The city of Portland's plan for a new sanctioned homeless site, slated for an early 2024 opening, is currently contaminated with hazardous chemicals. The city has a lot of work to do before the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, is ready to say the site requires no further action.
Located at 10505 North Portland Road, the property where the city wants to build a Temporary Alternative Shelter Site, or TASS site, contains high levels of Tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, and Trichloroethylene, or TCE, in the soil, according to a 2014 DEQ report.
The Bureau of Environmental Services, or BES, bought the property, known as Larsen North, for $3 million in 2001 with the idea that it might expand the neighboring Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant at a future date. The site has been empty since then, but BES is working on a risk assessment to understand the conditions, according to Bryan Aptekar, communications liaison for the city's Streets to Stability team. How long the process will take depends on when the city finishes the risk assessment and gives the results to DEQ.
At the edge of the Columbia Slough, the site is a currently marshy plot of land littered with tires, trash and a rusty shipping container. An overturned car stripped of all but a single tire sits at the entrance, rusted out and tagged with graffiti. Inside an abandoned industrial building at the northeast corner of the property, tires and shopping carts sit beneath burned rooms and moldy walls held up by corroded beams.
The DEQ report concluded exposure to soil, groundwater, indoor and outdoor air at the location may pose a risk to people’s health. Experts say those contaminants carry potential risks to people exposed for short and long time periods, including neurotoxicity, liver toxicity and cancer.
Larsen North is known as a brownfield, a common term for a property in which expansion, redevelopment or reuse may be complicated by hazardous substances, pollutants or contaminants, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. They are not uncommon locally — the Pearl District and the South Waterfront are both former brownfields. The city of Portland designed the Brownfield Program to bring contaminated sites back into active use.
Dan Hafley, DEQ hydrologist and project manager, said the cleanup program is voluntary. Still, if the city wants DEQ's blessing, it must undergo the complete inspection and cleanup process before moving people onto the site. DEQ is currently waiting on BES to complete a risk assessment, which will provide the data necessary to create a plan for cleanup and remediation.
Risk assessment is a standard part of the procedure for remediating a brownfield but is typically part of a longer process between DEQ and a property owner — in this case, the city of Portland.
"The city's goal is to not only make this site suitable for this temporary shelter use but to also create a secure, safe, and clean property for various potential future uses," Aptekar said.
At a minimum, the cleanup plan may include adding topsoil or paving the entire site to minimize direct exposure. It may also include fencing off areas where contaminants remain to keep people away from areas the city does not remediate, according to Anna Coates, DEQ project manager for the site.
"What they're planning on doing is paving the site," Coates said. "So, that will help to prevent incidental exposures to surface soils."
The risk assessment is imperative to determine the contaminants, but the risks also vary depending on what the owner intends to use the property for. For instance, if people are exposed to the soil for long durations or drinking groundwater, the exposure risk will be different than if people do not come into contact with the soil directly or for a short time. Digging into the soil can also create exposure risks, as the disturbance can release volatile chemicals into the air.
"One of the things that we do as part of the risk assessment is to evaluate that," Coates said. "We don't really have an evaluation of that as it stands right now."
The site has a long history of industrial activities. Since at least the 1940s, the site has operated as a shingle mill, a boat manufacture and repair facility, materials storage, and tank-truck washing facilities, according to a DEQ report.
The most recent soil sample came in 2014 and found high levels of contaminants, including PCE and TCE, according to the report.
"PCE was detected at 729 mg/kg and TCE at 39.1 mg/kg. Both values exceed RBCs for occupational vapor intrusion into a building and volatilization to outdoor air," the report said.
Once the city provides the necessary testing data and the desired land use, DEQ can decide how to remedy the site to make the environment safe for people.
"Once the concrete or whatever cover is in place, might there still be a potential for, you know, vapors to move up and through?" Hafley said. "Those are all boxes that would have to be checked.
Hurry up and wait
In January 2005, the city entered into a voluntary cleanup agreement with DEQ, but the site sat unused for years, and the process of cleaning up the environmental contaminants was slow-going, according to Coates.
As the city and DEQ coordinate around the Larsen North property, uncertainty remains as the city pushes for a shorter timeframe than DEQ typically sees when informing the cleanup process. BES contacted DEQ with a short-term plan for the site in October, according to Hafley.
The city announced the new TASS location and a goal of opening the site "within the coming months," but the
Oct. 26 press release made no mention of the site as a brownfield property and gave no insight into its remediation efforts at that time.
BES started coordinating with DEQ on the evaluation of the property just before the city announced the location for a new TASS site, according to Hafley. Like the current Clinton Triangle TASS location, Urban Alchemy will manage the site, which promises space for RVs, campers, tents and pods. It is still up in the air when the site will open. Wheeler said the site will add up to 200 sanctioned spaces to the city's shelter system, according to a press release.
"The timeline will be dictated by site conditions, the risk assessment and mitigation needs, permitting and construction process," Aptekar said.
He said the risk assessment, mitigation and collaboration with DEQ to ensure safety for people and the environment during construction and into future uses is a regular process for all capital improvement projects, including parks, sidewalks and sewers. Specific mitigation measures will be determined by what data the risk assessment reveals.
Hafley said the city indicated it wants to work through the process with DEQ to get its blessing and confirmation the site is safe for people to use temporarily.
"If they do the right things on this property, it's absolutely going to be protected," he said. "I'd have my kid there, I'd have my wife there. But we need to check all the boxes to make sure — it's all about adequate protective measures during this temporary use to ensure that there isn't exposure."
The EPA awarded a half-million dollar grant to the city of Portland to clean up brownfield properties for affordable housing projects in 2022.
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