Scenic view of Astoria, Oregon from the observation deck of the Astoria Column in August of 2013. Beth Hall Photography. http://bethhall.photoshelter.com/image/I00002EaIx1r1F4I I moved from Oregon City to Astoria, Oregon when I was 10 years old. When I moved there, it was the dead of winter. It was really depressing in town--always raining and foggy. I couldn’t really see the extent of the Columbia on most days until spring rolled around. On a sunny day, Astoria is beautiful. We would drive up to the top of the hill that the small city sits on, and look at the vibrant colored homes and buildings, the deep blue river, and the lush state of Washington on the other side of the Megler. When my family moved to the Astoria area, it took a while for us to adjust to the town’s way of living. My mom worked at home, and my dad worked at the Tongue Point Job Corps Center. We found that many of our neighbors in Knappa, a very small town 10 miles from Astoria, had a background in logging and fishing. I learned in my ESM Policy class how salmon had been heavily fished in the Columbia in earlier days. In Elementary school, I learned that Lewis and Clark viewed the Columbia as “crowded with salmon”. Commercial fishing exploded when canneries were introduced in the 1860s (Chamberlain & Desai, 1996). By the 1930s, the river had become very overfished (Chamberlain & Desai, 1996). There are parallels to what happened in the article on the Duamish. In the case of the Duamish, there was a huge economic boom in Seattle as well as a national effort to win a war that lead to severe environmental degradation along the river (Ahearn, 2015). In Astoria, our town grew significantly due to the economic boom canneries and fishing introduced. Our economy now has been impacted by our past practices. Since salmon and other species of fish were driven almost to extinction, fishing happens at much less extent, resulting in it being a much smaller part of Astoria’s current economic makeup. Our neighbors in Knappa express a severe distrust of regulation and agencies like the EPA. I could see why after reading the article: Pesticide Regulation amid the influence of Industry. This article, while focused on pesticides, brings up interesting points on the EPA’s power, and how sometimes politics becomes more important than the science itself (Boone et al., 2014). There were many flaws introduced on EPA’s risk assessment process. The one that stuck out the most to me was the conflicts of interest between who supplies EPA with risk assessment data. Much of this has to do with the EPA requirements for risk assessment research, which can often times only be met by the industry itself (Boone et al., 2014). I agree with the article, and would like to see more third party research collectors between industry and regulators, such as USFWS (Boone et al., 2014. Prior to this class, I had no idea that Astoria, Oregon had superfund sites. I did some research and found that my hometown has four superfund sites (EPA, 2016). I wonder how the citizens of Astoria feel about these superfund sites, and if the risk assessment process was more science-based or more politics-based. I may follow up on these sites in upcoming blog posts. -Kristen Purdy Ahearn, A. (2015, September 27). My Grandfather And The Plane That Changed Seattle. OPB. Retrieved from http://www.opb.org Boone, M. D., Bishop, C. A., Boswell, L. A., Brodman, R. D., Burger, J., Davidson, C., . . . Weir, S. (2014). Pesticide Regulation amid the Influence of Industry. BioScience, 64(10), 917-922. Chamberlain, T., & Desai, B. (1996). Columbia River @ nationalgeographic.com. Retrieved April 03, 2016, from http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/00/earthpulse/columbia/gallery1.html EPA. (2016). Oregon Cleanup Sites. Retrieved from https://yosemite.epa.gov/r10/cleanup.nsf/webpage/Oregon+Cleanup+Sites
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