The confluence of federal protections for imperiled salmon and Portland's green consciousness present an historic opportunity to protect and restore urban stream corridors and, with them, an urban landscape more deeply connected to the natural world. But if property rights groups and some developers have there way, the local protections will be rolled-back.

By Jim Labbe

Healthy urban streams; isn’t that an oxymoron? It wasn’t to John Charles Olmsted, who wrote in his famed 1903 Report to the Park Board of Portland: “Marked economy may also be effected (sic) by laying out parks... so as to embrace streams that carry at times more water than can be taken care of by drain pipes. Thus brooks or little rivers which would otherwise be put in large underground conduits at enormous public expense, may be attractive park ways.” Olmsted inspired generations of Portlanders to envision a more organic urban landscape: a city built amidst an interconnected system of parks, natural areas, and open space, linked by trails and streams corridors, and providing access to nature for all social classes.

Yet, a century of urban development has not been kind to Portland’s streams and waterways. An estimated 260 of the city’s original 476 miles of streams have vanished — most of them piped or paved over as the city grew. Many remaining streams suffer from encroachment by development, channelization, run-off from streets, yards, and higher stormwater flows. As of 1996, the Department of Environmental Quality listed over 213 miles of stream and rivers in the Portland Metro-region as water quality limited.

The cumulative impacts to urban streams and watersheds continued apace during Portland’s rapid growth in the 1990s. Watershed impacts were most glaring in areas with new sprawling sub-divisions, such as upscale Lexington Hills development in Southeast or Forest Heights in Northwest Portland. The loss of streamside forest canopy contributed to the well-documented decline in urban greenspace and forest canopy over the last decade.
Despite these trends, it is at the nadir of degradation that now something like the original Olmsted vision for Portland has a chance of becoming reality.

Salmon and the Endangered Species Act in the City

In March of 1998 and 1999, the National Marine Fisheries Service listed several salmon and steelhead stocks in the Willamette and Lower Columbia Rivers. Salmon and steelhead runs, once abundant in the Willamette and Lower Columbia watersheds, have declined or gone extinct in many of the region’s waterways, contributing to the 90 percent decline in historic salmon abundance in the Columbia Basin. The listings made the Portland-Metro region the nation’s first major urban areas directly affected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The City of Portland pledged an ambitious response to the fish listings. The City’s ESA response plan, lays out the intent to “push past the minimum standards set by the Endangered Species Act to help attain the goal of recovering native fish.” In summarizing the plan, Commissioner Erik Sten notes that “the fish are tough, but they’re not superheroes. In some areas it’s not reasonable to think they can survive now, but if we restore the habitat it’s reasonable to think the fish will come back.”

To that end, the City started by evaluating how its programs and activities affect fish, positively or negatively. It soon became clear that ESA compliance dovetailed with ongoing efforts to clean up the Willamette and its urban tributaries that flow through Portland’s neighborhoods. Bob Roth, former Johnson Creek Watershed Council Coordinator describes how “many segments of Johnson Creek used to provide water-related recreational benefits such as swimming. The reduction in water quality that has made these areas unhealthy to swim has also been a primary limiting factor for fish.”

The City has since sought to combine salmon recovery with the ongoing program, required by the Clean Water Act, to remove 94 percent of combined sewer overflows to the Willamette River by 2011 and fund water quality improvements, at a cost of $1 billion. Sten’s office is also heading up the removal of the fish-blocking Marmot dam on the Little Sandy River. City Council allocated $1 million to ensure fish passage to Kelly Creek while upgrading the intersection of Southeast 162nd Ave. and Foster Road. Kelly Creek harbors some of the best salmon and steelhead habitat in the City. Metro has helped by dedicating funds from the 1995 voter-approved greenspace bond measure to acquire high-quality habitat areas along streams, such as the Ambleside site on upper Johnson Creek. Meanwhile local watershed councils, stream groups, and the Bureau of Environmental Services continue to direct public and private funds toward helping landowners to restore urban streams.

Nevertheless, it has become increasingly clear that the City may be working at cross-purposes while existing regulations still allow clearing and development in sensitive streamside areas — like Kelly Creek. As Sten described the weak link in City's efforts: “Although we may have the best example of land use planning...the way we treat rivers and streams is the glaring underbelly.” Without adequate standards to protect existing habitat from development, salmon recovery efforts are swimming upstream.

Healthy Portland Streams

To address the problem, the Planning Bureau performed a yearlong review of existing regulations and conducted extensive natural resource inventories. The result is a draft program, dubbed Healthy Portland Streams (HPS), that expands the city’s environmental zoning and increases stream protections within existing environmental zoning. The proposal would curtail construction on roughly 5,000 acres of environmentally sensitive land in private ownership, approximately five percent of the City. Not a lot of land, but critical, say City staff, to prevent landslides, reduce flood damage, and protect clean water and salmon habitat.

To Ben Langlotz, a 39-year old patent attorney, pro-gun activist and Minnesota transplant living in Portland Heights, HPS amounts to a “land grab” based on “junk science.” Langlotz argues the draft program will decrease land values, discourage investment in the city and steal property rights.

Last November, Langlotz set up the United We Stand Foundation, a property rights organization to oppose HPS, naming himself, his wife Angela, and Kevin Starrett of Oregon Firearms Federation- as directors. He hired Bonnie Mabon of the Oregon Citizens Alliance (wife of jailed anti-gay activist activist Lon Mabon) to conduct a bulk mail campaign under OCA’s non-profit mailing permit. Letters to affected property owners announced that the City wants “complete control of YOUR property” and requested financial support to fight the plan. Langlotz also claimed that the new regulations would keep people from planting vegetable gardens. Via his mailings, Langlotz has successfully stirred up opposition to the program, inflamed passions against city staff, and raised $30,000 in just over three months.

Urban greenspace advocates strongly dispute Langlotz’s claims. “Langlotz has been very successful fostering a reactive response to City's draft program by spreading falsehoods about how it will affect ordinary homeowners.” says Ron Carley, urban conservationist with the Audubon Society of Portland.

United We Stand’s message has certainly not convinced all landowners. “You’d think from some of the rhetoric that I wouldn’t be able to go to the bathroom without a permit,” says Jere Retzer whose land is in a proposed environmental zone. Retzer is involved with watershed restoration projects in the Crestwood neighborhood and sees a clear need for stronger standards. “It takes decades for nature to grow a healthy forest next to a stream that a reckless developer can clear in minutes, regardless of impacts on the neighbors or the watershed.”

Other affected homeowners, like Walt Hollands, who lives in Sylvan Heights Neighborhood, question whether United We Stand represents the interest of many homeowners. “I find it ironic and sad that some people who have made a conscious choice to live in paradise should demand the right to destroy that paradise” says Hollands.

The answer, argues Peter Bray, a greenspace advocate from Northeast Portland, has everything to do with the interests vying to build on environmentally sensitive lands. “The beneficiaries of the status quo are those poised to first develop streamside properties and cash-in on the value of adjacent undeveloped areas. The losers are other streamside homeowners, those who live downstream and the fish and wildlife that depend on connected stream habitat. We need minimum development standards along streams.” Zoning to protect urban streams, Bray adds, is a problem uniquely suited to local government.

Regulatory Improvement or Roll-Back?

Still, United We Stand’s well-funded campaign against HPS has already had a chilling affect on City Hall. The Mayor still professes support for a revised program, but HPS has been put on a slow track. Meanwhile developers, industrial landowners, and some business interests are reported to be using the City’s new “Regulatory Improvement Work Plan” to weaken HPS and other environmental programs — an effort being fueled by the global economic downturn.

“There is absolutely no evidence that establishes any credible nexus between establishes any credible nexus between enhanced environmental protection and negative impact on the local economy, or ability of the business community to operate competitively.” says Mike Houck, Urban Naturalist with the Audubon Society of Portland. “In fact, every study we have seen documents a positive relationship between cleaner water, protection of fish and wildlife habitat, abundance of park and greenspaces, and economic vitality.”

Houck adds that the “critics of HPS fail to acknowledge that the program is part of a much larger, more comprehensive regional approach to natural resource protection and restoration.” Protecting and sustaining space for nature and human access to it, he argues, lies at the core of Portland’s sense of place and the region’s growth management strategy for a more compact, efficient urban form.

“Streams like Johnson Creek or Columbia Slough and surrounding neighborhoods cannot afford another decade of urban growth that treats environmental protection as an after-thought,” adds Ron Carley. “If places like Forest Park or Powell Butte, the legacies of the Olmsted generation, are not to become isolated in a sea of development, we will have to protect and restore the natural pathways found in stream corridors.” The majority of Portlanders, argues Carley, have yet to be adequately informed as to what is at stake.

The success of urban salmon recovery efforts and the fate of HPS may depend on more Portlanders making their voices heard. A recent poll found that 60 percent of Oregonians believed the decline of salmon has become “the No. 1 environmental issue” in the State. Polls also indicate that the same percentage of Portlanders favors stronger regulations to protect urban streams. Whether this public sentiment will translate into public policy, remains to be seen.

For more information contact Jim Labbe, 503-282-0327 and visit www.pdxstreams.org.

 

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