Is the Willamette River clean? There’s still a lot we don’t know
A national TV news outlet this week celebrated the Willamette River as a model of cleanliness and swimmability as it flows through Portland.The story by CBS News featured the River Huggers, a Portland swim group that advocates for more river access, floating in the water and diving off a dock under the Hawthorne Bridge.The story follows a clean bill-of-health declaration by the city of Portland after water quality testing in the Willamette showed 100% good results over the summer and early fall. The testing led the city to conclude, as it has over the past two years, that the river is “clean enough to swim, paddle and play.”But “clean” may be relative.Oregon State University researchers have just released a report identifying more than 980 chemicals in surface water samples taken at six sites on the river in Portland — chemicals that neither the city nor federal government test for. The study did not look for chemicals and pollutants that are already monitored, such as heavy metals or PCBs.The chemicals don’t appear to be toxic in the short term. But the results raise important questions about how to measure the river’s cleanliness and the cumulative and long-term impacts of less-studied chemicals on human, animal and fish health. The chemicals are likely not unique to the Willamette but are part of the evolution of human lifestyles and reflect the products people use in their daily lives.OSU researchers chose the sampling sites in partnership with the Portland Harbor Community Coalition, a local nonprofit involved in Willamette River cleanup and restoration.They focused on the area in and around the Portland Harbor Superfund Site, a 10-mile stretch of the river contaminated from decades of industrial use that extends from the Broadway Bridge to the confluence of the Columbia River. Much of the contamination is sealed in sediment but some also is present on riverbanks.Typically, water testing focuses on identifying a limited number of known chemicals. But a new testing approach allowed the OSU-coalition researchers to scan samples for thousands of different compounds.Water sampling and testing took place monthly from June through November 2022. The method does not measure the exact amount of each chemical in a sample, but instead shows the relative abundance of each compound across different locations and months.“We’re used to testing for known substances, but now we’re also focusing on other emerging contaminants, many of which don’t yet have established standards,” said Manuel Garcia-Jaramillo, a water quality toxicologist at Oregon State and the lead researcher of the study.Researchers identified the 900-plus chemicals across all the water samples collected by using multiple public research databases, then sorted them based on provenance and use. They include chemicals used in medications, cosmetics, pesticides, industrial products, food additives and plastic production, as well as so-called “forever chemicals” known as PFAs, among others.The two most common chemicals identified were irbesartan, found in drugs treating hypertension, and fexofenadine, found in over-the-counter antihistamines that treat allergies, colds and flu. Chemicals from medications make it into the Willamette because some are released in urine or flushed down the toilet and wastewater treatment don’t remove them, researchers said.Researchers also found some seasonal variations, with samples showing more chemicals during some months. That’s likely because more of them make their way into the river during certain periods, such as when farmers use more fertilizer, Garcia-Jaramillo said.To assess water toxicity, researchers tested two months of water samples on zebrafish, tiny fish that share over 70% of their genes with humans and are commonly used to test toxic exposure.The good news: Tests revealed no toxicity to very low toxicity in the zebrafish, even when the chemicals in the samples were concentrated five times in the lab, Garcia-Jaramillo said.The caveat, he said, is that this testing method does not account for long-term exposure or how a particular chemical or its mixture can affect human health.“Further studies are needed to confirm the entity of those compounds, their quantity and the impact of long-term exposure to low concentrations of individual contaminants or their mixtures,” Garcia-Jaramillo said.More than 100 of the chemicals identified by the research team deserve more specific studies, he said, based on their abundance, occurrence and potential toxicity.Garcia-Jaramillo said he could not talk about risks posed by the chemicals to people who are swimming or paddling. “Our study did not address these activities,” he said.Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services declined to comment on the new report. The city pointed to its own water quality testing, which shows the river is now vastly cleaner than in the past.For decades, raw sewage and industrial pollution had spilled into the river. It was closed for swimming in 1924.The federal Clean Water Act forced the city to build a modern sewage treatment plant, but sewage continued to overflow into the river and the Columbia Slough when storms taxed the sewer system -- as often as 50 times a year. In 2011, the city completed a $1.4 billion Big Pipe project to address the problem.Today, overflows are rare, occurring an average of four times per winter season and once every three summers, drastically reducing the amount of bacteria that makes it into the river and making it safe for recreation, said city spokesperson Diane Dulken.In recent years, groups like the Human Access Project and its swim club, the River Huggers, have worked to make the river more accessible to the public, including via the new St. Johns Bridge dock this year.Willie Levenson, executive director of the Human Access Project, said the “no to low toxicity” finding in the OSU report was optimistic. But, he said, everyone needs to do better to keep the river clean.“It’s a positive study and provides reassurance that the Willamette River is safe for recreation,” Levenson said. “People who recreate in the river naturally want our river to be as clean as possible. This study is a reminder that the actions we take in our watershed are reflected in the health of our river.”From late May to September, Portland residents can check the river’s water quality online. The city samples the water every week for E. coli bacteria at five popular Willamette River locations – the Cathedral Park boat launch, the Portland Boathouse dock, the Riverplace Marina boat dock, the Willamette Park boat launch and the Sellwood Riverfront Park dock. For the past three years, those samples have tested below the health standard set by the state, according to the testing results.Portlanders can also monitor water quality in real time during the rainy season to see how much sewage and stormwater is being prevented from reaching the river and to find out when a rare overflow does occur.The city also tests monthly for other water quality indicators, including nitrogen, phosphorus, mercury and suspended solids. Every four years, it tallies the results in a watershed “report card,” which looks at water quality, river habitat and hydrology. The latest report, released in 2023, gave water quality a B score due to higher water temperatures and pollutants such as copper that can harm salmon.Despite the positive results, Dulken acknowledged that addressing newly recognized contaminants such as PFAs and microplastics – present in a wide array of consumer products – will be the next challenge, in Portland and worldwide.“The cars we drive, the homes we have, the asphalt shingles … when it rains, the rain water flushes all the residual pieces, all the tiny micro-particles, and that all ends up as pollution going into the river. We need to continue to work on that,” Dulken said.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced new drinking water limits for PFAs this spring, but the rules don’t apply to the Willamette River since it’s not a drinking water source.Residents must do their part, Dulken said. This includes picking up pet poop, not washing paint, trash or other chemicals into storm drains and fixing motor oil leaks because all of those wash into waterways.Residents should also never flush medications, automotive fluids, paint, fertilizers and other yard chemicals, poisons and hazardous waste down the toilet or down a drain. The city’s wastewater treatment plants can’t remove plastics or chemicals.Bob Sallinger, executive director of Willamette Riverkeeper, said it is important to celebrate a cleaner river – but it is also key to recognize the river is far from clean.Challenges include chemical contamination, lack of habitat for fish, harmful algae blooms, temperature spikes and the risk of catastrophic spills at the Critical Energy Infrastructure hub on the Willamette River where companies store and offload flammable fuels.“We still have a long way to go,” Sallinger said. “Our urban river certainly is not healthy.”— Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at gwozniacka@oregonian.com or 971-421-3154.Our journalism needs your support. Subscribe today to OregonLive.com.
Oregon State University researchers have just released a report identifying more than 980 chemicals in surface water samples taken at six sites on the river in Portland. Though their toxicity is very low, researchers say we still don't know if or how they might impact humans or animals.
A national TV news outlet this week celebrated the Willamette River as a model of cleanliness and swimmability as it flows through Portland.
The story by CBS News featured the River Huggers, a Portland swim group that advocates for more river access, floating in the water and diving off a dock under the Hawthorne Bridge.
The story follows a clean bill-of-health declaration by the city of Portland after water quality testing in the Willamette showed 100% good results over the summer and early fall. The testing led the city to conclude, as it has over the past two years, that the river is “clean enough to swim, paddle and play.”
But “clean” may be relative.
Oregon State University researchers have just released a report identifying more than 980 chemicals in surface water samples taken at six sites on the river in Portland — chemicals that neither the city nor federal government test for. The study did not look for chemicals and pollutants that are already monitored, such as heavy metals or PCBs.
The chemicals don’t appear to be toxic in the short term. But the results raise important questions about how to measure the river’s cleanliness and the cumulative and long-term impacts of less-studied chemicals on human, animal and fish health. The chemicals are likely not unique to the Willamette but are part of the evolution of human lifestyles and reflect the products people use in their daily lives.
OSU researchers chose the sampling sites in partnership with the Portland Harbor Community Coalition, a local nonprofit involved in Willamette River cleanup and restoration.
They focused on the area in and around the Portland Harbor Superfund Site, a 10-mile stretch of the river contaminated from decades of industrial use that extends from the Broadway Bridge to the confluence of the Columbia River. Much of the contamination is sealed in sediment but some also is present on riverbanks.
Typically, water testing focuses on identifying a limited number of known chemicals. But a new testing approach allowed the OSU-coalition researchers to scan samples for thousands of different compounds.
Water sampling and testing took place monthly from June through November 2022. The method does not measure the exact amount of each chemical in a sample, but instead shows the relative abundance of each compound across different locations and months.
“We’re used to testing for known substances, but now we’re also focusing on other emerging contaminants, many of which don’t yet have established standards,” said Manuel Garcia-Jaramillo, a water quality toxicologist at Oregon State and the lead researcher of the study.
Researchers identified the 900-plus chemicals across all the water samples collected by using multiple public research databases, then sorted them based on provenance and use. They include chemicals used in medications, cosmetics, pesticides, industrial products, food additives and plastic production, as well as so-called “forever chemicals” known as PFAs, among others.
The two most common chemicals identified were irbesartan, found in drugs treating hypertension, and fexofenadine, found in over-the-counter antihistamines that treat allergies, colds and flu. Chemicals from medications make it into the Willamette because some are released in urine or flushed down the toilet and wastewater treatment don’t remove them, researchers said.
Researchers also found some seasonal variations, with samples showing more chemicals during some months. That’s likely because more of them make their way into the river during certain periods, such as when farmers use more fertilizer, Garcia-Jaramillo said.
To assess water toxicity, researchers tested two months of water samples on zebrafish, tiny fish that share over 70% of their genes with humans and are commonly used to test toxic exposure.
The good news: Tests revealed no toxicity to very low toxicity in the zebrafish, even when the chemicals in the samples were concentrated five times in the lab, Garcia-Jaramillo said.
The caveat, he said, is that this testing method does not account for long-term exposure or how a particular chemical or its mixture can affect human health.
“Further studies are needed to confirm the entity of those compounds, their quantity and the impact of long-term exposure to low concentrations of individual contaminants or their mixtures,” Garcia-Jaramillo said.
More than 100 of the chemicals identified by the research team deserve more specific studies, he said, based on their abundance, occurrence and potential toxicity.
Garcia-Jaramillo said he could not talk about risks posed by the chemicals to people who are swimming or paddling. “Our study did not address these activities,” he said.
Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services declined to comment on the new report. The city pointed to its own water quality testing, which shows the river is now vastly cleaner than in the past.
For decades, raw sewage and industrial pollution had spilled into the river. It was closed for swimming in 1924.
The federal Clean Water Act forced the city to build a modern sewage treatment plant, but sewage continued to overflow into the river and the Columbia Slough when storms taxed the sewer system -- as often as 50 times a year. In 2011, the city completed a $1.4 billion Big Pipe project to address the problem.
Today, overflows are rare, occurring an average of four times per winter season and once every three summers, drastically reducing the amount of bacteria that makes it into the river and making it safe for recreation, said city spokesperson Diane Dulken.
In recent years, groups like the Human Access Project and its swim club, the River Huggers, have worked to make the river more accessible to the public, including via the new St. Johns Bridge dock this year.
Willie Levenson, executive director of the Human Access Project, said the “no to low toxicity” finding in the OSU report was optimistic. But, he said, everyone needs to do better to keep the river clean.
“It’s a positive study and provides reassurance that the Willamette River is safe for recreation,” Levenson said. “People who recreate in the river naturally want our river to be as clean as possible. This study is a reminder that the actions we take in our watershed are reflected in the health of our river.”
From late May to September, Portland residents can check the river’s water quality online. The city samples the water every week for E. coli bacteria at five popular Willamette River locations – the Cathedral Park boat launch, the Portland Boathouse dock, the Riverplace Marina boat dock, the Willamette Park boat launch and the Sellwood Riverfront Park dock. For the past three years, those samples have tested below the health standard set by the state, according to the testing results.
Portlanders can also monitor water quality in real time during the rainy season to see how much sewage and stormwater is being prevented from reaching the river and to find out when a rare overflow does occur.
The city also tests monthly for other water quality indicators, including nitrogen, phosphorus, mercury and suspended solids. Every four years, it tallies the results in a watershed “report card,” which looks at water quality, river habitat and hydrology. The latest report, released in 2023, gave water quality a B score due to higher water temperatures and pollutants such as copper that can harm salmon.
Despite the positive results, Dulken acknowledged that addressing newly recognized contaminants such as PFAs and microplastics – present in a wide array of consumer products – will be the next challenge, in Portland and worldwide.
“The cars we drive, the homes we have, the asphalt shingles … when it rains, the rain water flushes all the residual pieces, all the tiny micro-particles, and that all ends up as pollution going into the river. We need to continue to work on that,” Dulken said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced new drinking water limits for PFAs this spring, but the rules don’t apply to the Willamette River since it’s not a drinking water source.
Residents must do their part, Dulken said. This includes picking up pet poop, not washing paint, trash or other chemicals into storm drains and fixing motor oil leaks because all of those wash into waterways.
Residents should also never flush medications, automotive fluids, paint, fertilizers and other yard chemicals, poisons and hazardous waste down the toilet or down a drain. The city’s wastewater treatment plants can’t remove plastics or chemicals.
Bob Sallinger, executive director of Willamette Riverkeeper, said it is important to celebrate a cleaner river – but it is also key to recognize the river is far from clean.
Challenges include chemical contamination, lack of habitat for fish, harmful algae blooms, temperature spikes and the risk of catastrophic spills at the Critical Energy Infrastructure hub on the Willamette River where companies store and offload flammable fuels.
“We still have a long way to go,” Sallinger said. “Our urban river certainly is not healthy.”
— Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at gwozniacka@oregonian.com or 971-421-3154.
Our journalism needs your support. Subscribe today to OregonLive.com.