A North Portland roofing products manufacturer has been fined $2.1 million for a decade of air quality violations.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality stated it’s the largest fine the agency has issued in its history, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

Malarkey Roofing Products was penalized after the company disclosed it may have been emitting a large amount of formaldehyde, a suspected carcinogen, since 2009. The company confirmed elevated emissions through source testing in 2019.

Formaldehyde can cause burning sensation in the eyes, nose and throat as well as nausea and skin irritation.

The company installed adequate pollution controls in July 2020. As a result, DEQ is not calling for suspension of Malarkey’s operations, agency spokesman Harry Esteve said. The majority of the penalty represents the economic benefit Malarkey gained by failing to comply with the law for 10 years, Esteve said.

Tyler Roppe, vice chairman of the Kenton Neighborhood Association, said while it’s encouraging to see the state take action against industry and make progress implementing the Cleaner Air Oregon program, a company worth potentially $1.5 billion should face greater consequences than essentially a fine to offset the amount of economic benefit derived by illegally releasing toxins into the air.

Malarkey representatives didn’t respond to The Oregonian/OregonLive’s request for comment.

The company has 20 days to appeal the order.

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A Portland ordinance intended to minimize the spread of hazardous materials during residential building demolitions has been largely effective, according to a new city report analyzing the first 18 months of implementation.

Portland City Council in 2018 adopted updates to the building demolition code as a means to protect neighbors of structures undergoing demolition. Prior to passage of the residential demolition ordinance, the city had no regulations in place for containment of materials such as asbestos and lead-based paint. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality was responsible for enforcing asbestos abatement rules, but lacked the resources to do so.

Stakeholders including contractors, the city’s Development Review Advisory Committee, neighborhood representatives, state agencies and city staff convened over the course of six months to craft the ordinance, which gained approval in February 2018 and took effect in July 2018.

The ordinance applies to residential buildings with up to four units, and includes garages and other accessory structures. Among its provisions are requirements that plastic sheeting be placed around demolition sites and in waste bins to prevent soil contamination and runoff, removal of exterior surfaces by hand rather than with mechanical equipment, use of water spray to contain dust and debris, and prohibition of mechanical demolition when wind speeds exceed 25 miles per hour.

In addition, the ordinance requires the Bureau of Development Services to expand the geographic reach of mailed and door-hung demolition notices, makes demolition permits susceptible to BDS staff review, requires contractors to submit demolition plans and materials surveys prior to starting work, and mandates three inspections over the course of a demolition – one each before, during and after the project. An interim administrative rule adopted earlier this month updated the policy to require two inspections during the demolition process.

From implementation in 2018 through the end of last year, the city accepted about 550 demolition permit applications that were subject to the new rules and took 47 enforcement actions for violations of the ordinance. After an initial correction notice, penalties for noncompliance start at $5,000 for the first offense, $10,000 for the second, and $15,000 each for subsequent violations. Through Dec. 31, 2019, the city issued 42 correction notices, two stop work orders and three first offense citations.

According to a BDS report presented to Portland City Council this week, the ordinance – the strongest of its kind nationwide, as stated in the report – has resulted in a reduction in both off-site demolition impacts and complaints to the bureau about dust from mechanical demolition activities.

City staff and stakeholders have identified several areas for improvement in the code, and are drafting updates to the rules, including requiring those performing demolition work to have lead-based paint certifications (regardless of whether that person is a contractor), and removing a requirement that somebody with certified asbestos accreditation be on-site during mechanical demolition. Revisions to the ordinance are being finalized by BDS staff and are slated for presentation to City Council next month.

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Government agencies are one step closer to beginning a $1 billion-plus project to clean up the Willamette River‘s polluted Superfund site through North Portland.

Last week, the Portland City Council authorized the Bureau of Environmental Services to enter into a settlement agreement for remedial design of the Willamette Cove area – a portion of the entire site targeted for cleanup. The bureau will work with the Port of Portland, U.S. Department of Defense and state agencies on the project.

The goal is to design for a “100 percent remedy” of the 10.1-mile stretch of river from Sauvie Island to south of the Fremont Bridge. The design phase is expected to take three to five years, followed by 13 years of construction. The site will then be monitored for 17 years.

River cleanup will be a long process, with a myriad of government agencies involved. The agreement represents a concrete step forward, said Annie Von Burg, an environmental policy manager for the Bureau of Environmental Services.

“This is an exciting phase of the project,” she said. “This is where we get closer to tangible action.”

The agreement – known as an administrative settlement agreement and order on consent – has been negotiated among the government agencies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing the work. The cleanup also involves the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of State Lands, which owns the riverbed.

The agreement now goes to state and federal agencies for their approvals, which starts a clock for the design work.

“Once that is officially signed, we have a clock ticking that we are legally bound to,” Von Burg said.

A request for proposals was issued June 28. The Bureau of Environmental Services is evaluating the proposals now, and officials expect to award the contract in early to mid-October, Von Burg said.

The contract is for an estimated $8.1 million, although such contracts tend to vary in actual cost.

“My experience is these change pretty significantly, so I’m not sure where we’ll land, but that’s the target,” Von Burg said.

The work is expected to involve dredging and capping the riverbed in certain places.

“We are looking at engineered designs that will guide the cleanup of construction itself,” Von Burg said.

Different places in the river will require different solutions. As one example, the agencies face a complex problem at water mile 11, slightly north of the Broadway Bridge. An underwater cable there is complicating the design work, Von Burg said.

The river is polluted from decades of industrial operations, and the city lists “chemicals of concern” including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), pesticides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

In general, the work is likely to begin upriver, closer to where the affected area begins south of the Fremont Bridge. There may be some exceptions in places where there is a reduced risk of recontamination, Von Burg said.

“There are areas that could possibly go sooner because of the water dynamics,” she said.

The Swan Island lagoon is one such area because it is less impacted by water circulation, Von Burg said.

The remedial construction crews will also have to work around the ongoing operations of Portland Harbor.

The EPA is encouraged that the state and local governments are coming together, spokeswoman Suzanne Skadowski said.

“We’re always happy when the parties are moving forward,” she said.

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The Trammell Crow Company is seeking to expand the capacity of the Subaru parts distribution warehouse in Gresham by more than 42 percent.

According to an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality land use compatibility statement submitted May 31 to the Gresham Urban Design and Planning Department, the firm is looking to add approximately 253,290 square feet of space to the warehouse in the Gresham Vista Business Park off of Northeast 242nd Drive.

Documentation submitted to the city states the new construction would be on the west (rear) side of the existing warehouse building, which is roughly 600,000 square feet. The existing parking lot would be reconfigured and expanded to accommodate the additional space and provide sufficient parking spaces required by city code.

Trammell Crow principal Steve Sieber declined to comment on project plans.

The submission of a land use compatibility statement is one of the first steps required of an applicant when it holds an existing DEQ permit and wishes to modify or renew that permission by seeking new construction or an expansion. In this case, the applicants wish to modify an existing “water quality NPDES (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) stormwater general permit” to accommodate the distribution center expansion.

The planned expansion is the second of two construction phases originally approved by the city in 2015 as part of a single development on the 39.07-acre site. The first phase was a joint project developed by Trammell Crow and Clarion Partners. It was designed by Mildren Design Group and built by general contractor Perlo Construction. The facility opened in October 2016.

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State regulators have denied the proposed Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipeline a needed water quality certificate.

The move announced Monday by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality deals another delay to the 229-mile pipeline project that would connect the Klamath Compressor Station east of Klamath Falls to infrastructure near a seaport terminal at Coos Bay’s North Spit.

The state agency’s decision was made “without prejudice,” meaning the company backing the pipeline, Pembina Pipeline Corp., based in Canada, could rework its application and try again.

A Southern Oregon environmental group fighting the project characterized the water quality certificate denial as a “really big move in the right direction for Oregon.”

“This is a very serious blow to the Jordan Cove LNG project,” said Allie Rosenbluth, campaigns director for Rogue Climate.

Pembina has been pushing the Jordan Cove project for more than a decade, seeing an opportunity to move liquefied natural gas from the interior of the United States to energy-hungry Asian markets via ocean shipping.

Pembina representatives did not reveal their next move.

“Pembina’s management team is working to better understand this decision and its impacts and will communicate updates when appropriate,” spokeswoman Tasha Cadotte stated in an email message.

Cadotte declined to comment beyond the written statement.

The DEQ decision came in response to a deadline set by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A recent court decision had called into question an extension of the deadline to Sept. 24, so the state agency kept to the original May 7 deadline to preserve Oregon’s right to review the project’s water quality impacts.

Some observers expect Pembina to rework its application and try again to get DEQ approval. It wouldn’t be the first time the Jordan Cove project team has overcome obstacles.

“They’ve had a lot of things denied, but they come back,” said Hugh Link, director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission.

The commission represents the 423 permitted crab boats on the Oregon Coast, and has pushed for safety corridors around any ships that would use Jordan Cove. Crab boats and tankers alike would have to cross the Coos Bay bar at slack high tide.

“We want them to be able to maneuver safely through the Coos Bay bar,” Link said. “When they’re going out or coming in, we don’t want them to have to wait in bad weather.”

The commission has not taken an official position on the project.

Pembina says the $10 billion project would create 6,000 construction jobs at its peak and would generate property tax revenues of $60 million a year to southern Oregon counties and $50 million to the state.

The Port of Coos Bay has backed the project.

“We see it as something that can be really transformative for this area as far as bringing back economic development opportunities,” spokeswoman Margaret Barber said.

Jordan Cove has alarmed environmental groups, who believe the project would become Oregon’s largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions as climate change worsens. The pipeline also threatens coastal rivers and the property rights of some landowners who could face eminent domain, Rosenbluth said.

DEQ’s denial was backed by a 209-page report analyzing the proposal’s effects on water quality. The agency cited concerns about construction of the pipeline and associated roadways affecting water temperature and sediment in streams and wetlands, and the risk of drilling materials entering the Coos Bay estuary.

Pembina proposes to dredge a 22-acre area to connect a slip that would be built to the navigation channel. The 36-inch-diameter pipeline would affect about 4,950 acres during construction and 1,400 acres permanently, according to the agency.

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Plans to build a homeless shelter underneath the Broadway Bridge have been appealed to the Portland Design Commission.

A $1.6 million new construction permit for the Navigation Center was previously issued by the city, and a ceremonial ground-breaking event took place last month. Deacon is set to serve as the general contractor. But now the Design Commission will now hear the appeal on April 18. The appeal was filed Feb. 25 by Portland resident Kurt Sorensen and gives three major reasons for challenging the Type II staff approval, which was finalized just four days prior.

Sorensen contends the project: 1, does not meet the definition of a mass shelter or a temporary use and thus is not exempt from review or entitled to expedited permitting; 2, does not properly fall under authority of the city’s housing emergency declaration; and 3, does not comply with relevant city River District design standards.

“Whether characterized as a mass shelter, a temporary shelter, or a short-term shelter,” Sorensen writes in the appeal, “the proposed navigation center does not meet the code definitions and thus should not be approved.”

Oregon Harbor of Hope, a nonprofit, is looking to build the shelter on a vacant 1.17-acre parcel along Northwest Naito Parkway, slightly north of the Broadway Bridge. The 60-foot-by-150-foot, Quonset-style prefabricated structure would have a fabric membrane tent roof.

The Navigation Center, designed by Opsis Architecture, is intended to house up to 100 men for up to 100 days at a time. Plans call for dormitory-style sleeping facilities, food prep and serving areas, office space, toilets, showers and storage space. Staffers at the facility would help temporary residents “navigate” their way to social services such as mental and physical health care, housing placement and job training.

Plans for the shelter have drawn criticism from neighbors. That includes a pending lawsuit filed last year by Portland developer Jim Winkler over an environmental cleanup plan approved by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

“The objection is not to a shelter,” Sorensen wrote. “It is to a project that is an ad hoc mixture of leased or used prefabricated structures cobbled together in a way that does not respect architectural character and land use within the neighborhood.”

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Although Oregon is on its way to finally establishing a set of toxic air rules, the final result won’t look quite like what many people had originally expected.

Prior to the Oregon Legislature‘s session earlier this year, the Department of Environmental Quality had been working on standards related to thresholds for the amount of cancerous and non-cancerous pollutants a facility could emit without having to take extra steps to control its emissions. Facility operators and manufacturers had pushed back against those limits.

In February, however, the industry stepped forward with Senate Bill 1541 as an alternate to the rules draft that DEQ was floating in front of legislators. The bill not only passed, but it was signed by Gov. Kate Brown, despite the fact that it was a far cry from her original recommendations.

“It’s being touted as an industry-backed bill,” Chad Darby, principal air quality consultant at Maul Foster & Alongi, said. “But really, in the end, there were people on both sides of the issue that supported Senate Bill 1541.”

Maul Foster & Alongi and other consulting firms have been following the path the toxic air plan has taken, stepping forward to help facility operators looking to take proactive steps to determine exactly where their emissions fell on the threshold scale.

That scale, however, has changed as a result of the passage of SB 1541. The new legislation basically doubles the thresholds that the DEQ will be allowed to set to determine whether facilities are in compliance. The cancer-risk threshold that was 25 excess cancers per million people, for example, is now set at 50 per million.

The legislation also addresses how the DEQ will deal with multisource areas such as industrial parks, where there are large concentrations of facilities that fall under the parameters of the toxic air rules. Originally, the rule called for the DEQ to look at any area that qualified as a multisource area – an approach that concerned many people that facility operators would shy away from areas such as industrial parks in order to avoid heavy concentrated areas.

Under the new legislation, the DEQ will select one area to study and then use the results to set up a process to be used as a starting point for managing similar areas.

One thing that hasn’t changed in light of the new legislation is the requirement that industry players will need to perform human health risk assessments.

“Any facility DEQ calls in for human health risk assessments with air permits will still need to do that,” Darby said.

With a November timeline for finalizing the state’s new toxic air rules, the DEQ is pulling together a committee to look at recommendations of final rules based on the new legislation. Public comment is expected to open in July, with a staff report and recommendations to follow in October. A vote on the final rules by the Environmental Quality Commission is expected during that group’s meeting in mid-November.

While the threshold increases have drawn criticism from some people, others say that while the new legislation may not be perfect, it allows Oregon to finally establish an air toxics program that might not otherwise have been fully funded.

Industrial facility operators will still be called upon by the DEQ to perform human risk assessments, and those results will be made available to the public.

Even with the new thresholds, industry experts are still recommending that facility operators take steps now to conduct their own testing.

“A number of facilities we’re working with are starting to look at where their risks come from,” Darby said. “We’ve been recommending they conduct a risk assessment similar to what DEQ will likely (keep) in its (final rules). We have done a couple dozen already for facilities, and most had (one or two) pollutant issues that were easily resolved or that they realized were being incorrectly calculated.”

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Demand for office space will drive the pace of development at Zidell Yards, executives of Zidell Cos. said Wednesday.

Office tenants are needed to lure a grocery store – an amenity that South Waterfront residents have demanded for years.

“The office market is going to be a big driver of that, but yes, we do have grocery store operators that are interested,” said Jay Zidell, president of Zidell Cos.

The Zidells are pushing for redevelopment of the 33-acre Zidell Yards property in the South Waterfront. A master plan calls for 5 million square feet of space. That breaks down to 2.3 million square feet of residential units, 1.5 million square feet of offices, 200,000 square feet of retail space and 1 million square feet of parking.

Three parks will add life to the site, and two docks will provide access to the Willamette River, Zidell Cos. officials said.

The Zidells went public with their master plan in December 2016, and new details continue to emerge. Zidell Cos. officials spoke at a breakfast meeting Wednesday hosted by the Mittleman Jewish Community Center at Hotel Lucia in downtown Portland.

Cambridge Innovation Center, a co-working company that is looking for space in Portland, is one potential tenant at Zidell Yards.

“They’re very interested in coming to Portland and being part of this,” said Charlene Zidell, director of corporate relations and communications for Zidell Cos.

Oregon Health & Science University and Oregon State University also have expressed interest, she said.

At one time, Nike seriously considered the Zidell properties for a corporate expansion.

“Nike was interested in the entire site,” Jay Zidell said.

Instead, the shoe and apparel company expanded its existing headquarters in Washington County.

The Zidells, Charlene in particular, had qualms about turning over a large tract in the South Waterfront for a corporate campus, Jay Zidell said. Though he would welcome Amazon as a potential tenant, he said, Zidell Yards is not a good fit for a big corporate headquarters such as Amazon’s HQ2 proposal.

“We do not have the capacity to offer 8 million square feet of office or anything else,” he said. “That’s not consistent with the family’s vision for the site.”

Zidell Yards is likely to include some affordable housing, Charlene Zidell said. She’s had discussions with EngAGE Inc., a nonprofit group based in Burbank, California, that provides arts programming for senior housing, she added.

The family wants to learn the community’s ideas for how best to use the property, Charlene Zidell said.

“We’re not going to sit in a back room and decide what is best for Portland and build it and hope we like it,” she said.

The Zidells are also wrestling with how much parking to include on the site. It’s difficult for developers today to predict how transportation may change in the near future, Jay Zidell said. For now, most people drive their own cars, but that may soon change, he said.

“It’s a really challenging issue,” he said.

The developer cannot build underground parking on some lots because of environmental contamination. Yet the Zidells still plan to build plenty of parking.

“We plan to build as many parking spaces as we are allowed to build,” Charlene Zidell said.

The Zidells have decided to keep the existing barge building, although it will likely look much different after redevelopment, with only the shell left intact.

Redevelopment of the site became possible after the Zidells completed environmental remediation in the Willamette River in 2011, following prods from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. The Zidells installed an 8-acre sand cap in the river and cleaned up the shoreline, where vegetation has begun to regrow.

The river and west riverbank were contaminated after decades of building and dismantling barges on the site.

The Zidells had long considered redeveloping the property. In recent years, the Zidell Marine shipyard had become increasingly constrained by development on three sides.

“It was becoming much more difficult to conduct our business on the site,” Jay Zidell said.

On Sept. 21, 2016, Zidell told employees the barge they were building would be the company’s last.

The redevelopment of Zidell Yards comes as other large master-planned developments are growing closer to fruition, including the Broadway Corridor, The Waterfront in Vancouver, Washington and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry campus.

“We have a truly unique, remarkable and maybe once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Jay Zidell said, “and our real challenge is to not screw it up.”

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Supporters of Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) were told Wednesday by Portland City Council members that whatever happens, high standards for workforce diversity would apply to a major utility-based construction project now rolling into action.

The different sides are still debating an equity plan for city construction projects drafted by Mayor Ted Wheeler, the Community Equity and Inclusion Plan. CBA supporters want the CEIP to closely resemble CBAs, which are considered union-friendly, and others want greater opportunities for minorities who own open-shop firms.

On Wednesday, the council held a procedural hearing related to a $146 million upgrade of the city’s Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant. Heavy work on the project won’t begin for about two years, but CBA advocates who testified were assured by council members the project would feature ambitious targets for gender and racial diversity.

“We’re concerned the city could be missing an opportunity,” said Kelly Haines of the Metropolitan Alliance for Workforce Equity.

Wheeler said Wednesday the sides are “weeks, not months” from agreement on the CEIP. He confirmed the main sticking point has been a threshold of $25 million stipulating projects use the CEIP.

Also at the hearing, the council voted unanimously to use the construction manager-general contractor alternative contracting method for the wastewater treatment plant project. The method, preferred by many builders for complex and/or risky projects, is also said to help firms meet workforce and subcontracting goals.

The debate over equitable contracting was going on long before Wheeler took office in January, but in April, his office released a draft CEIP that had the support of the National Association of Minority Contractors-Oregon, whose membership includes both union and open-shop firms. But the region’s largest construction worker union, the Columbia Pacific Building Trades Council, along with many other nonprofit groups, opposed several conditions of the CEIP, notably a threshold exempting required use of the CEIP on projects valued over $25 million.

Built in 1952, the Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant today serves 600,000 Portlanders, handling an average of 76 million gallons per day. However, as a result of Portland’s , the plant now sees peaks of up to 450 million gallons in a day following heavy rain.

These wide variations require more biological treatment during a rain and increased resiliency, according to BES program manager Muriel Gueissaz-Teufel. The upgrades have been included in planning documents as far back as the 1990s. Beyond that, she said, regulators have mandated the city complete the project by 2024.

The first deadline is Saturday, when the city is required to notify the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality it’s implementing the project.

“The project is really about increasing the quality of treatment at the plant,” Gueissaz-Teufel said. “The EPA is asking that as much flow as possible be sent to biological treatment.”

The project addresses deferred maintenance needs, upgrades of technical systems and rolls in several long-needed capital projects at the treatment plant. It adds 15,000 square feet of storage space and 5,000 square feet of staff space, as well as add two wet-weather clarifiers and replacement of odor control systems. Wastewater clarifiers are large basins that allow for the separation of sediments.

“(Clarifiers) are low-profile structures that are essentially full of water,” Gueissaz-Teufel said.

The existing clarifiers at the treatment plant will remain in place.

Construction costs for the project are budgeted at $89 million. The overall project budget of $146 million includes predesign, design, construction and permitting. Funding comes from sewer ratepayers via the Sewer System Operating Fund.

Mike Jordan, director of the Bureau of Environmental Services, said the will help by providing the contractor more flexibility in scheduling, which for this project will feature complex sequencing and maintenance of operations.

“When you’re talking about $90 million you’re talking about considerable risk, and anything you can do to minimize risk would be supported by the ratepayer,” Jordan said.

Jordan showed the council a picture of equipment at the plant used for biosolids processing jerry-rigged to prevent leaks.

“As you know, big electrical equipment and leaks just don’t mix,” he said.

Contracts for the project will require frequent reporting by involved parties, to groups including the Portland Utility Board, the Citizens Utility Board and the City Council.

Management help sought for treatment plant work

Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services is looking for program management and other support services as it embarks on major projects at its two wastewater treatment plants.

The Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant treats as many as 76 million gallons per day. Design for improvements is expected to begin next year.

The Tryon Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant treats an average of 6.5 million gallons per day. The facility was built in 1964 and expanded in 1976. An improvements program for the plant approved in 2014 includes five projects.

The overall project budget is $89 million. The program to expand secondary treatment in Portland is mandated by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

The winning bidder will work as an extension of BES staff to assist project managers with completion of the two large projects, according to the request for proposals. The initial contract will run for five years with provisions allowing for a five-year extension.

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The story is a familiar one in Oregon – technology advances and workers in the timber industry are displaced. Mill operators scale down, slowly at first, and ultimately sell their assets and leave. Industrial sites with lingering environmental issues sit abandoned in the heart of town.

It’s the story of tiny St. Helens, 28 miles downriver from Portland. But there, backers of a long-percolating redevelopment plan have a unique opportunity to reimagine their entire waterfront and restore a vibrancy missing since the loss of heavy industry.

The plan involves a long-shot idea that could aid two environmental cleanup efforts at once.

Essentially, the Portland Harbor Superfund Site needs to find a permanent facility to take its dredged spoils, and the city of St. Helens needs to fill a giant hole that now is a wastewater lagoon.

“The opportunity that they have is to fill a hole and make money,” said Kevin Parrett, cleanup section manager for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

The high-end estimate of potential income is around $150 million.

“It’s really up to the city of St. Helens whether they’re able to pull this off.”

Mayberry vs. Beirut

Boise Cascade still operates two paper machines in St. Helens, but the company’s presence here is much diminished from the town’s heyday. Four mills ran in the 1960s, when about 5,000 people lived here. The population now is nearly three times that.

About three-quarters of St. Helenians commute each day outside the county. Most take the relatively gridlock-free drive to Portland.

Many new residents are young with small children and, thus, less disposable income, according to City Administrator John Walsh. But in St. Helens, unlike Portland, they can live in a nice three- or four-bedroom house with a yard and driveway, he said.

“They like it here; it’s that rural way of life, but it’s changing,” he said. “We have a lot of development pressure, and not just on the water. All our properties are seeing pressure.”

About four years ago, Boise Cascade Wood Products announced it would finally close its veneer plant after years of ramping down. The city jumped at the chance to negotiate to purchase the 25-acre property, hoping to beat the large developers to the table.

The city today controls it as well as an adjacent 200-acre property where Boise Cascade operates its two remaining paper machines, and formerly ran much more.

A big-picture vision to redevelop this prime land – sections of which today resemble “Beirut,” according to Walsh – has taken shape. Plans call for Portland-style mixed-use buildings – i.e., ground-floor retail space below offices and residential units. And because the city is made up of several cities that grew into each other long ago, the town’s disjointed road system will have to be addressed before it can any handle additional volume.

To pay for it, an urban renewal district has been created. Development on the site would help too. The city wants to soon start looking for a developer.

Like most growing small towns, there’s a contingent in St. Helens resistant to change, said Roni Bartlett, co-owner of the Klondike Restaurant & Bar, a classic steak-and-seafood American eatery located near the veneer property. When she moved here 20 years ago, the city resembled Andy Griffith’s “Mayberry,” she said. It was nice, but new energy is nice too.

Bartlett supports the redevelopment plan, especially if it includes live-work space and more retail.

“Getting people to change their minds about growth is a challenge, but I do see things swinging that way,” she said.

Working plan

Because it’s been an industrial site for more than 100 years, environmental remediation is expected to be needed at spots on the ground around both parcels. But a far larger issue is the old Boise lagoon, a 40-acre, 35-foot-deep log pond between the two parcels that the city uses as a backup sewage storage facility.

But it’s far larger than the city needs (the primary pond is only 2 acres). Beyond that, at the bottom is about 8 feet of toxic material that must be addressed before the land can be dedicated to public use.

A plan hatched by consultants along with Walsh’s office and the city council would repurpose the lagoon by adding a liner, filling it in and capping it to create developable land.

The city’s options are either buy fill (but such an amount probably wouldn’t be affordable because the pond is so big) or seek a state permit to accept solid waste.

The city has proposed to seek a permit to accept dredged spoils from the Portland Harbor cleanup, but it won’t be easy. For one thing, residents who’ve already complained about being left in the dark have expressed reservation about their city taking Portland’s toxic waste.

“I hear people say, ‘We don’t want toxic waste,’” Commissioner Doug Morten said. “Well, we have it. We have it right now. The question is: What do we do about it?”

The harbor cleanup, in the works for more than a decade, is a whole other can of worms. The metal-impacted soils in the channel of the Willamette River in Portland are categorized according to the danger they pose. The sort of material St. Helens would accept is not the most contaminated option. That sort of permit would likely be too difficult to obtain. The spoils eyed by St. Helens tend to be pretty clean, and often are reused by the Army Corps of Engineers for beach replenishment projects, Parrett said.

Another hitch in the idea is the fact that filling the lagoon would require relocation of the city’s wastewater plant. This would likely be paid for with some of the money St. Helens receives to accept the waste.

A bill currently in the Oregon Senate’s Ways and Means Committee would direct $1.5 million toward an all-important engineering study that’s the next step in getting the lagoon certified as a landfill site.

Not many good, cost-effective locations exist to accept the harbor’s waste, Parrett said. The Hillsboro Landfill, for example, wouldn’t be feasible because a near-constant stream of trucks would be required to haul the material.

The only feasible way to move so much material is by rail or by barge. The other option would be to transport the material upriver to landfill sites in the Columbia River Gorge.

Leaders of the harbor cleanup have puzzled over this piece for years.

“In my mind,” Parrett said, “this is such a perfect solution for Portland Harbor dredge spoils, and it’s such a perfect solution for the city of St. Helens. The city of St. Helens has a need. The Portland Harbor has a need. This really could be a perfect marriage.”

But standing in the way is the public engagement process.

Changing of the guard

Randy Peterson, 61, is a lifelong St. Helens resident – a retired firefighter who served half of his life on the city commission, half that time as mayor.

For years Peterson championed the waterfront redevelopment, including the idea to fill the lagoon with dredged spoils. He pushed for a waterfront boardwalk, in part so that views could be protected, and for mixed-use buildings, so developers could immediately start recouping costs with the residential units.

“It’s beautiful out there,” he said. “I just want everybody to be able to go down and enjoy the river.”

Peterson was ousted as mayor in November when a virtual unknown received 51 percent of the vote. He had run into trouble when he tried to sell some of his privately-owned land to the city, according to Morten. That didn’t look good.

His opponent, landscaping company owner Rick Scholl, used an active Facebook presence and a stockpile of yard signs to ride an anti-establishment mood into office.

“He ran a campaign that nobody took seriously,” Morten said. “And now he’s mayor.”

St. Helens has a unique, hybrid weak-mayor form for government. It’s similar to Portland’s in that commissioners oversee various bureaus. But St. Helens has a fully empowered city manager and professional department heads who are overseen by citizen-commissioners. The mayor’s role can be as strong or as weak as that mayor makes it.

So far, things have been harmonious with Scholl helming meetings, according to Morten.

“It’s really hard to tell because he’s never held office before, and everything about this, all this stuff, is brand-new to him,” Morten said. “But he is enthusiastic.”

Scholl said he’s still worried about how much of the development process is occurring behind closed doors and out of view of the public. But he likes a plan that includes a waterfront park, and he likes what he’s heard about the waste the town would accept at its lagoon, especially if it lowers sewer rates.

“I’m not an expert on this stuff,” he said. “That’s why I’ve been trying to educate myself, and that’s what I tell members of the public: educate yourself about what is going on down here.”

For the moment, the council unanimously supports the lagoon plan. But the public is fickle, and the clock is ticking.

“Government is very slow,” Scholl said. “And there’s a lot that has to be done.”

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