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CEI Hub risks finally before Portland City Council
By Jim Redden The Portland City Council has finally begun to address the threats posed by the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub, the six-mile stretch of fuel storage and transmission pipes along the Willamette River in industrial Northwest Portland. Around 90% of all liquid fuel used in Oregon is stored there. It sits on soils with…
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Researchers say they have a solution for Willamette River algal bloom. What’s stopping it?
By Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle The algal bloom that forms each summer around Ross Island in the Willamette River south of downtown Portland is expected to be especially bad this year. A potent combination of high temperatures early in the season and ongoing drought made worse by limited snowpack have water already hitting 67…
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Continued Wrongs Don’t Make Anything Right – Ross Island and the Superfund
Opinion by Travis Williams One hundred years ago, Ross and Hardtack Island were connected with a berm. Shortly after, gravel mining began in earnest and continued for the next 75 years. Much of the two islands were scraped away, eventually creating a large and deep lagoon. Now one hundred years later exactly, a group of…
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Algae bloom an enemy to the epic journey of salmon, steelhead
The Pacific Northwest’s three iconic and endangered species — Chinook salmon, steelhead and lamprey eel — are now returning from the ocean and migrating up the Columbia and Willamette Rivers to their birthplace streams and tributary rivers in an event called the fall run. On the peninsula we are surrounded by their migration on both…
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OHA lifts algae bloom advisory on Ross Island Lagoon, Willamette River
News Release from Oregon Health Authority Posted on FlashAlert: August 19th, 2025 1:17 PM Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has lifted the recreational use health advisory issued for Ross Island Lagoon and for the Willamette River south of the lagoon downriver to Wapato Bridge and Kelley Point Park. OHA issued the advisory August 12. Water monitoring has confirmed…
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Harmful Algae Bloom Alert on the Willamette River
Human Access Project sent out a warning Aug. 11, urging caution as signs of cyanobacteria bloom appeared in Ross Island Lagoon that could move downriver. Algae bloom has increasingly developed in the lagoon for the past 20 summers. The HAP warning emphasized that dogs can die from swimming in affected water. Two days later, on…
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Community River School
An invitation to summer evenings on the banks of the Willamette to learn about your river. Each evening will include a children’s art project and music. Please register at sarahsojourner@mac.com. Relax, learn, and connect with the river that unites and sustains us at these free weekly river walks, community art projects, lessons of ecology, despair…
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North Portland’s Willamette riverfront in flux: an opportunity with no guiding vision
There’s an opportunity to reclaim, rediscover and restore North Portland’s neglected Willamette riverfront. But without a guiding vision, it will be left to happenstance, piecemeal and inappropriate development. The North Reach Plan, 2009, would have helped define that process and return to the lower river some environmental function, but it has been tied up in…
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Algae Bloom alert expands (September 2023)
An advisory is in effect for algae bloom in the Willamette River between Ross Island Lagoon and Cathedral Park. According to Oregon Health Authority residents should avoid swimming and high-speed water activities such as water skiing or power boating in areas of the river where there are blooms. Ingestion of water should be avoided. Toxins…
