We are seeing the effects within our country as well:

• Water supplies are becoming dangerously scarce in Los Angeles and Phoenix. Senator Paul Simon, D-IL, attributes growing water scarcity to population growth and the fact that consumption is rising twice as fast as the world's population.
• Six million acres of farmland have ben lost to urban development over the last ten years. I recommend reading Eben Fodor's new book, "Better, Not Bigger – How to Take Control of Urban Growth."
• Our reservoirs, sewers, roads, bridges, health facilities and schools are under serious strain due to population pressures.
• Our wildlife, whether the Florida manatee, the lynx, the king salmon, the red cockaded woodpecker, and varieties of frogs and butterflies, is dwindling.
• Our children's health is under increasing threat because of pesticide and herbicide use and poorly processed toxic wastes.

Nothing is more urgent than focusing national attention on the problems population growth can bring. Anything we can do to raise public awareness of the social, economic, and environmental consequences of over-population is a top priority. Anything we can do to generate national legislative support for family planning and foreign assistance is a top priority. Anything we can do to help educators introduce population concepts to their students is a top priority. Anything we can do to find humane answers to the question of immigration is a top priority. Any anything we can do to get people from the print and broadcast media to discuss population issues is a top priority.

The Sierra Club Training Academy recommends these resources: Robert Engelman's "Plan & Conserve: A Source Book on Linking Population and Environmental Services in Communities"; a report by Robert Livernash and Eric Rodenburg called "Population Bulletin, Population Change, Resources, and the Environment,"; and the magazine "Populi: the UNFPA Magazine" by the United Nations Population Fund. April 29, 1999, Oregon Conifer, by Greg Jacob.

The plant is the city's answer to a lawsuit that alleged violations of the federal Clean Water Act dating back to 1994 and that sought a moratorium on sewer hookups. City officials acknowledged that during heavy winter rains, infiltration of runoff water into the system caused raw and partially treated sewage to pour into the river. 

An out-of-court settlement approved earlier this year required the city to stipulate that sewer service won't be extended to specific pending developments before certain dates, and it called for delay of new annexations until the treatment plant is on line.Spayden Construction Co. of Stayton is the contractor. City officials were pleased that the company's low bid of $9.5 million was below the engineer's $10.7 million estimate.

The project is being financed by a long-term low-interest federal loan that will be paid off over 20 years by already enacted increases in sewer rates and systems development charges.The new plant is scheduled to be operational by October 2000, but city Public Works Director Ken Lanfear said the contractor believes he can beat that deadline by two months.

The plant is designed to handle about twice Florence's current 6,715 population. "It will more than double the capacity of the current plant," Lanfear said.The treatment facility will be built on the five-acre site that contains the existing plant and will use some of the old plant's components. Construction will be phased in such a way to allow continued treatment of sewage, Lanfear said.In dry conditions, he said, the existing plant has the capacity to treat 750,000 gallons of sewage per day; the new plant will be able to treat 1.6 million gallons per day.In wet weather, the current plant begins to have problems at 1.4 million gallons per day; the new plant will have the ability to handle more than 6 million gallons per day during heavy rains, Lanfear said. 

He said the plant is designed in such a way that as Florence grows, it can be expanded to eventually handle a population of 25,000. April 29, 1999, Register Guard, by Larry Bacon.

The lawsuit was filed in 1997 after sewage sludge was sprayed in 1996 on land owned by Davidson Industries in the Tiernan area east of Florence. The sludge ran down a watercourse and tainted springs that provide drinking water to the homes of Will and Barbara Pritchett and Mark and Mona Tittle. Plaintiffs included the Pritchetts and Tittles as well as various family and friends who, according to the lawsuit, visited the homes, drank tainted water and became ill. The lawsuit asked for nearly $570,000 to compensate plaintiffs for medical expenses, physical and mental distress, loss of work and devaluation of property. 

Davidson Industries was a defendant in the lawsuit, but under terms of the agreement all costs will be paid by the city. McCorkle said the city was pleased with the settlement. "We've a sense of relief, now that it's over," he said. Ron Gerber, the plaintiffs' attorney, would not comment.

City insurance will not cover the cost of the payments. The city has liability insurance, McCorkle said, but coverage for such an incident would have required a special insurance rider that the city now has but did not at the time. Knowing that the city was likely to face settlement costs, the council increased city sewage rates two years ago to raise extra revenue, McCorkle said. "We have the money," he said.

McCorkle said disposing of sludge by spraying it on the land is an approved method for which the city had a state permit. The problem developed, he said, when the spraying operation got too close to a downhill slope that funneled the sludge into a water course and ultimately into the two water supplies.

The lawsuit alleged the city was negligent in many ways, including applying sludge to land outside the permitted area and in amounts beyond that allowed by the permit. Once the problem was discovered, McCorkle said, the city quit using the Davidson site and now hauls the sludge to a disposal site in Lincoln County. When a new city sewage treatment plant is completed next year, the sludge will be recovered in a dry form that can be mixed with compost and sold as a fertilizer, McCorkle said. Source: 4/21/99 Register Guard, by Larry Bacon.

As he finishes the job, the rain returns. The zinc sulfate, which is toxic to fish and bugs, quickly pours through the downspouts and into the storm drain in front of his house. The rain also carries away a thin spill of motor oil on his driveway and residues from a pesticide he sprayed in the dog kennel to kill fleas. Within minutes, the toxic household plume dumps into the local creek. Once again, one homeowner's Saturday morning has dented the health of a Willamette River Basin stream that once grew steelhead trout. One resident's misuse of chemicals has little effect on fish. But what about the impact of thousands of households in the Portland area? 

"Whatever you do in your garden and yard, in your driveway or in the street in front of your house ends up in the Willamette or a tributary of the Willamette," said Dean Marriott, director of Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services. "The challenge is there are hundreds of thousands of yards and driveways. Collectively, it can make a big difference."

Oregon's salmon debate has pivoted around hydropower, forestry practices and cattle grazing. But last month's federal listing of Willamette Valley chinook salmon and steelhead trout as threatened under the Endangered Species Act brought the issue to Portland's yards and driveways. New research suggests salmon may be especially sensitive to chemicals even when the fish only pass through contaminated waters. A recent study in the San Francisco area found toxic levels of a common insecticide flowing not from an industrial section but from well-tended residential lawns. "When we first started doing the sampling, it hadn't crossed anyone's mind that residential use of pesticides was going to be an issue," said Jim Scanlin, an engineer with the Alameda County (Calif.) Public Works Agency. "It came as a surprise to everyone." 

Toxic material in storm-water runoff has not been widely studied. But few regulators underestimate the impact of urban runoff, which is ranked among the nation's top pollution threats. Moss controls such as zinc sulfate and copper sulfate can harm fish, says Jeremy Buck, a toxicologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Copper has been linked to disruptions in the homing instinct of fish. 

Operating a salmon-friendly household has become more challenging, said Ross Penhallegon, a Lane County extension agent. "We have to look at things differently," he said. "Putting things on the roof has never been a problem before. The interconnectedness is what will drive everybody crazy. There is no longer a single answer to the problem."

Toxic lawn runoff In the early 1990s, California researchers began investigating toxic chemicals in storm water south of Oakland. Diazinon, an insecticide, was showing up in San Francisco Bay after rainstorms. The federal government banned diazinon from golf courses because it is a nerve poison that kills birds, but the pesticide still is widely used; it is found in more than 200 products in California. Intent on tracking the pollution, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board tested runoff in two cities, Hayward and San Lorenzo. "We envisioned the problem was coming from industrial areas low in the watershed," said Tom Mumley, a state watershed coordinator. "But the problem was above. We tracked it all the way up to residential neighborhoods." 

The pesticide, an organophosphate, is among a generation of products that replaced long-lasting chlorinated compounds such as DDT, which the United States outlawed in 1972. DDT, which lasts for decades in the environment, accumulated in the food chain and decimated bird populations. Almost everywhere they looked, Mumley said, researchers found diazinon. The chemical hung around longer than anticipated in aquatic systems and killed test organisms at extremely small doses, findings at odds with industry studies that said diazinon dissipates quickly, he said. "My assumption going in was that one or two people were dumping things," said Jim Scanlin, who tested Castro Valley Creek. "But it turned out it was coming from hundreds of sources." Those sources were the residential lawns and gardens that drain into the little creek south of Oakland. 

What the diazinon problem portends for urban watersheds is unclear. A report by Mumley and Revital Katznelson, a scientific consultant, says the pesticide's impact is difficult to identify among myriad problems afflicting urban creeks: massive erosion and habitat destruction spurred by flash runoff; accumulation of nutrients and bacteria; removal of tree canopy and higher water temperatures; and the presence of other pesticides and heavy metals. 

But the findings prompted California to organize a stakeholder's group. Industry representatives, scientists and state and federal regulators worked to reduce pesticide pollution. Mumley said the urban pesticide committee has focused on public education. The group trains retail store clerks to suggest less toxic alternatives in pest control. "There are some outstanding issues here," Mumley said. "The evidence is sufficient that we better look into what we need to do to manage this." 

The Willamette Basin The U.S. Geological Survey gathered the best information about pesticide pollution in the Willamette River Basin between 1991-95. Fifty pesticides were found at 51 sites in the basin. Ten pesticides exceeded federal clean-water guidelines for preserving aquatic life, said Frank Rinella, an agency hydrologist. They included atrazine and diuron, which are herbicides; DDE, a long-lived component of DDT; and the insecticides azinphos-methyl, carbaryl, carbofuran, lindane, malathion, chlorpyrifos and diazinon. The highest pesticide concentrations were found in agricultural areas, although 25 different pesticides were detected in urban streams. While the agency tested Fanno Creek, a Tualatin River tributary in Washington County, data about urban storm-water runoff is scarce. 

"There hasn't been a whole lot of monitoring in streams like Fanno or Johnson Creek or these other urban streams," said Bob Baumgartner, water-quality manager for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. He said urban streams typically are dogged by high levels of heavy metals and an array of problems, including excessive nutrients, high temperatures, pesticides and heavy erosion. 

Research in Puget Sound and Alaska by the National Marine Fisheries Service shed new light on chemicals and salmon. Since 1987, scientists at the service's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle have studied the impact of contaminants on chinook salmon smolts in the Duwamish River estuary. Scientists sample some of the smolts before they are released from an upstream hatchery. Another set is collected three to five weeks later in the estuary, which flows through an industrial part of Seattle. "When we started doing this 10 years ago, we didn't expect to see very much," said Tracy Collier, a fisheries service scientist. "We thought we'd be able to show some exposure." 

But the studies revealed much more. Even though smolts only briefly passed through the contaminated estuary, their growth rate slowed, and they became more vulnerable to disease when compared with fish moving through cleaner systems. Collier said the suspect contaminants are polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs, long-lasting industrial insulators that now are banned, and polyaromatic hydrocarbons, which are related to petroleum products. The fisheries service has expanded that work into seven Oregon estuaries, from Coos Bay to the lower Columbia. The sensitivity of salmon to polyaromatic hydrocarbons raises a grim specter in urban watersheds, where oil residues stream off parking lots and streets each time it rains. 

Metro collects more oil products than anything else in its hazardous waste program. During the years, residents have taken bags of DDT and even radioactive uranium to the collection centers in Oregon City and Northwest Portland. Metro collects 2.5 million pounds of hazardous waste and serves about 30,000 customers each year, says Richard McConnell, a supervisor with the program. He believes a broader effort is needed. "We are not hitting the populace of this region," he said. "There is still a lot of hazardous waste that is getting into our rivers." 

In the Tualatin River Basin, 30 creeks violate federal clean-water standards. One, Fanno Creek, the basin's most urban stream, is listed as impaired because of bacteria, excessive algae, little dissolved oxygen, higher temperatures and toxics, such as heavy metals. The Geological Survey study detected 23 pesticides in the creek. Jeffry Gottfried, a former president of the Fans of Fanno Creek, once caught and released several cutthroat trout in the beleaguered stream. Gottfried often hikes along the creek, turning over rocks and hunting for signs of life. He says the creek is devoid of the aquatic insects that healthy streams possess. "There is nothing there," he said. "We don't have a system that protects the creeks."

The region has achieved some gains. Since the mid-1990s, upgrades to sewage treatment plants have improved water quality in the Tualatin River. But experts believe more work is needed, especially on residential runoff. "The potential impacts are so great, and yet there are a lot of unknowns," said David Moskowitz, Metro's salmon recovery coordinator. 

"Much more public education is needed," he said, adding that development of alternative products is critical. "There is no silver bullet." Source: 4/18/99, The Oregonian, by Brian T. Meehan

After years of wrangling, the Bureau of Environmental Services has worked up a storm-water management manual that details what builders of new homes, factories, office buildings and other developments have to do with runoff. The rules also apply to redevelopment projects, but those aren't as tight. Dean Marriott, the bureau chief, and others said curbing runoff from new development is the first drop in the bucket. To cut pollution, the city will have to cut runoff from existing homes and businesses. "This manual will not restore the health of our urban waterways," Marriott said. "This manual will hopefully prevent the further decline of our urban waterways." 

Storm-water challenge The first enemies targeted by the 1972 Clean Water Act were sewage and industrial pollution, and cities nationwide have made significant strides in those areas. The next federally mandated phase is storm water. Portland has had less stringent interim standards in place since 1995, but other cities, including Seattle, have manuals in place. "I wouldn't say we're out in front on this," said Ron Smith, the bureau's chief engineer. "But we're certainly among the first rush of municipalities going this direction." 

The new standards, scheduled to take effect July 1, require a 70 percent reduction in pollution in storm water in most cases. The standards also call for containing storm water so it doesn't gush into streams all at once and tear apart streambanks. The changes aren't prompted by the recent federal listing of nine species of wild fish under the Endangered Species Act. But to the extent they cut pollution and silt, they should help bring the fish back. 

Jere Retzer, a board member of the West Multnomah County Soil and Water Conservation District, told the City Council that Portland should follow other cities in requiring 80 percent pollution reduction. The city also should hold redevelopment to the same standards as new development, he said. The situation "is already critical," he said. "If anything, it's almost comatose." 

Builders question costs Builders noted that the bureau hasn't spelled out the costs of complying with the new standards, or set performance targets to establish how much the requirements actually improve the health of streams. They worry that the new standards could stymie development in and around downtown, where tight space makes containing storm water more expensive. The city also has to make sure money is spent where it will do the most environmental good, said Gregg Weston, director of engineering for Otak, a Lake Oswego engineering and planning firm. Requiring every new building to treat its own storm water might do less good than charging builders a fee and spending the money on other environmental projects, he said. The standards need to ensure "we don't spend the money on things that make us feel good but on things that are most effective," Weston said.

The council will discuss the standards again April 28. The discussion and a vote on the new standards might extend into May, Saltzman said. By June, the city also expects to have a draft of standards to control erosion during construction. And Marriott is assembling a committee to look at the issue of how to cut storm-water flows from existing buildings. Source: 4/16/99, The Oregonian, by Scott Learn.

Manufacturers will e asked to provide an inventory of all chemicals used on the premises, along with information on storage and disposal. It'll be the same inventory that companies are already keeping, the board promises, and propriety information will be handled confidentially. "We're just looking for substances that are heavier than water – chlorinated solvents, for example," says the board's water quality program manager, Chuck Davis. When such chemicals show up on the list, the board will provide information on ways of using less-hazardous chemicals, or no chemicals at all. "Education is the priority," Davis says.

The contamination potential of some of these chemicals, such as trichlorethylene, is well-known in industry, and Weyerhaeuser is one local company that banned their use even before the Drinking Water Protection Plan was written. But Davis says there may be other companies that aren't as aware, and he believes they will welcome a list of best-management practices aimed at reducing the use of hazardous substances. "We're going at this with the idea that folks really want to protect their drinking water," he says.

The Drinking Water Protection Plan comes before the public in a series of hearings this month. If Springfield's elected officials approve it, it will include an outright ban on the most hazardous chemicals. It will also include an overlay zoning district aimed at protecting areas above the city's wells. "We want people to know of our wellhead protection requirements when they first inquire about a permit – not at the site plan-review stage, as it is now, when they've already spent money on having plans drawn." Source: April 1999 Oregon Business Magazine, by E.W.

Kerr's group is putting on workshops throughout the state this month. The Eugene gathering will be from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday at the Hilyard Center, 2580 Hilyard St. The cost is on a sliding scale from $15 to $30.

Saturday's workshop, "Endless Growth, or the End of Growth: Making Your Community Better," will feature talks by Kerr, Eben Fodor, a Eugene researcher and author of "Better Not Bigger," and former Eugene City Councilor Shawn Boles.

Kerr said his talk will be about what continued growth means to Oregon and how to stop it. He helped put together an "alternatives to growth" conference last year in Portland.

The workshop also will focus on House Bill 3401, which would allow local governments and schools to charge developers for the full cost of growth. Schools currently cannot levy fees against developers to pay for building new schools, and cities cannot charge such development fees to finance new police and fire stations.

Kerr, who now lives in Joseph, said he's been interested in growth as an environmental issue since he was the conservation director for the Oregon Natural Resources Council.

He said halting or slowing population growth can be done. He also said taxpayers ;must stop subsidizing growth and giving financial incentives to industries to locate in Oregon, which fuels more growth. "If we keep packing people in, Oregon is just going to be a well-planned California," said Kerr, best known for his efforts to save the region's dwindling old growth forests. Source: April 8, 1999 Register Guard, by Lance Robertson.

Note: AGO Conference in Florence April 18. Link to: AGO web page