A 10-mile toxic float trip

Know your river: A float through Portland's toxic 10-mile stretch (18 Photos)

Portland Business Journal

Cathy Cheney

Staff Photographer-Portland Business Journal

Casting off from Cathedral Park under the St. Johns Bridge. It looks pristine on the surface, but I'm about to learn otherwise from my Superfund tour guide Travis Williams, head of the Willamette Riverkeeper. Click through for more images of Superfund sites, both dirty and rehabilitated, along the Willamette River.     Cathy Cheney | Portland Business Journal

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The Willamette was a toxic soup in the 50s and 60s before serious clean-efforts began. Raw we wage, chemical wastes... It was the de facto dumping ground for unwanted waste materials.  There is obviously still more work to be done - the easy stuff has been taken care of already.  

One of the things Anne McDonald said at the City Council work session last week ("Wish you were there"), was that streams in Lake Oswego needed to be colder still in order to compensate for warm water downstream (Oswego Lake and the Willamette River).  I doubt that Lake Oswego has a refrigerator big enough to make a difference.