On a beautiful autumn day of blue skies and warm sun, a woman dressed in black scuba diving gear slips beneath the river in Portland’s North Reach. School children watch curiously as she prepares her equipment and slowly lowers herself down and disappears.
A woman from a nearby houseless camp teaches the students how to find agates and they delight in their discoveries. The shores, on the west side of the river, are crowded with large imposing oil and gas tanks. There are signs warning of the dangers of eating certain fish. We are cautioned about underground pipelines.
Behind the tanks, stretches, one of the largest urban wildlife parks in the United States. It’s many creeks, directed under the tanks and into culverts, where the water spills out into a large superfund site.
The scuba diver is collecting samples of the sediment to determine how to make the river safe again for humans and wildlife. For decades industry and public agencies have fought over who should clean it up, if it should be cleaned up, and who pays.
Over the years, I have discovered the many ways that governments disguise the many subsidies to industrial polluters.
The children ask, “Won’t she get cancer by going down there?”
I reassure them that they have precautions. The contamination is sometimes as deep as twenty feet. It’s not an easy problem to solve. How do you remove or cap that much contamination?
I tell the students that they hope the clean-up will be completed in fifteen years.
TThe scuba diver returns with her samples and the children hold out their treasure of beautiful,golden agates found on the beaches of North Porland.
