Environmental Disasters, Human-made: Ecological Disasters

Celilo Falls (also known as Horseshoe Falls) was located on the mid-Columbia River about twelve miles east of The Dalles. It was part of an approximately nine-mile-long Indigenous fishery that included sites such as the Upper Dalles, the Lower Dalles, Three Mile Rapids, Five Mile Rapids, and Big Eddy.

Google forbids city officials from disclosing how much water the tech giant plans to use for a new data center. This shroud of secrecy is not sitting well with area residents who are uneasy with the tech giant’s latest plan to expand in the region.

he removal of four obsolescent hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, expected in 2023 or 2024, should have been an occasion for celebration, recognizing an underdog campaign that managed to set in motion the biggest dam removal project in American history. But it may be too little, too late.

As scientists, tribes, and fishermen all warned, these four dams decimated the Snake River's salmon and steelhead. The four dams transformed the Lower Snake River into a series of warm, shallow lakes where predators, dam turbines, and hot water kill too many migrating salmon.

Lithium Nevada Corp. (LNC) is the Permittee for the
Thacker Pass Project which consists of an open pit lithium mine, two waste rock storage facilities (WRSFs) and associated runoff ponds, coarse gangue stockpile (CGS) and runoff pond, sulfuric acid plant (SAP), processing plant, and clay tailings storage facility (CTFS).

Portland Harbor is a heavily industrialized stretch of the Willamette River, extending from Portland’s Broadway Bridge to Sauvie Island. Due to decades of industrial activities, some of the sediment (or mud) in the river and along the riverbank is contaminated with pollutants. This includes the Gasco/Siltronics superfund site.

On June 3, 2016, 16 Union Pacific unit train rail cars carrying Bakken crude oil derailed in Mosier, Oregon, on the Columbia River. Four of the rail cars, each carrying approximately 28,000 gallons of oil, were breached and caught fire... Further assessment is needed to understand the nature and extent of contamination and potential impacts to natural resources.

A destructive wildfire in the Columbia River Gorge, with smaller spot-fires in Washington, that was started on September 2, 2017, by a 15-year-old boy igniting fireworks during a burn ban. The fire burned 50,000 acres, and burned for three months.

Gas Works Park was once a major synthetic gas manufacturing plant. Beginning in 1906, the structures on this plot of land produced a type of fuel extracted from coal, petroleum or other carbon-based materials—a major source of energy for residents throughout the city. By 1956, Seattle, along with the rest of the country, had moved on to alternative energy sources, so the plant was closed. But these structures had been releasing black smoke and pollutants into the land and water for years, so their impact on the area didn’t magically disappear overnight.

The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. Plutonium for nuclear weapons was produced for decades at the Hanford Site, which is now the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States.

The causes of most of Oregon’s catastrophic wildfires that ignited on Labor Day are still under investigation, with official determinations yet to come. But anecdotal and eyewitness accounts suggest that several were started by electrical lines and equipment buffeted by the historic windstorm that whipped across the state for three days.

Pipe-coating businesses, run by the Hall Process Company and Northwest Pipe and Casing Company, operated on the southern part of the 53 acre property from 1956 to 1985. Contaminants were released at the site during operations into the soil and groundwater. These contaminants included volatile organic compounds (VOCs), polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). In 2006, the Five Year Review of the site found additional pollutants.

In 1941, The Aluminum Company of America (= Alcoa) built and operated the Troutdale aluminum plant for United States Department of Defense as a primary aluminum reduction plant, where alumina from bauxite ore was converted to aluminum, to support wartime operations.

Ross Island Sand and Gravel Co. mined gravel from the lagoon between 1926 and 2001. Since 1979, the company has been required to place fill (sediment, soil, concrete and other materials) at the site to reclaim upland, wetlands and in-water areas that were previously mined and return them to a more natural state.

The National Reclamation Act, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, made extensive agriculture in the Upper Klamath Basin possible by authorizing the reclamation of swamps and lakes to increase irrigable acreage. In 1906, the newly established Reclamation Service initiated the Klamath Project to drain lakes and wetlands for cultivation. The Klamath Project included a network of dams, canals, ditches, and other facilities to drain, move, and store Upper Basin water.

On Memorial Day in 1948, the Columbia River, roaring downstream fifteen feet above the flood plain in Portland, undermined a railroad embankment that served as a dike, starting a flood that would leave 18,000 people homeless and significantly alter race relations in Portland.

Superfund sites on the National Priorities List (NPL) under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).

Search the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) sites proposed to, currently on, and deleted from Superfund's National Priorities List (NPL).

Accidents, spills, leaks, and past improper disposal and handling of hazardous materials and wastes are listed here. The EPA coordinates with state, territory and tribal partners to assess and, where necessary, clean up these contaminated sites.