, per the agreement, cannot be applied to administrative costs or even put toward harbor cleanup; that expense must be borne by the responsible parties. The goal of creating the fund is to enable individual groups to base their cleanup design plans on the future and current use of their individual areas.
It is anticipated that the cleanup project will require $1bn and 30 years to complete.
