Contaminants removed at tumwata village

By Nicole Montesano

Smoke Signals staff writer

Removing leaking underground storage tanks and tracing the network of underground pipes has been the focus of work over the last year at tumwata village at Willamette Falls, Engineering & Community Development Department Manager Ryan Webb said during a Wednesday, Jan. 8, Zoom meeting.

The meeting was intended to update the Tribe on work at the 23-acre site of the former Blue Heron Paper Mill, which the Tribe purchased in 2019. The Tribe has set a goal of cleaning up decades of environmental pollution, restoring the landscape and returning public access to the site.

The Tribe received an $800,000 multipurpose grant from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2021 for site assessment and cleanup and has now spent approximately 75% of it.

Webb said it was an important number.

“What the EPA allows you to do is that when you get to 70% of your grant, you can apply for additional cleanup grants,” he said.

In addition, the grant came with an EPA specialist assigned as a project manager.

“And they provide a lot of technical expertise to us,” Webb said. “The Tribe, I've said this before, but the Tribe is not in the business nor has been in the business of brownfield cleanup work.”

The Tribe will be seeking additional grants as well.

The multipurpose designation of the grant was important, Webb said, because it allowed the Tribe to use the money for both site assessment and cleanup, both of which were needed.

Somewhere between 40-50% of the more than 50 buildings onsite have been demolished, mostly before 2024.

Work over the last year was focused on the complex system of underground stormwater collection pipes and fuel storage tanks, many of which were leaking, Webb said.  

The Tribe put in monitoring wells and performed extensive testing of inlets and manholes to check for groundwater contamination, and put cameras and smoke into the pipes, to trace where they led to, and where there were breaks. In addition, chemical inventory was conducted.

Fifty-five-gallon drums of chemicals were found throughout the site, along with buried railroad tanker cars.

“Somebody thought it was a good idea to bury (those) under the ground and then use them as an underground storage tank,” Webb said. “Railroad tankers were never designed to be underground storage tanks.”

Not surprisingly, these leaked, contaminating the soil. That requires the Tribe to remove the contaminated soil, as well as the tanks.

“It's those types of complexities that we're always unearthing,” Webb said.

Throughout the work, the Tribe has also watched for cultural relics.

Tribal Community Development Manager Kristen Svicarovich noted that the site is ancient, far pre-dating the past century or more of industrial use.

“We know that the Tribe has creation stories that go back to events like the Missoula Floods, which happened 13,000 to 18,000 years ago … think about like 500 generations being connected to this place,” Svicarovich said. “What we're really trying to do is also broaden the public's understanding of (the) Grand Ronde Tribe's connection to this place over time. Cultural protection onsite is really important and is certainly a part of our activities under the grant. We know that there are known cultural resources on site, archaeological deposits dating back to 1700 years ago. They're petroglyphs.”

The Tribe’s plan is available online at www.tumwatavillage.org. It includes public access to Willamette Falls, shops and restaurants, and habitat restoration for wildlife.

“(Willamette Falls) is the second largest water pool waterfall in North America by width and volume and so to have this hidden gem here in Oregon City is really an amazing feature,” Webb said.