Plan To Deepen Columbia River Faces Opposition

A $100 million dredging project to deepen the Columbia River shipping channel may be challenged by environmentalists despite heavy political pressure and a study predicting no harmful effects.

Preliminary findings by the Army Corps of Engineers indicate dredging would not release major contaminants or significantly raise saltwater concentrations.

State and federal politicians are lining up behind the project to deepen the 40-foot-deep channel an additional 3 feet, removing enough volcanic sand to fill at least 40 Rose Garden arenas.

The project would enable a new generation of cargo ships coming into service worldwide to squeeze upriver as far as Portland.

Northwest leaders warn that failure to deepen the channel would affect the $15 billion worth of cargo shipped each year from points as far as the Dakotas.

But environmentalists have branded the engineering study premature, and they question an emerging plan for dumping dredged sand, claiming the corps is selecting the cheapest sites - not necessarily the best sites.

“The plan as it exists now is environmentally unacceptable, period,” said Lyn Mattei, a lawyer for Northwest Environmental Advocates and the Oregon Sierra Club.

Even without a challenge, the earliest the corps could start dredging is 2003, making business and government leaders anxious to push the project.

To reach agreement with environmentalists, managers of the seven lower Columbia River ports asked the corps recently to consider “ecosystem restoration,” such as creating marshes or wetlands, as part of the dredging project.