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Aug 04, 2023

Willamette River garbage pickers petition DEQ to enforce trash limits

Some of the Willamette River's most active caretakers are calling on the state

Some of the Willamette River's most active caretakers are calling on the state to do more to regulate trash in that waterway, a problem they say now has grown too big for even its regular garbage picking events to effectively control.

The Willamette Riverkeeper sent a petition Friday to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality leadership asking that the agency institute regulations on trash levels in the river. The nonprofit wants DEQ to enforce trash load limits on the Willamette River using the federal Clean Water Act, a tactic that's been used in only a few other places.

"It's just been a growing problem. We have recognized that we and others are clearly not up to the task as nonprofit organizations trying to do cleanups and trying to contain this problem," said Willamette Riverkeeper Executive Director Travis Williams. "We need to try to have the state of Oregon address this issue with the Clean Water Act."

Riverkeeper volunteers operate along the Willamette River and its tributaries as trash collectors. The organization conducts boat-mounted cleanups throughout the river basin, including in Eugene-Springfield, Corvallis, Salem and Portland.

The petition argues DEQ should institute "total maximum daily load" standards for trash and hold property owners, municipalities and others with jurisdiction on the Willamette River and its tributaries responsible for meeting them.

DEQ spokesman Harry Esteve said the agency received the petition Friday and will review it, but could not comment on its details before they are analyzed. He said it is the first time DEQ has been approached about a trash total maximum daily load.

"We definitely share the concerns that are expressed in the petition by the Willamette Riverkeeper about the trash in and along Oregon's waterways," Esteve said. "We are going to take a look at what they're asking."

Though the struggle to keep the Willamette clean is not new, the Riverkeeper, who have been at it since 1996, say the trash problem is getting worse. Among other causes, they point to encampments of the unhoused on the river.

"The amount of trash that is contributing to waste in the river within the urban river areas is definitely correlated to the growth of the homeless community," said Michelle Emmons, who's been cleaning the Willamette in Lane County with the Riverkeeper nonprofit for decades. "We are having to remove more trash, and we aren't even scratching the surface."

Williams and Emmons have stressed the petition is not meant to criminalize homelessness, but said a housing crisis is contributing to an environmental crisis. They said the issue of river encampment litter requires humane solutions.

"The trash is a symptom. Simply driving people away isn't going to solve the problem," Emmons said.

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In the petition, the Riverkeeper make the case the trash problem is or can affect almost all of the Willamette River's functions, including fouling boat propellers, decreasing aesthetic values and endangering wildlife and human health.

The Willamette Riverkeeper are asking DEQ to declare the Willamette as "impaired for trash" on its next report to the EPA. DEQ then should institute a trash total maximum daily load, or TMDL, and wasteload allocation for trash in the river, according to the petition.

DEQ then would be able to — and should — enforce trash limits in the river as it regulates other contaminants, the petition continues.

"The time for DEQ to take meaningful action to address this problem on a river-wide basis is long overdue," the petition reads. "The Willamette River Basin has 13 designated uses, all of which are being impaired by trash."

The Riverkeeper's petition does not lay out a framework plan for DEQ to follow, instead encouraging the agency to develop its own plan and accept a responsibility for keeping trash out the Willamette under the Clean Water Act.

The petition argues DEQ already has the necessary authority to implement the regulation policies it describes as the state agency responsible for implementing the Clean Water Act in Oregon. The law requires states evaluate waterways and, when they are deemed impaired by pollutants, take actions meant to regulate the introduction of the pollutant.

One of those actions is instituting a total maximum daily load, or TMDL, for the pollutant causing the impairment.

The Willamette already is impaired by various pollutants, according to DEQ. The river and its subbasins have existing TMDLs regulating temperature, bacteria, mercury, dissolved oxygen and other substances that affect water quality.

"The TMDL will be used to determine whether changes are needed for wastewater discharge permits for industries and sewage treatment facilities. Water quality management plans are also developed based on the TMDL. These plans document the ways that local landowners, agencies, forest and agricultural land managers (including federal agencies), DEQ and others will implement a specific TMDL and work to improve water quality," DEQ's website reads.

DEQ does not regulate the mere presence of common garbage in this way.

"We want a standard to be set by the state under the Clean Water Act for trash, and then they would implement that like any other standard, whether you're looking at dissolved oxygen or temperature of effluent," Williams said.

If DEQ implemented a trash TMDL, it would have to develop a plan to reach trash load goals and to allocate how much trash is allowable across jurisdictions on the river, according to the petition. The petition suggests DEQ would do this through water quality permits and sector-specific or source-specific implementation plans surrounding trash.

The Willamette Riverkeeper are asking the allowable limit for trash in the Willamette be set at zero.

Trash TMDLs have been adopted in at least two other states, including for the watersheds of Los Angeles River and Anacostia River in Maryland. The petition cites them as examples of how conditions in the Willamette can be fixed.

Esteve said changes to DEQ regulations have been spurred by such petitions in the past.

Though he emphasized there has yet to be a formal analysis of the Riverkeeper's proposal, he said potential roadblocks could include the diffuse sources of trash in the Willamette, which would make it difficult to regulate.

"Trash is as much of a non-point sources as you can imagine," he said. "There's no one source of this."

The Willamette Riverkeeper volunteers paddle along the length of the river in rafts and kayaks to pick up trash. During cleanups in Eugene-Springfield, Corvallis, Salem and Portland last year, the Riverkeeper collected more than 490 cubic yards of trash. A cubic yard of such trash can vary weight between about 300 and 800 pounds.

In 2020, Riverkeeper volunteers working in the Eugene and Corvallis areas collected 216 cubic yards of trash, according to the petition. That equated to 648 pickup beds full of trash, with 389 of those beds able to be filled with just plastic.

There's been trash and industrial waste in the Willamette River for generations, but Emmons says it's getting worse largely due to a growing number of riverside encampments, many on private property outside of cities' jurisdiction.

"In about 2012, we started to see there was a marked difference in specific areas along the urban banks, places that were harder to get to, that were not visible from the bike path and places that had a patchwork jurisdiction, so they weren't necessarily owned by the city, but by Union Pacific or the University of Oregon or ODOT," Emmons said.

The petition outlines a long history of water quality issues on the Willamette River, but links the rising trash problem with the homelessness crisis across western Oregon. It identifies several spots where the Riverkeeper organization says encampments contributed to trash that flows downstream or is buried in riparian areas, including in the Eugene-Springfield area.

One of those sites is a Union Pacific property near Franklin Boulevard. City officials are aware of the trash problem.

"We've found over the years it has been a local/regional magnet for large-scale illicit camping," Eugene Planning and Development Department spokeswoman Lindsay Selser said in March. "Enforcement is really difficult there. It's also, unfortunately, because of its proximity to the water, a source of significant pollution and dumping in the river."

Selser said the city has been working with Union Pacific on the waste and camping issue at the property for years. Union Pacific has conducted cleanups there, but the use of heavy machinery to do the job created other problems.

"They came in with a bulldozer and dump trucks and were working to clean up, but ended up also grinding some garbage and camping items into the soil," Selser said in March. "They used a pretty blunt cleanup tool."

More:Illegal dumping in rural areas continued problem for Lane County and Oregon

Emmons said the petition to have DEQ enforce trash is about accountability for the source of the problem, which has as much to do with the reasons people are forced to camp on riverbanks as much as it does garbage itself.

"Instead of just allowing people to continue to accumulate garbage, this will help drive accountability for people to find a multi-pronged approach, which is going to include law enforcement. It's also going to include ensuring that there are appropriate places for people to go," she said. "Hopefully, it will charge a conversation about prevention."

But Marisa Zapata, director of Portland State University's Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative, said the already vulnerable population of unhoused people still may be the ones to suffer from greater enforcement efforts.

"When framed as a homelessness issue, cities might respond by excluding people experiencing homelessness from yet another space when there is nowhere else to go," Zapata said in a statement. "We need to invest in housing solutions and services instead of continually displacing some of the most vulnerable members of our community."

Contact reporter Adam Duvernay at [email protected]. Follow on Twitter @DuvernayOR.

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