GASCO: Willamette River Cleanup

From The Oregonian May 22, 2005

'NW NATURAL AGAIN ASKS TO DELAY CLEANUP'

'Summary: For more than 10 years, records show, regulators have told the utility to dig out a tarry mass polluting the Willamette River
The federal government says a toxic tar reef that juts into the Willamette River near downtown Portland poses such "an unacceptable risk to human health and the environment" that it should be dug out this summer.
In 1913, the Portland Gas & Coke Co., known as Gasco, began manufacturing gas from oil on the Willamette's west bank, between what later became the Fremont and St. Johns bridges. Within a decade, the plant was making the lowest-cost gas in the nation by selling byproducts.

The work created huge volumes of waste that Gasco dumped directly into the Willamette and, after 1941, into four settling ponds. Once pipelines brought natural gas to the Portland market in the 1950s, Gasco closed the plant and changed the company name to NW Natural Gas Co., later shortened to NW Natural. The company still stores liquid natural gas and has two tenants on the site. It sold the site's southern portion, later developed by Siltronic Corp., which makes the silicon wafers that computer chips are printed on.

But the tar remained. Pollution spreads

By the 1970s, tar waste from the four ponds had been mixed with soil and spread between the Siltronic and NW Natural site. Test drilling in 1998 encountered tar and tar oils at 60 feet. Tar oils have turned up in two neighboring wells near the river at 120 feet. '

Alex Pulaski: 503-221-8516; alexpulaski@news.oregonian.com
Julie Sullivan: 503-221-8068; juliesullivan@news.oregonian.com

please see this link for the complete article regarding the GASCO Superfund site on the Willamette River:

http://www.oregon-health.org/assets/PH/News%20Articles/PH%20-%20Oregonian%20-%20NW%20NATURAL%20AGAIN%20ASKS%20TO%20DELAY%20CLEANUP.htm?/base/front_page/111675586579500.xml&coll=7&thispage=1