{"id":228107,"date":"2010-01-25T07:59:21","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T12:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3072"},"modified":"2010-01-25T07:59:21","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T12:59:21","slug":"portland-harbor-report-downplays-risk-%e2%80%94-epa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/228107","title":{"rendered":"Portland Harbor report downplays risk \u2014 EPA"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Greenwire<\/a>: In a 13-page critique, U.S. EPA<\/a> lambasted the risk assessment included in an October report on Oregon’s<\/a> largest Superfund site written by industries and local government agencies that will likely foot the bill for much of the cleanup.<\/p>\n

Federal regulators said the Lower Willamette Group’s report on the Portland Harbor contamination cleanup tends to “minimize the risks to human health and the environment” and was “incorrect” in concluding that the majority of the contaminants identified at the site pose no unacceptable environmental risks.<\/p>\n

“They tried to make some inappropriate claims about what’s risky and what’s not,” said Eric Blischke, an EPA project manager. “They just really kind of beat that to a pulp to some degree.”<\/p>\n

EPA said in its letter that the $74 million report prematurely dismissed the risks of contaminants harmful to wildlife, such as pesticides and tributyl tin, and low-balled the risk of PCB<\/a> concentrations in fish. The report found that PCB concentrations in fish in the Willamette and Columbia rivers range from 20 to 100 times higher than EPA targets but still it concluded that the risk assumptions about how much fish people eat are “potentially significantly higher than actual risks.”<\/p>\n

EPA’s interpretation of how dangerous the contaminated sediment is will determine the extent of the cleanup and influence whether the sediment is capped or dredged, which would be more expensive.<\/p>\n

The cleanup work is slated to cost up to $1 billion, paid for by industry, landowners and Portland’s sewer and utility ratepayers.<\/p>\n

Federal regulators hope to have a cleanup plan in place by the end of 2012 and do not expect a dispute over the findings to slow down the process (Scott Learn, Portland Oregonian<\/em><\/a>, Jan. 21). – DFM<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Greenwire: In a 13-page critique, U.S. EPA lambasted the risk assessment included in an October report on Oregon’s largest Superfund site written by industries and local government agencies that will likely foot the bill for much of the cleanup. Federal regulators said the Lower Willamette Group’s report on the Portland Harbor contamination cleanup tends to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4055,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4055"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}