House Bill 3314<\/a> passed unanimously from the House Agriculture, Land Use, Natural Resources and Water Committee in March.<\/p>\n\u201cIt was a 9-0 vote with a kiss and a hug,\u201d Levenson said.<\/p>\n
But the bill died unceremoniously in the Joint Ways and Means Committee without a vote. Without the funding, Levenson is stuck finding private money to design the channel and eventually build it while the toxic algae blooms continue year-after-year unabated. He already spent two years fundraising $500,000 through grants from nonprofits and local and tribal governments to cover the first 30% of the planning process. The rest of the plan hinged on getting money from the legislature.<\/p>\n
State Rep. Mark Gamba, D-Milwaukie, who sponsored the bill, said it died like many others in the Ways and Means committee: \u201cBecause there was no money.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were $500 million short from a normal operating budget,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of bills like this that weren\u2019t a lot of money, that were going to solve real problems, didn\u2019t get the money they needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gamba said it\u2019s likely he\u2019ll try again to get funding for the project in 2027. Until then, Levenson will be left to find private money to fund the work.<\/p>\n
Levenson is in disbelief that Gov. Tina Kotek and state agencies won\u2019t \u201cown the problem\u201d on the arterial waterway of Oregon\u2019s largest city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy is a one-and-a-half person nonprofit put in a role to drive a solution to this problem? Everything\u2019s been a bake sale and we\u2019ve had no help from the state,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not an option not to solve this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Levenson said he\u2019s been discussing these issues with Kotek\u2019s Regional Solutions Office for the last two years to little avail. The office is meant to bring state agencies and the private sector together to tackle specific issues across \u201c11 regions\u201d of the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been giving me placated answers. I\u2019ve lost faith in the Regional Solutions process,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Anca Matica, a Kotek spokesperson, said the Regional Solutions Office and the Governor\u2019s Office \u201chave met with and continue to meet with various stakeholders,\u201d including the Oregon Health Authority, Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Agriculture, and the Department of State Lands to coordinate on public health advisories around the algae blooms.<\/p>\n
A hole in the river<\/p>\n
Matica said paying to fix the algae bloom problem also lies with the Ross Island Sand and Gravel company, which has created the deep, warm water lagoon where the algae blooms originate.<\/p>\n
Ross Island used to be one of a complex of four islands. In the 1920s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved the earth on two of the islands around to create an embankment connecting them to divert water and make a deeper shipping channel in the river, as well as to make it more accessible to industry. The two islands combined created the U-shaped Ross Island, but the new embankment stopped the natural flow of the river between the islands and the lagoon became a stagnant pond in the river.<\/p>\n
In 1926, the Ross Island Sand and Gravel Co. established itself on the island and started excavating millions of tons of gravel from the river to make cement, creating a large hole in the river until 2001. The combination of the gravel excavation, the man-made lagoon around it, hot summers and pollution from nearby cities has led to the perfect conditions for cyanobacteria and algal blooms to grow in the area.<\/p>\n
The Ross Island Sand and Gravel Co. though no longer operational, is under orders from the Department of State Lands to undertake reclamation work to refill the hole the company left in the river from decades of excavation. As part of that, it\u2019s possible the company could offer to pay for some of the channeling work.<\/p>\n
The company is currently facing a $2.9 million fine from the Oregon Department of State Lands for failing to comply with the terms of its agreement to refill the Ross Island lagoon. They could choose to direct 80% of the fine to a Supplemental Environmental Project such as the lagoon channeling.<\/p>\n
Under a 2024 settlement with the Northwest Environmental Defense Center, which sued the company over perpetuating the toxic blooms, Ross Island Sand and Gravel is required to block the lagoon so algae can\u2019t spread after the state has issued an advisory, something Levenson said is also a bureaucratic failure because the algae has typically spread well beyond the lagoon by the time the state issues an advisory.<\/p>\n
Officials in charge of the billion-dollar Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund, made up of revenue from a 1% tax on large retail businesses in the city, declined to fund project planning and implementation because it was not reducing carbon dioxide emissions, according to Levenson.<\/p>\n
Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501(c)(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Shumway for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on FacebookandBluesky.<\/p>\n
This republished story is part of OPB\u2019s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit opb.org\/partnerships<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The thick, green layer of toxin-producing algae currently growing on the Willamette River south of downtown Portland is…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":146566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[746,86663,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-146565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-politics-environment-willamette-river","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115030237294346227","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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