Fishing rights stall port project
Overlooked tribal treaty halts construction that is three-quarters finished

ARLINGTON, Ore. – Nine miles east of Arlington near Willow Creek, a new bridge crosses the railroad tracks. Completed in 2006 as part of a new Port of Arlington project, it would have linked Gilliam County’s planned new port facility to the rest of the world.
Today it’s Eastern Oregon’s version of the Bridge to Nowhere, a term made famous by a multimillion-dollar span built from the Alaska mainland to a sparsely-inhabited island and considered by some to be a classic case of government pork.
But here, the issues are different.
Work on the port is 75 percent done, but it may have to be dismantled even though Gilliam County has spent, with the help of a $1.9 million Connect Oregon grant, almost $2.3 million.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted the county a permit to drive the pilings at the port site but revoked it in April 2008, saying the pilings would interfere with a fishing site granted to Columbia River tribes by an 1855 treaty.
Project manager Gene Leverton said the Port of Arlington has appealed the corps’ decision, saying the corps should have known about the treaty site.
“We did everything by the book, and they’re just saying, well, sorry,” he said.
Scott Clemans, corps spokesman, said the agency mistakenly granted the permit and blamed miscommunication.
The tribes raised the issue in 2006 but the corps received no written complaint until after the permit was granted last year, he said. It went to a branch not involved in the issue.
Clemans said the corps will help find other possibilities.
But Paul Conable, an attorney for Gilliam County, said the corps has made fundamental mistakes.
“The port’s dock pilings are sitting in a spot that was not under water in 1855,” he said. “It was about 300 feet from the bank, up on a side of a hill.”
He said that when many Columbia River fishing sites were inundated by the John Day dam in 1968, the federal government tried to repay the tribes with cash and nearby “in-lieu” fishing spots.
“We’re not saying the 1855 treaty should be ignored,” Conable said. But “our pilings aren’t anywhere where they have a treaty.”
Brent Hall, an attorney for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, said the site has been known as a tribal fishing area for more than 200 years.
Hall said the tribes had been poorly informed and knew of the project only when a member noticed a large crane at the site.
Hall said the “in-lieu” sites don’t compensate the tribes for lost fishing rights at their “usual and accustomed areas” but are supposed to offset harm caused by the dams.
He said courts have determined that even though water courses change, tribal fishing rights do not.
Hall said tribal leaders have looked into whether the port and tribal fishing could coexist at the site but said because of the pilings and barge activity it was determined they could not.
Hall added the tribes also would help the port relocate the dock.
Laura Pryor, who was Gilliam County judge for almost 20 years, said without the site the county could lose the only viable place to put a dock near Arlington and lose the county’s biggest employer, Waste Management Inc., which runs Columbia Ridge Landfill.
Columbia Ridge needs a barge dock to compete with other landfills nearby, Pryor said, because cities that send trash to the county now prefer barges over trucks for environmental reasons.
“None of this was done in a vacuum,” she added, adding that the permitting process allowed plenty of time for the tribes to object.
She said the Corps of Engineers sold the land near Willow Creek to the Port of Arlington in the 1960s, specifying that it is to be used for a public port.
Pryor said the county gets no federal timber payments and luring businesses to the county is difficult. Without the income from the landfill, she said, the county would not be able to function.
But in May, a Troutdale trucking company won a bid to take trash from the Portland area to the site for the next 10 years.
For now nobody is budging on the issue, which could wind up in federal court.