DEQ bills ODOT $90,000 for U.S. Highway 20 runoff

Oregon's environmental watchdog agency has slapped the state Department of Transportation with a hefty fine over muddy runoff from a troubled highway construction project west of Corvallis.

An ODOT spokesman said the agency won't contest the penalty but thinks its highway contractor should share the blame.

The Department of Environmental Quality is penalizing ODOT $90,000 for allowing excessive amounts of sediment-laden stormwater to ooze into the Yaquina River and a half-dozen tributaries, damaging spawning beds and food supplies for sensitive populations of salmon, steelhead and cutthroat trout.

According to DEQ, the agency violated its stormwater discharge permit at least 37 times between September and January during construction work on a stretch of U.S. Highway 20 between Pioneer Mountain and Eddyville. The road-straightening project is about 25 miles west of Corvallis in Lincoln County.

The Department of Transportation has until May 28 to appeal the penalty, but a spokesman for the agency said that won't happen.

"On all our projects we're charged with protecting the environment, and we do take that very seriously," said Joe Harwood, who works in the agency's Springfield regional office. "The bottom line is this is a black eye for ODOT. We're going to take our lumps and pay the bill."

Harwood acknowledged it was ODOT's responsibility, as the permit holder, to make sure steps were taken to keep sediment out of streams in the construction zone. But he added that his department had repeatedly urged Yaquina River Constructors (YRC), the prime contractor on the $150 million project, to take aggressive erosion-control measures before the fall rains settled into the Coast Range.

He said ODOT sought - and got - a change in Yaquina River Constructors' onsite management of the Highway 20 project, but that wasn't enough to halt the damage. Now the department is considering asking the contractor to pay at least part of the fine.

"That's actually under review right now," Harwood said.

ODOT and its Highway 20 contractor already are feuding over the project. Last month Granite Construction, Yaquina River's Watsonville, Calif., parent company, formally requested that its contract be terminated.

The company claims that the soil in the construction zone is unstable due to ancient landslides that were uncovered during the excavation. Granite executives say the problem will cost about $61 million to fix and will delay the seven-mile Pioneer Mountain-Eddyville project by about two years past its projected 2009 completion date.

ODOT officials counter that the company was aware of the soil conditions going in and that the problem will cost much less to fix. The department is negotiating with Yaquina River over the financial implications of a possible contract termination.

Both ODOT and DEQ point to extensive earth-moving work as the ultimate source of the problem. Yaquina River cleared about 160 acres last summer at the construction site near Eddyville, where the coastal mountains slope steeply above the river.

In his official penalty letter to ODOT, DEQ Deputy Director Dick Pedersen appears to suggest that the highway project itself was causing landslides in the area.

"Because of the lack of sufficient erosion controls, multiple slope failures into stream beds, substantial rilling and mud flows, and discharge of highly turbid storm water has occurred throughout the fall and winter," the letter states.

Les Carlough, who works in the environmental regulatory agency's compliance office in Portland, said the stormwater permit laid out numerous steps to keep erosion in check but that, in many cases, the contractor failed to heed the advice.

"The permit advised that the land clearing should be phased, but it was up to YRC to determine how much land to clear, and they cleared a lot," Carlough said. "DEQ's position on this, I think, would be that the slope failures came from a combination of perhaps clearing too much land … and (inadequate) erosion control)."

Officials of Yaquina River Constructors and Granite Construction did not immediately return phone calls requesting comment.

DEQ has penalized ODOT before - five times in the last 10 years, according to Carlough. But the Highway 20 fine is nearly twice the size of the next-largest penalty, a $51,000 fee levied in 2003 for failure to control hazardous waste during repairs to the Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River in Portland.

Harwood called the amount of the latest DEQ fine "unprecedented" and said ODOT was thinking of instituting an erosion-control certification process for contractors.

"We spend in the neighborhood of $30 million a year on environmental compliance," Harwood said. "We're going to make sure this doesn't happen again."

Bennett Hall is the business editor for the Gazette-Times. He can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.