Below. Sewage warning sign near Denver Avenue and Schmeer Road. Photo by George Winston Weatheroy, Summer 2000
The one thing you learn is you’ve got power, that people who are elected officials or agency officials don’t necessarily have. You can speak your mind and get angry if you so choose. And it happened! And it was very contentious at the time, but we came through it. We weren’t even halfway through that [fighting against further development at Rivergate] and all of a sudden another huge development, on Leadbetter Peninsula. I told you, when the Port filled it, that was kind of the trigger point to start the Friends [of Smith & Bybee Lakes]. Now their jail is going there. The new county jail is going there. And it was huge. But through hard work we got the county to give a lot. Troy Clark, Friends of Smith & Bybee Lakes

Act locally. . . if you're on the ground you can know more about it than anyone else and at least you can claim you know more about it. I'm not talking about the technical stuff. I often feel I'm over my head, I'm pretty good at the engineering part of it and I can pick up on that fairly fast, but I really constantly feel I should really know more about watersheds. . . I just jumped into this and I've learned on the job, and I've read thousands of pages of documents, and you can pick it up, if they're well-written you can learn that way. Not only can you learn about that issue, but about how bank stabilization is done and you get on the web and figure out who's doing what, with regard to sewage treatment plants or something. So that information is out there. I testify and stuff,. . . they need a lot of bodies up there. . . So that's basically the way I work. Peter Tenow, Kenton Neighborhood, Columbia Slough Community Activist

Below. Ducks swim in the slough at N.E. 33rd, north of Columbia Boulevard. Photo by George Winston Weatheroy, Summer 2000
The ideal vision, the one that I'm not sure whether it's totally accomplishable within an urban area, is that the Slough would be an area for the people to be safe to swim, to fish, to eat the fish, and to be in the Slough, and that the Slough would support a good urban natural center of wildlife, refuge for wildlife as well, and that the environmental issues affecting the Slough would be very small and minimal -- that would be my vision of the Slough. . .people working together towards a common goal. I think that's achievable to a certain extent. Chee Choy, Bureau of Environmental Service

I guess my ideal vision is that the toxic issues would get resolved, that we would take every opportunity to back industry and other human uses off the slough. I mean, you see a large concrete building -- in all likelihood it's not gonna be taken out, but I think there are places where we could allow the green part around the slough to get wider, certainly never to get narrower. . . I think long-term the groundwater issues need to be resolved, you know here we've sewered East Multnomah County to deal with groundwater contamination, which eventually makes its way to the Slough, and meanwhile as a sort of cheaper fix to the CSO problem, the city's now got all these sumps installed in North, Northeast Portland which are undoubtedly going to cause groundwater contamination that will catch up with the Slough eventually. . . Maybe the best we can hope for is that we learn a lesson from what we've done, but I'm not optimistic on that score either. So it's kind of a depressing water body and yet with not only remarkable potential, but what it offers today to mammals, and fish, and wildlife and people, it's still rather remarkable habitat. Nina Bell, Northwest Environmental Advocates

Below. An otter swims in the Columbia Slough off of N.E. 33rd, north of Columbia Boulevard. Photo by George Winston Weatheroy, Summer 2000
I'd (like) to see the part of the Slough that's left saved and restored as much to its natural state as we could. Make it viable for fish and wildlife. Keep chemicals out of it and stop people who are along it, and I [don't] doubt there's people dumping stuff in it now. Do we need to pull some of it? Do we need to clean? Do we need to take the sediment out of it? I think we need to make sure that it can flush itself, [that it] has an adequate supply of water. There is limited wildlife, the owls, the raccoons the coyotes those kind of things in the area, the red-tailed hawks. Make sure we keep them there. It's not going to go back to the way it was in the early 1900's, but let's make sure we keep what we have. That is what I think the future of the Slough should be. A place where people can actually go. . . that's the kind of Slough we should have. Ed Washington, Metro Councilman, North Portland resident, and former Vanport resident