Shreds of mystery
The environmental fiasco happening in plain view right across the street from where the Trail Blazers play is a total disgrace to Oregon. And Anthony Effinger at the Weed is all over it.
The second cargo ship in two months arrived Sunday at the old Louis Dreyfus grain terminal next to the Steel Bridge and took on a load of shredded tires from Castle Tire Recycling, a Portland company that uses the site on the Willamette River to export the tire shards to Asia, where they are often burned for fuel....
Three front loaders buzzed around the grain silos, scooping up tire shards and loading them onto a conveyor belt that led into the belly of the ship. A dust cloud kicked up each time a loader dropped a bucketful into the bin that led to the conveyor.
Travis Williams, executive director of the environmental watchdog Willamette Riverkeeper, observed the process from the Steel Bridge and filmed what appeared to be tire chips falling from the conveyor belt into the river, making ripples. The terminal’s operators stretched a tarp under the conveyor, but some of the tire shards appeared to fall past it.
“My guess is that if we were to look at the river bottom right here, there’d be some nice piles of shredded tires,” Williams says. “This is the kind of thing that is ridiculous in the year 2022.”
Indeed it is. You've got to smack your head just reading about it. Where is the state DEQ? Where are the city bureaucrats who would crucify you for even spilling stormwater into the river?
Contrary to what DEQ found Aug. 4, tire shards like the ones piled up at the terminal are visible along North Interstate Avenue, from Thunderbird Way, the short street that leads to the terminal, to Broadway.
If this were New Jersey, any sensible person would conclude that someone was on the take. Here in Oregon, I guess it may be just innocent, inept government.
Perhaps.
Anyway, when Tina Kotek comes around telling you how bad her opponents are going to be for the environment, ask her about how the Democrats in Salem have been doing in that department. This state's DEQ is a bad joke a lot of the time.
My first thought is "doesn't Paul Allen have right-of-refusal on that spot?"
ReplyDeleteMy second thought is "how bad do those owners hate Allen AND the city that rather than sell, they'd do this?"
Tom McCall would have rented a jet boat and stormed in for an appearance in front of one of those ships being loaded. He would have shamed every last person who either signed off or looked the other way.
The youths keep saying Portland is just fine. Meanwhile hopper cars full of this stuff are passing under the Blumenauer Bridge every day on their way to be burned in Asia. A disgrace.