More than 10 years after the issue first came up, state pollution fighters hope to start finding out more about toxics in the Willamette River.

The Department of Environmental Quality is asking for $1.9 million to start monitoring the Willamette for potentially toxic pollutants such as pesticides and traces of metals.

The amount is included in the budget Gov. Ted Kulongoski has proposed to the 2007 Legislature, which will start meeting Jan. 8.

The DEQ hopes to hire or designate about 10 employees to work on the monitoring, said Nina DeConcini, a spokeswoman for the DEQ in Portland.

Details of the monitoring - such as where and how often to check for which contaminants - has yet to be determined.

In a fact sheet explaining the program, the DEQ says toxic pollution can come from many sources, including runoff that washes oil and chemicals from parking lots, roads and rural lands, soil erosion, industrial and city discharges, and even air pollution from around the world.

Traces of mercury in the river, for example, have been blamed partly on air carried across the Pacific from China.

The agency says it wants to "design control and reduction strategies that address the toxics of highest concern and are targeted to get results."

The proposed DEQ budget is up 12.5 percent overall, to $298 million, including just under $40 million from the general fund.

"Funding is provided for initiatives to reduce diesel emissions, toxics monitoring in the Willamette watershed, and regulating storm water runoff from urban and rural land when it rains," the printed budget document says.

Concern about toxics in the river is not new.

A 1995 study said that Tetra Tech, a consulting firm for the DEQ from Redmond, Wash., had made recommendations for toxic chemical monitoring in 1993.

It was in 1996 that the U.S. government issued a report by the U.S. Geological Survey showing "pesticides and trace metals" in Willamette Valley streams including the river.

The report showed there was a "potential for localized, short-term exceedances" of state standards for aquatic life, "but concentrations are low overall," according to a December 1996 press release from the Geological Survey office in Portland.

The report also said that for most of the pesticides found in the water, there were no established "toxicity criteria."

"It is unknown to what extent, if any, the interaction of these compounds affects the toxicity of stream water to aquatic life or humans."

Trace metals such as copper, chromium, lead and zinc had been found mostly at sites getting runoff from cities.

At the time there had been concerns about deformities found in some Willamette river fish, especially those which at the time the government still called "squawfish" and now are known as pikeminnows. Later studies done at Oregon State University showed the deformities were caused by two kinds of natural parasites.

In 1997, a task force appointed by Gov. John Kitzhaber made several recommendations to reduce river pollution, including one to increase monitoring of toxic pollutants in and near the river.

In 2000, Willamette Riverkeeper issued a warning that based on discharge records, toxic compounds in the river had nearly doubled in the previous five years.

By Hasso Hering, Albany Democrat-Herald. He can be reached at hasso.hering@lee.net.