Three women come from Seattle to ask community members what they would like to see, when the land along the riv
redeveloped, after the federal superfund clean-up. They try to reassure us that it does not simply mean giving multinational corporations, currently polluting our air and water and blocking access to the river, more tax breaks and incentives. No on is looking reassured.
My mind drifts to Anna and her beaver.
Anna and her father, a handsome Italian immigrant who worked in the mills of Linnton, once went to these places along the river; to the lakes that are now only remembered by the oldest of our community. The lakes and the surrounding wetlands were a place where a man could catch his own dinner. It was a special treat after a week of too many canned beans. She held tightly to her father’s hand as they walked down the Old River Road to the lakes. She loved playing along the shores as the men fished but most of all she loved the beaver. There were three lakes; Guilds, Kittridge and Doane. They went to Doane.
Families and single men were camping down along the river. They hopped trains and set up camp, before going into the small towns to look for work in the forests and mills. They spoke as many languages as did the children in Linnton, and later her father would make a point of going over and welcoming them. He knew what it was like to be new to this country and feel the sting of prejudice. She liked going over to their camps because that is where her beaver lived.
Beaver once thrived along the lower Willamette. Although Oregon is known as the Beaver State, its numbers have been greatly reduced by trapping and a loss of habitat. Recent research has shown that they are a keystone species in fighting climate change and drought, They create small pools and places for other species to live.
“It is not your beaver.” Her older brother teased.
“Well, he is my friend. We look for each other when we come here.”
“Have fun talking to the beavers.” He smiled and ran off to play baseball in the fields. The day was getting warm and they would need to head home soon. Back along the river to the house, her father built in the Italian neighborhood of Linnton. “We all lived in tents when we first got here and were saving our wages to build a house,”
The beavers were building homes too.
She loved the beavers’ homes nestled between the river and the lakes. She wanted to dive under the water and go inside.
“Without the beaver, we’d have no fish.” her father explained. They do half the work for us. They dam the lake so it doesn’t all run out into the river again. Her father liked the beaver too.
Doane Lake was cut in half by the Railroad Bridge built in 1908. Much of the area is now a Brownfield with little lake evidence. Much of the area is a superfund. Across the river we see the industrial area which has shut down and is becoming Willamette Cove Natural Area. To the left is Siltronics.
Years before they had been trapped for hats but that was a long time ago. There were not as many as there were before but in this place, they once again thrived along with the river otter and heron. There were wild berries to pick and wildflowers to put in their hair. Their town was filled with mills and log rafts snd the many small stores of a busy mill town. Their houses were built into the side of the mountain, where they could look out at the town and mills and river.
Anna would remember the lake before and after all her life, just as she would remmber the town before the state tore it down for a highway and to lay the pipes for the Olympic Pipeline.
Remember the smells and the sound of music; laughter and fires as people cooked a noon meal. The last time they came, the water had turned bright green and the beaver lay dead along the shore of the lake. All that was left were their skeletons and their large front teeth. The fish were gone too. The men shook their heads and the mothers drug the children from the shores.
Some cried and covered their noses to avoid the smell. Some talked about finding the men who did this but there were nowhere to be found. They dumped their chemical wastes, made their fortune and left town.
Anna picked a bouquet of flowers and put flowers on the carcasses of the beaver. Her father let her. He knew what it mean to morn the place you came to love and then to lose it. A small group of people from a local tribe, were saying prayers.
“This river is our mother.” A man tells her father and he nods. they had been forced form this land and sent to reservations. They had been promised the right to fish. But what good is a promise if the water is poisoned and the fish have died.
Later they would fill the lake with ground-up scrap metal and cut off its relationship with the river. The creek would be bulldozed and the area declared too contaminated to go near.
From the 1920s to 1980’s, the lake of Anna’schildhood was transformed through the following actions:
Split into three sections by the railroad
30,000 cubic yards of coal tar was laid by it
A battery-breaking company discharged 6.5 gallons of sulfuric acid into the lake
80,000 tons of lead-bearing material was put in it
An agricultural chemical production company discharged wastewater containing chlorinated phenolic and aromatic compounds as well as herbicides and pesticides
Radioactive zinconium sands were used as landfills
The site is bordered by Forest Parka and the Willamette River
Currently, the surrounding area has been repurposed for crude oil export at Zennith Energy with future plans to make it a biofuel export hub. Oil trains cross over the once prosperous and abundant lake.