|
|
| Possible environmental impacts Part 1: |
|---|
| A dead zone in the Molalla River? |
|---|
By Russell Bassett
Will the city of Molalla’s wastewater outflow into the Molalla River harm the environment? Will it hurt fish populations?
The answer to those questions pretty much boils down to who you believe and how you personally feel about the issue.
City officials say discharging effluent, sewage treated at the wastewater plant, during winter time high flows into the river will not harm the environment; however, opponents disagree.
The Molalla City Council and Citizens for a Clean Molalla (a group of residential business leaders), among others, support the plan to discharge in the winter flows into the river.
Work is currently being done to install the outflow pipe into the river — one of the final steps of the city’s current wastewater treatment plan. Once complete, and if the city doesn’t lose the September ballot initiative — which would bar the Molalla River as a discharge point, effluent will begin discharging into the river as early as November.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Molalla Community Planning Organization, River And Friends Together and Friends of the Molalla River, among others, are currently fighting the city’s plan. If they win the ballot measure, the city will have to come up with an alternative to its current plan.
Who is right? It’s your decision.
DEQ and permits
Department of Environmental Quality officials have given the city of Molalla’s wastewater plan the green light.
DEQ is the agency responsible for ensuring environmental compliance in Oregon, and that agency did sign-off on the city’s plan, granting the municipality a permit to discharge into the Molalla River on April 21, 2004.
Ask Oregon Department of Environmental Quality Engineering Specialist Garry Sage and DEQ Professional Engineer David Mann what the chances are that fish could be hurt if the city continues with its plan to discharge into the river, and you will hear, “none” from Sage and “zero” from Mann.
“It’s not even an option,” Mann said. “It won’t hurt the fish.”
Opponents argue that — even though DEQ issued the permit — it did not approve the plan, and that the agency is not being a responsible regulator.
“The DEQ letter to the city (dated Dec. 13, 1999) stated ‘it is doubtful that department management could go before the Environmental Quality Commission to support a Molalla River outfall without an approved facilities plan,’” reads the Molalla Wastewater Plan Informational Publication published by Friends of the Molalla River. “Molalla completed their Facilities Plan in April 2000, but the plan was stamped ‘not approved’ by David Mann, P.E., who reviewed the document.”
The publication goes on to say that DEQ had several reasons for not approving the plan, including high growth projections, high per-capita summer flows, not enough information about environmental impacts in the mixing zone at the outfall location, and because further discussion is needed on the inflow and infiltration in the collection system.
“The city has not acted on these comments and the Facilities Plan was never approved,” reads the Friends publication. “If the city had chosen to have their facilities plan approved by the DEQ, they could have taken advantage of low interest Revolving Fund loans. Instead, they chose to proceed without approval to fund their project through higher interest bonds.”
Opponents also object that if the city was going to move its discharge point, there should have been a new permit written; not a renewal of the old one, likening it to a contractor getting a permit to build on one piece of land and building it to another.
DEQ Environmental Specialist Lyle Christensen countered, “The permit is for the treatment facility (and) the discharge point is evaluated as part of the treatment facility, but we’ve had other cases where discharge points were modified, and it’s just part of our evaluation,” he said. “We require that they meet water quality standards and the permit is written to ensure that.”
“Molalla is similar to a number of situations where facilities cannot comply with their permit and we put them under an order and given them interim limits and we’ve given them a schedule to come into compliance,” Mann added.“That’s pretty much the way we do it with everybody in the state. All of the cities are worried about their procedures. They don’t want to wind up dealing with every single violation because some facilities don’t have any control over them, and the policy of DEQ has been to work with the city instead of just trying to beat them up.”
Opponents counter that DEQ has failed as an environmental regulating agency.
“You have DEQ, they are in charge (and) they decide what the impacts will be on the fish,” said Tom Derry, Friends of the Molalla River member. “Does this make sense to you? They don’t have a fishery’s biologist there. This should be the job of ODFW (Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife). DEQ just doesn’t take it seriously. That’s the whole nutshell right there. That’s what gets me wound up.”
“DEQ needs a major over haul, but we as a community have an obligation to do what’s right,” Friends member Mark Schmidt added. “If our officials and DEQ can’t or won’t stand up for water quality, then we as citizens must.”
DEQ officials argue that wastewater sewage is not the culprit.
“Most of all of the problems with rivers in our state deal with heat,” Mann said. “We have several, or at least a few, big, important paper mills that are discharging massive amounts of heat into the rivers, but it’s legal to do so. The Molalla (River) has heat problems caused by logging and agriculture, (and) DEQ does not have purview over logging or over agricultural processes. I’ll tell you what hurts the fish. The logging that they are doing. It warms up the entire river. That’s why the fish runs are declining all the way up past ... (the city of) Molalla. Warming the headwaters of the Molalla has been a disaster, and that is entirely done by logging.”
Whether or not effluent is the main cause of fish decline, the Friends of the Molalla River say they are not willing to risk the possible negative impact the city’s treated wastewater may have on the river’s ecological system.
“That water’s going to be dead in the area, and you just can’t have a dead zone in that river. Fish just won’t pass through it,” said Schmidt, a prolific angler. “Most rivers in Oregon only have half a river because of dumping sewage. We’ve got a giant chore ahead of us in our lives just trying to undo some of the damage that has been done over the last 100 years. I’m never going to find myself tolerant of a dump zone in the Molalla River; I’m just not going to go there. It will have to be undone. Ultimately we will have to undo that damage.”
“What happens if dilution is not the solution?” Derry asked. “Dilution was the solution in Bear Creek when there were 2,500 people in town, and now (the city) can’t (discharge to the creek). What happens if they (discharge) to the Molalla River and this town goes to 50,000? What would stop the city from doing the same exact same thing (it did in Bear Creek)? What happens when they are daily violating their permit for six years? It will be an issue down the road, and rest assured they are not going to do a damn thing unless they have to.”
The city of Molalla did (at certain times) in the past six years violate several DEQ regulations. Violations in the late 1990s forced the city of Molalla to come up with its new plan to discharge into the Molalla River.
Recently, the Friends of the Molalla River filed a lawsuit against the city for $5.7 million for Clean Water Act violations dating back to 1999.
Molalla Wastewater Plant Operator Otis Phillips, who started at the plant in March, said the days of violations are over.
“We haven’t had a violation since I have been here and don’t plan on getting any,” he said. “If (effluent) doesn’t meet my standards, it isn’t going into the creek (or river).”
In Saturday’s Pioneer: Part 2: A look at NOAA Fisheries’ and ODFW’s review of the construction plan.
(Note: Pioneer Editor Jerry Raehal contributed to this series.) |
| Go to top. |
|
