Sources of Pollution


Nonpoint Sources

The federal Clean Water Act does not directly regulate diffuse, or "nonpoint" sources of pollution, the runoff from land activities such as logging, grazing, farming, and urban development. Instead it requires states to create their own laws and programs, provides an accounting for water quality impaired by nonpoint sources, and funding assistance to land owners. The text below describes nonpoint sources and programs designed to control polluted runoff from those land activities.

Logging

Forestry is the most widely distributed land use in the Columbia River Basin. Modern forestry practices, such as clear-cutting and road building, fragment and devastate forest ecosystems, cause severe water pollution and destroy aquatic life, particularly where hillsides are steep. Clear-cutting has destroyed entire sub-basins in the Columbia River Basin. Now, less than 10% of the region's ancient forests are still intact. Beyond the famed Northern Spotted Owl, there are dozens of other species threatened with extinction by the destruction of our region's last primeval forests.

Road building is believed to be the greatest source of excess sediments in small streams. One third of the 340,000 miles of roads built by the U.S. Forest Service (the largest road building organization in the world) are in the Pacific Northwest, making this federal agency one of the Basin's biggest polluters. Pollution from road building may not be fully apparent until major storms cause widespread erosion and hillsides collapse.

The practice of removing trees up to the edge of creeks destroys critical riparian areas. This can kill fish by raising water temperatures and destroying the natural habitats which are created when mature trees fall into waterways, forming pools. Salmon and related fish, which are ideal indicators of the health of other aquatic life, are closely tied to the well-being of forest ecosystems. Forestry practices that remove riparian corridor habitat and create excess sedimentation can completely prevent salmon, which require clean gravel to spawn, from reproducing. Despite known problems, forestry practices, even on public lands, continue relatively unchanged.

Farming & Grazing

Although farming makes the land look green, modern techniques are anything but environmentally sensitive. Where water is scarce, massive amounts of water from rivers and underground aquifers are diverted for irrigation. Modern agriculture pollutes water and lands with pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers, and poor land use practices lead to erosion. Most of the 211 major dams in the Columbia River Basin were built by federal agencies in part to irrigate the fertile coastal valleys and desert plateaus -- thus heavily subsidizing the current industrial-scale agriculture which has wrought so much environmental destruction. Irrigators often divert most or all of stream flows, raising water temperatures and drying up streambeds, thus destroying aquatic life. In many irrigation districts, fish are drawn out of the river to suffocate and die in irrigation ditches because screens have not been installed. Ditch irrigation also threatens the land itself in Washington State, 8 tons of soil for every acre of farm land wash into rivers each year. Much of the irrigation water in the arid West is used for alfalfa, irrigated pasture and other crops inappropriate to its desert climes. During dry years, irrigators pump groundwater at rates far exceeding the speed with which rainwater refills underground aquifers, a process known as "mining groundwater" These water sources are likely to be lost forever.

Overgrazing throughout the West has damaged the quality of 80% of public grazing land. The federal government subsidizes this destruction by keeping grazing fees artificially low. When too many cows or sheep are grazed in a concentrated area, they severely degrade water quality by denuding hillsides, causing erosion into streams. Cattle also strip the stream-banks of riparian vegetation, which raises water temperatures and harms fish, and they wade in streams, muddying the water and fouling it with pathogens such as giardia, salmonella, dysentery anthrax, and fecal coliform bacteria. Cattle feces have been linked to a water-borne liver-kidney disease affecting sea lions on the Pacific Coast.

Many of the chemicals used in agribusiness are lethal to fish, wildlife and people, contaminating rivers from farm run-off. Some toxic pesticides persist in the environment for decades. Banned in 1974, DDT -- and its breakdown products DDD and DDE -- is still found in the Basin waterways, hampering the reproductive success of mammals and birds, such as bald eagles, that live far down stream. Much of the millions of tons of chemical fertilizers applied in the Columbia River Basin end up as nutrient pollution, causing algae blooms and suffocating aquatic life. Unsafe levels of pesticides and nitrates have been found in many wells used for drinking water in counties dominated by agriculture.

Mining

Nationwide, mining releases more toxic heavy metals than any other source. In the Columbia River Basin, this industry has caused environmental degradation for more than 125 years, particularly in the Northern Rockies Now, abandoned mines and smelter sites in Montana are among the largest Superfund sites in the nation. New, more toxic, methods of mining are being employed which continue the destruction of water quality and wildlife. Federal regulation of mining is archaic; the Mining Law of 1872 still guarantee miners the right to purchase public lands at $5.00 an acre, virtually free of environmental regulation.

The two areas in the Basin most heavily affected by mining are the Silver Valley, in northern Idaho and the Upper Clark Fork River in western Montana. Just east of Kellogg ID, the Bunker Hill mining and smelter complex encompasses 21 square miles and includes several small towns. Lead, cadmium and zinc contaminate dozens of miles of the Coeur d'Alene River and Lake. The nation's largest Superfund site is a 100-mile stretch of the Upper Clark Fork River floodplain and the whole town of Butte MT which includes thousands of acres of contaminated landscape and millions of cubic yards of toxic mine tailings. Heavy metals from mining have contaminated drinking water, poisoned children, and killed large numbers of fish.

Water and land pollution, particularly by heavy metals, result from all types of mines. Countless abandoned underground mine shafts in the Basin discharge water made acidic and contaminated with heavy metals. Placer mines dig up whole streams to separate metal flakes from gravel and muck, thereby causing massive sediment pollution, destroying fish habitat, and re-suspending toxic metals deposited deep in river and stream beds.

Mining's most nefarious form, open pits, is still practiced in Montana and Idaho, and dozens are proposed for Southeastern Oregon. Huge gashes in the earth's surface expose hundreds of acres of toxic compounds, which leach heavy metal and sulfuric acid soup into surface and groundwater. This practice is becoming even more deadly with increasingly sophisticated technology: massive amounts of low-grade ore scraped from pits are deposited in huge piles which are sprinkled with a cyanide solution to extract particles of gold. Cyanide heap-leach mining ponds attract migrating waterfowl searching for water; leaks and spills from these ponds contaminate soils near streams and groundwater.

Urban Development

A significant part of pollution from urban areas comes from the run-off from poorly managed lands - construction sites, illegally dumped household and industrial wastes, air pollution deposited on city streets - as well as industries that foul the water through direct discharges from their pipes. In addition each city has at least one massive source of millions of gallons of pollution: municipal Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs). In older cities, human sewage, stormwater and often industrial waste, are gathered together under city streets and directed to these STPs. Newer cities collect stormwater separately and discharge it to rivers untreated.

STPs are enormous sources of treated or partially treated sewage, containing high levels of BOD and TSS. In addition, two cities along the Columbia discharge completely untreated sewage directly to rivers on a regular basis. Portland OR has 55 of these Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) pipes that discharge over 7 billion gallons annually into the Willamette River and the Columbia Slough, while Astoria OR has 46 CSOs that dump into the Estuary. CSO discharges include human fecal matter, toxic wastes from households and industries, and floatable wastes such as tampons, condoms and syringes.

Like CSOs, which largely unregulated, cities and towns discharge large amounts of untreated stormwater, While it may sound innocuous, stormwater can be highly contaminated with heavy metals and toxic pollutants deposited from auto exhaust, industrial air pollution, pesticides and weed killers used on lawns, to name a few sources.

Water Withdrawals

THIS SECTION UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Animal Feeding Operations

THIS SECTION UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Nuclear Facilities

One legacy of the United States' amassment of nuclear weapons and its enchantment with nuclear power is the Columbia's distinction as "the most radioactive river in the World." Exactly how radioactive the river's water, sediments, and fish are today is unknown, due to an almost complete lack of monitoring. Between 1944 and 1971, however, the waters of the Columbia were used by the US. Department of Energy (US.DOE) to cool 8 military reactors at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, waters which passed directly over the highly radioactive fuel and into the river. As a consequence, shellfish as far away as Puget Sound and San Francisco Bay were contaminated with Hanford's radiation.

Today, these reactors are shut down, but Hanford's contribution of nuclear pollution to the Columbia continues. As a result of intentional dumping in open waste pits, accidental spills, and routine discharges from nuclear materials processing facilities, there are now four major groundwater contamination plumes and over 1,400 contaminated sites identified at Hanford. Over 120 square miles of groundwater have been found contaminated on the 570 square miles that make up the Hanford reservation. The largest plume is entering the Columbia River on the eastern perimeter of the site. Along with radioactive cesium-137, plutonium-239 and 240, strontium-90, cobalt-60 and technetium-99, wastes at Hanford include sodium, nitrates, sulfates, cyanide, phosphates and fluorides. Some operations continue - even in this "modern" age - to discharge vast quantities of chemical and radioactive wastes directly to the ground. The annual rate of such dumping in one area alone is 8 billion gallons. From the ground, contamination eventually reaches the Yakima and Columbia Rivers via groundwater and riverbank springs. While only the tip of this iceberg of nuclear waste has come in contact with the river, the result has already been measured in increased radiation found in agricultural produce irrigated with water downstream of Hanford.
Water in the Hanford Reach of the Columbia contains radiation well over drinking water standards: 900 times for strontium-90, 8 times for tritium, and 7 times for uranium.

While Hanford is currently no longer being considered as the site of the nation's first nuclear dump for high-level wastes from commercial reactors, it is the de facto nuclear waste dump for the country's decommissioned reactors. Dozens of Navy submarine reactors have been and continue to be barged up the Columbia River to be buried at Hanford along with the nation's first decommissioned nuclear plant and other large nuclear garbage.

Upstream from Hanford, on the Snake River, the US.DOE also operates the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) which has similarly contaminated the Snake River Aquifer. More nuclear reactors have been built there than any other site in the world: a total of 52 reactors, with 13 still operable. Like Hanford, INEL serves as a de facto nuclear dump for the nation, with radioactive wastes - including an estimated 60,500 pounds of the core debris from the Three Mile Island reactor - stored and buried there. Like Hanford, nuclear wastes have been put in decaying tanks, open trenches, and cardboard boxes. In addition, 16 billion gallons of radioactive wastes have been injected through deep wells to the Snake River Aquifer. As a result, the aquifer contains plutonium, strontium-90, cesium, cobalt-60, tritium and iodine-129, among other chemicals. Contaminated groundwater enters the Snake River through springs, primarily at the Thousand Springs outlet near Hagerman, ID.

Some high-level nuclear wastes at INEL are "calcified," or turned into a granular form. There are 3,500 cubic meters of this calcified waste, in addition to the 2 million gallons of liquid high-level radioactive wastes at INEL, 1.5 of which contain sodium and cannot be calcified. There is also an enormous quantity of plutonium-contaminated waste at INEL: 2 million cubic feet of such wastes were buried up to 1970, and 3 million cubic feet of plutonium-contaminated soils are present. An additional 2 million cubic feet have been placed on asphalt pads. Over 750 metric tons of used fuels - from Three Mile Island, other reactors, and navy submarines - are also stored at INEL Toxic wastes have been dumped indiscriminately as well, creating 368 identified hazardous waste sites at INEL. Flooding and the addition of organic compounds that enhance migration are believed to have increased the speed at which underground plumes of wastes are moving.

Other sources of radioactive discharges to the Columbia are the region's two electrical nuclear reactors. WPPSS No.2 at Hanford WA has operated since 1984. Its design is intended to keep large amounts of radioactive pollution and heat from the Columbia River but, like all commercial reactors, it routinely discharges radioactive materials to the water and the air. In addition, the reactor poses a significant safety threat to the Northwest from the risk of a nuclear accident. While commercial reactors cannot explode like a nuclear bomb, they can have steam explosions and other types of accidents that could distribute large amounts of deadly radiation to an area the size of Pennsylvania. The likelihood of an accident is increased for a reactor like WPPSS No.2 which suffers from a range of deficiencies including bad design, faulty construction, inadequately trained operators and poor management. The region's other commercial nuclear plant, Trojan in Rainier OR, operated from 1976 through December 1992, when it was permanently shut down Trojan will continue to pose a threat to the public and workers from the high level spent fuel currently stored onsite and from de-commissioning activities.

The United States began perpetrating its large-scale nuclear experiments on people and lands throughout the world when it built the bombs that annihilated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The federal government promoted the commercial nuclear power industry in an attempt to overcome the public's horror of the nuclear bomb. Both the nuclear power and military nuclear programs continue to this day as experiments-experiments that are linked to thousands of radiation-related illnesses of cancer, chronic diseases and genetic defects each year. This experiment will continue until Congress stops supporting, subsidizing and protecting the nuclear industry. The solution to the problems of Hanford and INEL, however, does not lie in moving their radioactive wastes to another dump, such as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico or Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Point Sources

Columbia River Basin Pulp & Paper Mills

Of the 19 pulp and paper mills in the Columbia River Basin, 11 discharged so much dioxin that the US. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined the levels of this pollutant in the Columbia, Snake and Willamette Rivers were unsafe for people. As a result, in 1991, 8 bleached-kraft pulp mills, which produce dioxin as a result of using chlorine bleach, were ordered to reduce their dioxin discharges. The process used by EPA to obtain these reductions - called a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) - has been required by the Clean Water Act since 1972, but with few exceptions TMDLs have not been implemented for other polluted waterways in the Columbia River Basin. EPA's use of the TMDL process was necessary after the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and Washington Department of Ecology (WDOE) identified these pulp mills as toxic polluters under new laws passed by Congress in 1987. Now, with the TMDL, dioxin discharges are being reduced.

Such progress in curtailing toxic pollution was only possible because EPA had already measured unsafe levels of dioxin in Columbia River fish. This combination of water quality monitoring, aggressive regulatory requirements, and EPA involvement that came to bear on the dioxin problem must be repeated if we are to ensure that states will force industries to reduce pollution in the future. The dioxin TMDL dramatically illustrates that, despite its vast flows, the Columbia cannot dilute to safe levels the mere 43 milligrams per day of dioxin that was being discharged by the pulp mills. The dilution solution to water pollution simply did not work even with this tiny amount - the equivalent of one tenth of an aspirin tablet each day! Now that EPA has ordered dioxin discharges reduced to 6 milligrams per day, the region still must determine if this level protects wildlife. Dioxin has been found in bald eagles and other fish-eating birds in the Columbia River which may be at greater risk than humans because of the larger amount of fish they consume in relation to their body weight.

The pulp and paper industry yields tremendous political clout both in the Basin and throughout the country. Despite the fact that it is the largest discharger of dioxin, BOD, and TSS to the Lower Columbia River, and the second largest user of electricity in the region, the pulp and paper industry has virtually regulated itself. It has achieved this status by bullying state and federal agencies, manipulating scientific data on the dangers of dioxin, and buying political clout. To the public, the industry masquerades as environmentally conscious, promoting itself in expensive advertising, while it challenges every attempt made by regulators to curtail dioxin discharges. The best way to address discharges from pulp and paper mills is a national phase-out of the use of chlorine in this industry. Meanwhile, consumers need to be informed of the hazards that are linked to production of bright white paper through mandatory labeling and encouraged to buy non-chlorine bleached paper. Companies will only manufacture these products in response to consumer demand or government incentives. Regulatory agencies must also take steps immediately to reduce and eliminate dioxin discharges from other sources such as wood treaters and Superfund sites.

Insufficient Instream Flows

This section under construction.

Hydroelectric Dams

There are 211 major dams in the Columbia River Basin, 34 of which are on the main stems of the Columbia and Snake Rivers. With these dams, government agencies have radically altered the natural stream flows of the Basin, transforming a once free-flowing river into a series of stairstep, slackwater, computer-controlled reservoirs. Once a dynamic ecological system, the Columbia supported abundant populations of fish and wildlife. Now, the region's waterways are managed almost entirely for human purposes: hydropower, irrigation, flood control, and navigation. The first dams in the Basin were built for irrigation on the Snake River at the turn of the century by the Bureau of Reclamation. The construction of the Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams for hydropower, by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1930s, initiated a new phase of river destruction. Built without fish ladders, the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia and the Hells Canyon Dam on the Snake completely blocked the access of millions of fish to and from their historic spawning grounds, and are largely responsible for the extinction of 67 stocks, or subspecies, of salmon. The present network of dams, from the Canadian Border to Bonneville Dam, has now completely flooded all of the Columbia's original riverbanks except for a 50-mile stretch along the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, called the Hanford Reach.

The construction and operation of dams affects fish and wildlife habitat. The flooding of streamside vegetation, known as riparian areas, is one of the most disruptive aspects of dam construction, causing major habitat losses. In addition, water levels in reservoirs behind the dams operated by the Corps, to serve the power needs managed by the Bonneville Power Administration, rise and fall on a schedule unrelated to nature. Levels in reservoirs may drop suddenly on a daily basis to meet electrical demand - as far away as Los Angeles. Hardly any native vegetation, upon which fish and wildlife depend for nesting, roosting, and foraging, can tolerate these new environmental conditions. The dams also significantly reduce and slow the movement of water, with serious impacts to fish. In the spring, when the river should be quickly flushing tiny salmon smolt to the sea, the Corps holds back water for summer irrigation, causing catastrophic fish kills. Sufficient flows are also critical to many fish, like sturgeon and trout, which are adversely effected by dams.

In addition to these physical changes, dams affect water quality held in the reservoirs behind dams and diverted around dams in power canals that parallel rivers, with rises in temperature, threatening cold-water fish like salmon. In addition, the water in reservoirs becomes stratified, with levels of dissolved oxygen necessary to sustain life reaching zero at the bottom. And, while too much sediment in a river is a form of pollution, too little causes erosion. Dams hold back sediments - up to 99% of a river's silt - causing clear, or "sediment hungry' water. When this water is released by dams on the Columbia's tributaries, it causes erosion of riverbanks at high, unnatural rates, destroying riparian habitat. Water pounding over Columbia River dams causes another pollution problem, supersaturation with nitrogen gas, which causes "gas bubble disease' in fish.

All regional electric users benefit from the hydroelectric dams by using the cheapest electricity in the nation, but no one benefits as much as the aluminum industry, which pays bargain-basement prices to obtain 35% of the Columbia's hydropower. Dams also subsidize the barging industry and agribusiness by providing cheap transportation and irrigation water. But like a silent canary in a coal mine, the progressive decline and continuing extinction of the salmon in the Columbia River Basin warns us that this ecosystem is in trouble. The high federal subsidies of industries and electric users have come at a tremendous cost. More than any other single factor, this system of dams has destroyed aquatic habitat and threatens the survival of a wide range of species.

The mere existence of dams should not be used as a mandate for operating them at maximum capacity. In the wake of huge-scale and irreversible destruction caused by dams, Congress should now require them to be retrofitted and operated with environmental protection foremost. People will have to shoulder the burden of conservation of water and electricity to compensate for the toll previously borne only by the land, the water, the fish and wildlife. Plans for hundreds more hydro plants should be stopped and Congress must take control of the Army Corps of Engineers, now an outlaw agency operating under its own rules.

Wetland Fills

Before European settlers began to dike, drain and fill wetlands, these marshy areas were prevalent in the estuary and along the Lower Columbia River, where they played a critical role in supporting what were then huge populations of fish and wildlife. Beginning in the 1850s - a time when wetlands were viewed as mosquito infested swamps - diking and draining estuary wetlands to produce pasture land occurred at a rapid pace. Of the original wetlands, today a mere 23% of tidal swamps and 35% of marsh swamps remain in the 46 miles of the lower river which constitute the estuary. Filling wetlands to convert them to urban and industrial uses upstream of the estuary such as the City of Longview and the Portland International Airport, has been equally devastating, but not well studied.

Today we know that wetlands provide critical habitat for the feeding, resting, migration and reproduction of countless species. Salmon, on their journey to and from the ocean, use estuary wetlands as a place to adapt from freshwater to saltwater and back again. The young of many species, such as crab, use estuarine wetlands as a nursery, feeding in a protected environment before entering the ocean. The survival of many species is tied to the preservation of wetlands; for example, some birds nest only in wetlands, and when the wetlands are destroyed, they cannot reproduce. Despite today's recognition of the critical importance of both freshwater and estuarine wetlands, their destruction continues. Federal and state governments must be urged to pass - and enforce - tougher laws that will ensure that remaining wetlands are given the absolute protection they need. The practice of constructing artificial wetlands, in order to justify the filling of natural wetlands to make way for development, should no longer be tolerated. In addition, funding should be allocated to restore former wetlands in the estuary by breaching agricultural dikes and carefully reintroducing native plants.

Dredging & Shipping

As the vessels used in international shipping have grown in size, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has kept pace in the Columbia River by increasing the dredging of sediments accumulated in the ship channel. The Corps uses a variety of methods to dredge 53 million cubic yards of material from the Columbia RM 106.5 (Vancouver), and a depth of l7 feet to RM 145 (Bonneville Dam). Dredging is environmentally damaging because it disturbs habitat and releases contaminants to the water, and because disposal of dredged spoils has similar effects. Some dredged spoils are returned to the river in what is termed "flow lane disposal," which merely carries the material downstream, to be dredged again. Other spoils are used to build up beaches that have eroded, called "beach nourishment." Yet others are used to fill in wetlands, create entirely new islands, and some are dumped at sea. Dredging areas that are contaminated deep under the surface causes historic deposits of toxic and radioactive pollutants to be released, making them available to fish and other aquatic life. Likewise, placement of contaminated sediments on beaches, islands, and in water increases the availability of toxic pollution in the environment. In addition to eroding water quality, both the dredging and the disposal disrupt the habitat of aquatic life by removing the habitat altogether and/or smothering it. Despite the fact that the Corps is overwhelmed by the amount of dredged material currently in need of disposal, this agency with the support of Columbia River Ports, is planning to increase the depth of the channel from 40 feet to 43.

Many of the materials shipped up and down the Columbia River pose a serious risk to the environment should they be spilled on land or into the water. These include radioactive wastes, oil and chemicals. The most significant oil spills in the Lower Columbia were the 25,000 gallon Toyota Maru spill in 1978, the 170,000 gallon Mobil Oil spill in 1984, and a 90,000 gallon spill in Youngs Bay in 1990. Transfers of oil at land-based facilities and vessels also pose a threat to water quality from chronic leaks. Attempts to clean up oil spills and to rescue oiled wildlife generally fail, making prevention the most effective approach. However, a combination of insufficient funding for clean-up and regulatory agencies, as well as inadequate laws to prevent and minimize spills, are the greatest barriers to achieving success.

 


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