Oregon Coastal Salmon Restoration Initiative

Introduction

For centuries, seaports and harbors have been central to the economies of local communities and larger trade dependent regions. Ports acted as the primary transshipment points in the allocation of goods and services domestically, as well as in foreign trade. With new transportation technologies and the growing interdependencies between regional, national and international economies, port districts have been experiencing enormous pressures to support economic development values by continuing to offer modern harbor facilities.

In the United States, foreign trade has grown at a remarkable rate over the last decade as compared to previous years. For West Coast ports, where the potential for future cargo growth is greatest, the combination of expanded trade with Asia and a change in shipping routes from the Panama Canal to overland continental rail has invigorated Pacific Rim Trade and is transforming ports into "intermodal transport gateways" for the nation. Oregon's economy continues to burgeon. Exports from Oregon businesses have increased by 21 percent in the last five years. The value of waterborne commerce on the Columbia River has reached $15 billion. A new generation of cargo ships is coming on line worldwide, requiring deeper navigation channels and new terminal facilities.

Until the early 1970s, ports were able to accommodate these emerging demands with few conflicts in public purpose. Over the last decade, however, equally important demands for environmental quality and more diverse social planning have been imposed. Ports operate in delicate wetland environments where extensive marine ecosystems are impacted by dredging, filling and other terminal development operations. Consequently, land use management and environmental regulation which developed to offset or mitigate such impacts have required ports to plan and develop around the notion of satisfying more than their traditional single goal of economic development. Port success now depends predominately on proper adjustment of port district structure and process to contingencies posed by market forces, technology and environmental quality. There is no better example for demonstrating new policy areas of environmental conflict than in showing how ports have participated and can participate in the recovery of anadromous fish stocks.

Background

Ports districts in Oregon are a diverse group of public entities - by definition, municipal corporations - which provide a wide range of marine and non-marine facilities and services and satisfy broad market demand. The port district is a local unit of government, formed under Oregon statutes, with the aim and authority to engage in activities, including but not limited to, stimulating economic development within the port district. The means to accomplish this goal are numerous and varied. According to Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 777, a port may engage in the following:

• Make bay, river and harbor improvements
• Acquire real property
• Maintain tug and pilotage services
• Construct and maintain marina facilities
• Engage in domestic and foreign commerce and shipping
• Operate facilities for processing agricultural, fish or meat products
• Build, operate and maintain power plants, transportation facilities, airports, bridges, canals or locks
• Acquire, develop and manage industrial parks within the port boundaries
• Manage commercial/retail and other types of development

Oregon's 1995 Legislature passed Senate bill 1027, creating the Oregon Ports Advisory Council (ORS 285.808). Membership on the Council consists of seven individuals representing the ports and maritime and shipping industries. The Council mission is to determine the appropriate state role and priorities for investment in Oregon ports. Senate Bill 1027 mandated the Council be staffed by the Ports Division of the Oregon Economic Development Department. Through the mandates of Senate Bill 1027, the Council will serve as a body to advise the Economic Development Department, Economic Development Commission, the Governor and the Legislative Assembly on matters relating to the development and implementation of state policies and programs related to ports. Such policies may include resolving natural resource and habitat issues that affect ports.

The State of Oregon is served by 23 such port districts located along the Columbia River and the Oregon Coast. The Port of Portland, formed in 1891 by the Oregon Legislature, was Oregon's first port. Over the next six decades, 22 port districts came into existence; the last of which, the Port of Morrow, was formed in 1958. Ports range in size and scope from the Port of Portland, serving as a regional trade and transportation hub, to the Port of Alsea in Waldport, serving that community as a keeper of one of the most pristine estuaries on the West Coast. Port boundaries, while not exactly aligned with watersheds, generally are associated with the local development of watersheds. Therefore, they tend to politically represent the development views of single watersheds.

Several levels of development opportunities for ports exist which address and meet local and regional demands. The dual nature of ports, which allows them to function as a quasi-public entity while at the same time conduct business in a market driven economy, creates a unique opportunity for the communities that they represent.

Most coastal ports maintain marinas to serve commercial and recreational fishing interests and encourage charter fishing service. Lower Columbia River ports are located below the Bonneville Dam and have deep-water shipping facilities. These ports play important roles in international trade through the development and maintenance of facilities that aid the movement of cargo to and from the marketplace. Ports located on the mid-Columbia River are key to the successful function of the river transportation network with its important barge transportation system. Grain, forest products and other containerized goods are transported by barge for export to international markets. In addition to this regional perspective, ports are involved in commercial and industrial land development, tourism, recreation and transportation activities. Clearly, ports play an active role as the economic engines for their communities by providing an integrated network of transportation and economic development activities.

Challenges

Over the past decade, ports in Oregon have experienced several major challenges. Oregon ports, as well as communities all over the Pacific Northwest, have seen significant downturns in their natural resource industries.

• Of particular impact for coastal ports are the cutbacks in the timber and anadromous fish fishing industries. Ports are increasingly confronted with the responsibility to diversify their local economies in order to lessen dependence on these diminishing industries. Additionally, this is very challenging when most port revenues come from leases, fees, and moorages paid from activities serving these declining industries.

• Lower Columbia River ports have experienced strong growth in waterborne trade and containerized shipments. While this growth has placed the Port of Portland among the top five West Coast ports for revenue and containers, the resulting increase in the type and size of vessels calling upon the river as a whole, places a strain on existing infrastructure, resulting in the need for a deeper channel.

• Ports are also facing the very real threat of cutbacks in federal appropriations for operation and maintenance dredging - a critical activity which keeps Oregon's navigable waterways viable for commercial fishing and waterborne commerce.

• Also taking place at the federal level are changes in the federal transportation infrastructure funding allocations and mechanisms that could affect improvements to or maintenance of, intermodal freight facilities, rail lines, highways, etc.

Any one of these challenges on its own has the potential of effecting changes in the way ports do business. However, their cumulative effect gives legitimacy to concerns that now is the time for a proactive plan for meeting these challenges and at the same time, protecting the environment that provides the quality of life cherished by port district residents.

Environmental Management Roles

As enterprises, ports are a mixture of public and private aims. Their incentive functions, therefore, consist of behavior inducements for public accountability and market aggressiveness. Like private firms, they hold bounded organizational objectives, but like general-fund public departments, they to some degree are also subject to externally politicized objectives. The public enterprise is partly dependent on the machinery and operation of politics, governmental custom, and personal influence of elected officials.

The day-to-day activities of port management consist of liaison work with an intergovernmental network, information gathering, and environmental planning and assessment. Although the environmental management role is usually not through an independent department, the critical factor is the degree to which it is integrated into the decision making process. It is more than just acting as the organization's "antennae" for external change. With a legitimized place in port decision making, environmental planning avoids a reactionary mode. Ports attempt to be well prepared, knowing the type of questions that are going to be raised. Ports have responded to the conflict between the organization's economic development role and the environmental concern role by developing expertise, becoming open and deliberative about impacts from environmental damage, and extending financial and technical assistance to local groups with common purpose of environmental protection.

Ports in Oregon are not local government land-use planning agencies, but have played major roles, especially in estuary and shoreland land use planning. Ports were major participants in recommending how estuaries were divided into management units, which was done with the objective of balancing economic growth, as well as protecting natural resources. Defining management units and assigning uses also was done to assure the protection of important habitats for fish and wildlife. Shorelands were saved from development only for those uses most dependent on water access. Special restrictive zoning was applied to keep development away from the shoreline and protect the delicate fringe of habitat that exists between water and uplands.

Ports play an active role in providing comments on any amendments to comprehensive land use plans. As better information emerges about anadromous fish habitat requirements, ports are in a position to take a lead in making sure these requirements are satisfied, either through denial of amendments or offering offsetting deleterious impacts through creation of improvement of habitat elsewhere. Recommendations from ports have influenced and will influence the protection of natural resources through the land use planning process.

Ports can and do make important decisions regarding the conservation of anadromous fish resources. This includes:

• Mitigation measures of development projects. This includes projects in which ports have direct control, as well as projects in which planning and design are open to comment. For such projects, mitigation can be offered both in a least impact design and to use port property for offsetting unavoidable habitat impacts. For other public agency and private sector development, a permit and approval process can be used to demonstrate local concerns for development.

• Financial support of local efforts to protect, restore and enhance habitat and rearing programs. Many financial avenues have developed in recent years to assist local efforts. Many state and federal programs have been instituted to provide funds, but the programs sometimes require local cash matching funds to rate high enough to qualify for awards. Ports, through their own budgeting, can assist in providing the financial support for selected projects.

• Ports own most of the moorages along the Oregon Coast, therefore their constituency is the harvesters. Port public processes of representation are another opportunity to educate and deliberate management measures to conserve anadromous fish stocks. When harvest management measures require special gear or time/area closures to avoid impacts to certain anadromous fish stocks, port agencies can be used as a conduit of information to maintain public fisheries where they exist and explain why closures are necessary.

• Ports can be clearinghouses and sources of information for academic research, training centers, government and non-government organization, and private sector partners who choose to participate. Ports can coordinate and collaborate to provide information and training services to assist in economic adjustment from changes in the management of natural resources. This includes:
  • Sharing expertise and best practices through training and technical exchange.

  • Facilitating information exchanges and consensus building for use of common environmental standards and benchmarks.

  • Supporting growth in member economies' human resources and institutional capacity to achieve sustainable development goals.

• Ports can assist in anadromous fish recovery efforts by taking advantage of planning and permitting processes that can, in themselves, lead to direct conflict with efforts to protect and restore anadromous fish habitat.
  • Ports develop strategic master plans that can be recognized by local general purpose government in their comprehensive land use plans. State and federal actions must therefore be consistent with the master plans. To facilitate this complex task, the port usually establishes a coordinated work program and comprehensive planning outline which identifies all the necessary decision points, agency reviews and necessary approvals. In addition, the port recognizes the necessity of working with the public at large. The process must comply with state direction for overall planning efforts which include citizen participation, environmental studies and evaluation of alternative development possibilities before a major development commitment is made. While port officials recognize the need to negotiate and coordinate activities at many levels, interaction with state and federal permitting agencies and public interest groups will dominate the process. Factors affecting agency and public interest groups include navigation, fish and wildlife, water quality, economics, conservation, aesthetics, recreation, water supply, flood damage prevention, ecosystems and the economic needs of the people.

  • Oregon ports, channels and harbors along the coast and Columbia River are divided into several different federal navigation dredging projects. Since the beginning of this century, the United States Congress has authorized and appropriated funds to the Army Corps of Engineers to maintain these projects at depths and dimensions that ensure the safe passage of ocean-going vessels. Once a project is authorized to certain dimensions, the Corps is charged with maintaining those projects pending appropriate funding levels set by Congress. The environmental permitting for the maintenance of those channel projects must meet tests under the Clean Water Act and a host of other federal and state regulations. Ports have the opportunity to comment on the public notices for the permitting and are the local sponsors required to provide dredge material disposal sites, if other than ocean sites are used. Ports can exercise their own discretion for making sure dredging and dredge material placement are at times and places beneficial to anadromous fish freshwater habitat requirements.

  • Port officials are predisposed to informal coordination and negotiation procedures. For example, it is common practice for port representatives to informally contact the Corps before a formal permit request is made for a development project. The intent of these informal contacts is to learn of Corps attitudes, policies, procedures and time requirements prior to formal consideration. Port officials believed it better to design a workable and reasonable permit application rather than risk unanticipated responses by permitting agencies during formal review procedures. This kind of reciprocal and informal interaction characterized much contact between permitting agencies and port officials and ensure local interest for protection of anadromous fish freshwater habitat is recognized.

Case Examples of Port Participation in Environmental Management

Although not an exhaustive list, the following are examples of port participation in anadromous fish conservation programs:

• The Port of Newport has entered into a cooperative relationship with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to reopen the Ore Aqua Salmon Facility. The port acclimates hatchery reared coho smolts in facilities acquired from Weyerhaeuser Corporation. Weyerhaeuser experimented with the feasibility of a salmon ranching operation at the facility. The purpose of reopening the facility is to provide for sport fishery for marked coho inside Yaquina Bay. While the size of the operation and expected returns are small, the visibility of a local public agency attempting to supplement dwindling natural stocks realizes high public education returns.

• The Port of Brookings Harbor at the entrance to the Chetco River is located at the northern extent of the Klamath Management Zone. The port decided upon active involvement rather than confrontation with the Klamath River Technical Advisory Team (KRTAT) and other users of the limited anadromous fish resource. The port established its own Fishery Committee and Klamath Management Zone Fisheries Coalition (KMZFC) to deliberate and participate before the KRTAT, the Pacific Fishery Management Council, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and California Fish and Game. The port provides financial resources, staffing and coordination to the Fishery Committee and KMZFC. Then, when asked, the port testifies before the respective anadromous fish management agencies. The heavy local coordination efforts have resulted in determining priority local views and consensus building towards fishery management measures. In some cases, controversial management measures, such as one-fish bag limits, have been able to be applied by management agencies that other user groups have not been able to reach consensus towards elsewhere. The port's Fishery Committee has also been active in pursuing funds for restoration, research and fisherman job adjustment programs.

• The Port of Umpqua and the Salmon Harbor Management Committee (SHMC) are financial participants in the Gardiner/Reedsport STEP and the Smith River STEP. The SHMC additionally provides a dock at Winchester Bay for use as a small net pen release facility. The financial association between the largely volunteer STEP efforts and the public agencies is a reminder to port officials when balanced decision making is needed towards development projects impacting environmental quality.

• The Port of Garibaldi has been the active local government representative in a number of intergovernmental and private sector projects to improve the water quality of Tillamook Bay. The port joined with the county in sponsoring a bay-wide study of water quality and sedimentation problems. The study resulted in a successful application to have Tillamook Bay recognized in the National Estuary program (NEP). The port now contributes a financial match and office space for the NEP local staff. The NEP funds scientific research and demonstration projects in the Bay's watersheds to remediate and improve anadromous fish freshwater habitat. The port has recently undertaken several projects specifically designed to protect freshwater habitat.
  • Working with the Pals of Patterson Creek, the port has contributed materials and labor for the construction of a fish ladder. A separate project with the same organization was the placement of dredge materials along Patterson Creek to expand adjacent riparian habitat.

  • The port sponsored a storm drainage planning project to consolidate eight separate outfalls located on port-owned and adjacent industrial land. The effluent will be treated and discharged on a constructed wetland before entering the Bay.

  None of these Port of Garibaldi projects were directly motivated solely for their economic development benefits and demonstrate the willingness of port officials to use their organizational and budgeting resources to assist in anadromous fish conservation activities.