Waterfront Organizations of Oregon
P.O. Box 83296
Portland, OR. 97283-0296
woooinc.org
SUBJECT: Meeting, June 12, 2007
ATTENDEES: Bill Barrett Barrett Automotive & Marine
Clark Caffall Combined Forestry & Marine
Ted Carr Northwest River Tow/Vessel Assist
Ginger Curtis Happy Rock Moorage
David Curtis Happy Rock Moorage
Heidi Curtis Happy Rock Moorage
Carolyn Dickie Tomahawk Floating Homes
David Grant Dikeside Moorage/
Sue Gress Buoy I/Blue Frog Moorage
Dan Gulbrandson A-1 Moorage
Bill Mackey Islands Moorage
Matt Moulton River City Environmental Inc.
Debbie Rice River City Environmental Inc.
Rich Rich Tyee Yacht Club
Michael Schults MCSO
Stan Tonneson Rocky Pointe Moorage
The meeting was called to order at 7:00 p.m. by Treasurer, David Grant in the absence of President, Bob Wilson.
David recognized Lt. Michael Shults of the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office River Patrol to update us on the status of the River Patrol considering the budget cuts that were suggested by the County.
MICHAEL SHULTS:
"I have a lot of things to talk about, but the main thing that we appreciate from the boaters here in Oregon is that we didn't lose any money from the Sheriff's Office regarding the River Patrol, however, we are taking cuts, we are taking a 3.2 million dollar cut and a lot of that will equate to some of our investigators that are working with FBI and some of the other domestic violence type cases, but the River Patrol is staying strong. Not as strong as I would like to see it, but we are there. All of our money is in manpower. The boats are free, gas does cost a little bit, but all of our buildings and all our maintenance has been paid for, so any time we have a cut, it is cut in manpower which is about four deputies on our part so that requires that we would have been covering just short parts of the river for short periods of time so we are happy about that. The Sheriff's Office actually did pretty well in this budget. We had some add back packages that Sheriff Bernie Guisto was able to work with the Chair on so that we don't have the extensive cuts that we were looking at with our detective unit and our SIU. Some of you remember that our SIU units are the big units that have been working on some of the meth labs that have been floating that you have heard on the news for the last couple of years. Those are the guys that once we find them they have to come in and clean them up and so they'll still be around to do some of that work for us, but we are not seeing very many meth labs any more now that pseudophedrin is finally behind the counter. We are still seeing a lot of aliens, illegal aliens, coming across the border bringing some of that poly drug, cocaine, marijuana, methanthedimine, across the water. So that's good news.
Fleet Week we just got over with. Last night we took the Navy war ships down to Astoria. Very successful year! We had a lot of boaters out of compliance, actually that were trying to visit the zone. They didn't have life jackets, fire extinguishers, certificate of title, a lot of things, so we ran the boats actually for stolen boats. None of them came back stolen but we had a lot of sites that came through and you have to keep in mind that we had Sheriff's Offices from around the state that came and helped us with that. We are very thankful that the Sheriff's sent their people to help us. With that, we sent all seven of the war ships back to Astoria and they had a great time. Did any of you guys make it down to the water in the security zone? The Coast Guard was there with their big guns.
The Coast Guard did a good job and a lot of the sailors and captains had a great time while they were here.
We are just getting into our summer program so our reserves will really be working on our wake issues, that is one of our priorities, getting in the harbors, the moorages, spending some time doing our light arc, beaming off the boats to see how fast they are going and looking at the wakes. Deputies Erickson and Dangler have trained about five reserves to come in and assist. We don't want to be heavy handed right at the beginning, we want to do a lot of warnings, but then as the season goes by we want to start hitting them more. After that message gets out we are going to do more violations. We are letting most of the moorages know when we will be coming through. We think that the people in the moorages are not the ones creating wakes, but the people who visit so we will be working on those issues.
Thefts have been down, we feel because there are more people out on the water watching it, where in the winter time we had a lot of theft cases that we had to work on. We caught a few too, in fact our buddy here, Rich Rich, caught one. But we will continue that.
Once we start getting the hot weather we will be out there with wake enforcement on moorages. The river pilots are getting concerned because they are getting a lot of people who make waves, with the fishermen stacking up, in fact, I wrote my first ticket on make wave two weeks ago. When a female river pilot was coming through blew five or six times and everybody was yelling at the guy to get out, but we were able to catch him. So those are some of the issues, and I will keep you posted at the next meeting where we are and what missions we have done."
Any questions?
SUE GRESS:
I have one question. About a month ago there were a bunch of ATV's with security looking guys out by the airport and then they came down Bridgeton Road and they came down onto our moorage. They were, like, officers of some kind.
MICHAEL SHULTS:
Were they police or Port of Portland?
SUE GRESS:
They must have been Port of Portland. But they came up our ramp and almost knocked somebody over. They came tearing up the ramp on the ATV's.
BILL MACKEY:
They were wearing the dark green jump suits like the Gresham uniform. There are so many different uniforms it is hard to keep them straight.
MICHAEL SHULTS:
I will try to find out for you. Portland Swat doesn't have ATV's. We have two. You think it is the Port of Portland? I would like to call them up because it is a nice resource to know about. If they are out there on the moorages we should have known about it.
SUE GRESS:
I think it was the 17th of May, around that week anyway. The week before Memorial Day.
MICHAEL SHULTS:
I'll check into it and see what I can find out. Those are complaints that are important, especially if you don't know what they are doing. Even their after actions should have been able to inform some of the citizens.
BILL MACKEY:
I would like to say something while Michael is here. Last week Carolyn and I were in a two week course for Power Squadron for boater's safety. I have boated for over 30 years or more and learned it just by doing it, but I was very impressed by it. I learned things that I was not aware of. It was a really good program. There were some young kids there. I don't know if they took it as seriously as I did, but I think it was well worth the time and I think it is a very, very good program. That's going to be the key to thinking about wakes. I think a lot of people just don't think about things. They are just going, they are not intentionally doing it, but they don't realize what they are doing.
MIKE:
Frankly, I was really surprised to see boats coming up to our security zone without the proper safety equipment. How could you not know? Normally you see a Sheriff boat and what would you do? You would turn around! We weren't chasing anybody, they had to come to us. Yet they all knew; "You have to have a boater education card". "Well, yeah, I knew that."
BILL: That is being enforced though?
MIKE:
Yes, we cite. I did six citations for no boater education cards on the fleet and we denied them access.
BILL: Well, I think it is a great program.
MIKE:
I'm glad to hear that and I'll check into Power Squadron. I'm new to the river. This is going to be my first summer and I've got a commitment to be around for a while.
DAVID GRANT:
Mike, thanks a lot!
RIVER CITY ENVIRONMENTALISTS: (Bill Mackey)
BILL:
I am pleased that Matt and Debbie were able to attend the meeting tonight. I had an inspection of our moorage with Debbie and Steve McGinnis Monday, in fact in a rain storm; it was appropriate. River City has some products, including drain inserts that stop the flow of oil and other contaminates into the river, because our parking lot drains drain directly into the river, and we had a downpour right before the inspection. You could see the oil sheen going into it, and they have products like that. Also, I had them walk the moorage and our upriver slips are loaded with contaminants and debris that catch in from the current and I asked them to look into some type of system for cleaning that on some type of service basis. So I think they can be a real asset to the Clean Marina Program. On our marina, we are all owners so we have to go before a Board and we do volunteer a lot of stuff but that's one thing we've never gotten cleaned up properly and I think it just goes hand-in-hand with the Clean Marina Program so, this is Debbie and Matt and they are interested in being involved with the river community.
DEBBIE:
I am basically the River City girl and we clean catch basins; parking lot flushing; we have a down spout filter system that stops zinc and other metals that run off the roofs of your metal buildings, all kinds of good stuff.
Matt here is more like the Clean Way catch basin insert man so he can probably tell you a lot about ways to protect your runoff into the river, taking off oils and metals and all kinds of nasty stuff. Do you have any questions or anything?
SUE:
So is that a service you are offering of cleaning up junk in the water, you know, flotsam and jetsam.
MATT:
River City is an industrial cleaning service, just about any kind of cleanup and from the brochure that Debbie is passing around there, storm water is one of the things that is under a lot of scrutiny right now. The Federal Government is heavily involved in committing a program called the NPDES which is the National Pollution Discharge Environmental System which tells people that have a storm water facility, that would be a catch basin in the parking lot, to numerous catch basins and filtration swales that more modern places have. The objective is to eliminate anything being discharged into the waterways except clean water, so oil drippings from the bottom of cars, even you know coffee cup lids. They are actually seen coming out of outfalls from the parking lot up above. You have pipe lines that come down and spill out into the river. It's actually a violation of the NPDS to have anything but clean cool water coming into the river. If anybody washes their car in the parking lot or drips oil from their car. Oil is the biggest one because it is so easily observed by passers by and there is an outfit called the NEDC which is the Northwest Environmental Defense Center and there are law students from the local college here and they paddle the Columbia, the Willamette, the Columbia Slough, basically they just look at the oil sheens and they photograph them and then they are a third party sueer, that is they bring a suit against people who have a discharge.
The NPDES allows them so it is an important thing to make sure that everybody, at least in the beginning awareness is the most critical thing. As you said earlier, people aren't aware that their wake causes a ripple effect all the way down the dock and upsets people's coffee cup right off their table. Let everyone on the moorage know that everything that hits that parking lot is going to wind up in the river right there at their marina. I think that we have a sheriff's person here that can say that even a cigarette butt can cause quite a hefty fine.
The biggest problem right now is the third party people. Of course DEQ is involved. I don't think any of the private marinas have a storm water discharge permit yet, but all the industries do and they have what is called a 1200 permit and there are a series of bench marks and they have to sample four times a year and submit the samples and if they are over these bench marks…and that is probably what is going to eventually come to all the marinas. The industrial ones, the Port of Portland, the Port of Vancouver already have these permit processes in place eventually the trickle down effect will affect everybody and the whole purpose of it is to clean up the waterways of the country and a waterway defines all the way down to a seasonal puddle practically, it just includes everything, so awareness is the first thing. Maybe a lot of people label; put a little fish beside the grated inlet if you have them up in your parking lot, just to make people aware that whatever hits the ground goes immediately into the river.
These people from the NEDC are students and they are using this as part of their curriculum so they are very active and they love nothing better than to get out on the water for a day and paddle their canoes up and down and observe and it's a very effective way of helping people become aware.
BILL:
The good news is that you have an insert that goes in and filters this out so I think if we are proactive in this deal instead of reactive, where we have people coming in and sue us, if we are already taking steps to clean up the river, because we want a clean river, we live in this river and if we can do that kind of thing and you have service that we don't have to invest in a whole lot of equipment and this is maintained by a vendor type party like you guys because we lose time on the river, I call it "river time" so we need support services to maintain this type of stuff.
DEBBIE:
It does come with a yearly catch basin cleaning and filter bag replacement so we keep track of that and once a year we come out and clean it and renew it and take care of it.
BILL:
River City is going to supply a cost analysis and bid for Islands Moorage that I am submitting to our Board next Tuesday an we'll see how they go on it.
CAROLYN:
Are there a lot of them still that just dump in the river?
BILL:
They all dump in the river.
CAROLYN:
Ours goes into the City sewer.
BILL:
At least on the Columbia River here (ours was built by the Port of Portland) they go directly into the river.
If you are on the City of Portland system and you dump chemicals in there, they can trace it back to you and you are liable for it.
DAVID:
Any more questions? So the major point here is that we live in a fish bowl and the more
proactive we are the better we are going to deal with environmental issues in the future. Thank you for taking your time to come out, and the information. It is important information to all of us.
MINUTES:
It was moved and seconded that the minutes of the meeting of May 8 be approved as written. Motion carried!
TREASURER'S REPORT: (David Grant)
David gave the Treasurer's Report (attached). It was moved and seconded that the Treasurer's Report be approved. Motion carried!
CONTINUING BUSINESS:
MULTNOMAH COUNTY RIVER PATROL BUDGET UPDATE: (Mike Shults)
Has been completed as above.
TITLE 28: (David Grant)
The ongoing saga of Title 28 (not my words, David's). David reported he actually had a great meeting with the Harbormaster, Ray Pratt, last week. Jan and he went down to discuss spacing between houses in existing moorages. The question had come up that a house was being moved in from a construction site in St. Helens. It's moving into Jantzen Beach Moorage. Under the original Title 28 the spacing would be 4 foot eave to eave and 6 foot wall to wall. Ray's interpretation of the old code to the new code
interpreted that it would be 8 foot eave to eave and 10 foot wall to wall in existing moorages built prior to 1990.
That wasn't the intent of the rule. The designer and engineer on the house had some problems with it and the builder had some problems with it, and Jan, being the manager of Jantzen Beach Moorage, had some problems with the spacing because it would lead to lots of problems for any of the existing moorages, not just within the City limits but sooner or later it's going to be within the County. So I went with Jan to the Harbormaster to talk about intent. Owners of moorages that have been in existence for a long time are not to be penalized slips. Their safety and given means to keep a distance, or if changes are made, at least 4 foot eave to eave, 6 foot wall to wall distance. We had a nice meeting with Ray and he made some changes in the new Title 28 and he agrees with the intent of the original Title 28 and the intent that we will add to the revised Title 28. So that's an interesting thing on spacing.
We think Title 28 is headed in some direction.
LEGISLATURE: (Peg/Jeff)
Peg and Jeff are not available for a report.
MEMBERSHIP: (Bill/Andre)
Bill reported that he has tried to recruit everybody he has talked to but so far no luck. He really thinks River City is interested. Steve McGinnis, the owner, doesn't live on the river right now, but he has this environmental business and he is interested in being involved in the river community. Andre and he have not gotten together yet but Bill's feeling is that they can get people to support the river community, suppliers and so on. We have Vessel Assist, Sea Tow, they are part of the river community and without us they wouldn't have their business. Bill reiterated that he believes that is the direction we should go to expand our membership.
WEB SITE: (Bob Wilson)
Since Bob is not here there is no report on the web site.
OREGON LCDC LAW INTERPRETATION ON HOUSEBOATS: (Stan)
The meeting will be on the 18th at 3:00 p.m. in St. Johns at the McMinnimans Pub. Stan said he believed that there would be people there from the LCDC, the DSL perhaps, the State Marine Board, some of the county commissioners from Multnomah County and perhaps even Columbia County. They all seem genuinely interested in listening to these concerns. They agree that the interpretation of this law is not right. They weren't thinking about houseboats when they wrote the law. This is regarding State law, Goal 14 that states that outside of the urban growth boundary all homes must be on a separate tax lot. So in the case of a marina, houseboats, they aren't on any tax lot and if they could be, there is only one authorized. The law is designed to limit the growth outside the urban growth boundaries. A list of what makes houseboats different than houses on land or mobile home parks has been put together. There is a lot of bureaucracy to go through and that was all listed so everyone would know that we aren't just running freely and doing whatever we want on the waterfront. This is at the staff level and people were willing to come up from Salem, Eugene and Bend to meet with us and if they think it is right then we take it to the next level, which is the Board level and then the next level which is the Legislature. Next month we will have the results of the meeting.
If you have any additions or questions please e-mail them to Peter Frye.
LANDLORD TENANT LAWS: (Jeff)
No report.
BOARD MEMBERS - VOTING: (Dave)
The ballots have been sent out. Please mail them back as soon as possible. Thanks!
NEW BUSINESS:
COON ISLAND DOCKS:
Stan reported that the Coon Island docks are being delivered to Rocky Ponte the first week of July and will be installed by mid-July so we will have new concrete docks at Coon Island.
BANKING: (David)
David reported that he would like to change banks. He feels that U.S. Bank is charging us $8.00 per month to have our account there and won't deal with us. U.S. Bank has
nothing to do with the river community as far as floating home loans or anything of that nature. He would like to have permission from the Board of Directors to move our account from U.S. Bank to Bank of the West. They are actively involved in floating home loans and they sent a representative to our last Board meeting, and they won't charge us to have our account there.
Bill moved that David be authorized to move the account. The motion was seconded. There was no discussion. Motion carried!
BRIDGETON TRAIL: (Sue Gress)
Sue reported that they are still working on this project and they are supposed to be coming up with the final design tonight, June 12, 2007, and the new one suggests that they buy the gazebo at Blue Frog moorage and rip all of it out and make it a big fancy trail. The City of Portland and the Bureau of Parks are supporting this project.
QUESTION:
Are there any letters we can write to help with this?
SUE::
Sue said not yet. The one thing she believes we should be involved in, when it comes along is garbage service. They want to have volunteer garbage service but the project is not at that point yet.
ADJOURNMENT:
Since there was no further business it was moved and seconded that the meeting be adjourned. Motion carried. The meeting was adjourned at 8:30 p.m.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The next meeting will be July 10, 2007 at 7:00 p.m. at the Tyee Yacht Club. Everyone is invited to attend.
Respectfully submitted:
Jean McNulty, Secretary
Waterfront Organizations of Oregon