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LAWSUIT CHALLENGES ROSS ISLAND PERMIT: The Northwest Environmental Defense Center filed a lawsuit April 10 challenging a permit the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality issued last year to Ross Island Sand & Gravel for its reclamation of the island’s lagoon. The company mined the river bottom there for 76 years, finishing in 2001. Now, it is refilling the mined areas under an agreement with the state. But environmentalists say the lagoon, which is shallow and stagnant, is the source of summertime algal blooms that spread into the river, posing health hazards to humans and animals. NEDC says in its lawsuit that the reclamation plan by Ross Island Sand & Gravel, part of R.B. Pamplin Corp., would exacerbate the algal blooms. Therefore, it argues, DEQ shouldn’t have issued Ross Island’s permit, which the lawsuit says is “in contravention of state and federal water quality protection laws, is insufficient to protect aquatic resources and water quality, and is harmful to the state and each of its citizens.” Ross Island Sand & Gravel is not a party to the lawsuit. A DEQ spokesman says the agency is reviewing the lawsuit.
PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY REARMS ITS COPS: Campus police at Portland State University are getting their guns back in response to an increased number of weapons being found on campus and limited assistance from a thinly stretched Portland Police Bureau, according to a campuswide email sent April 11 by university president Stephen Percy. The school disarmed its cops in 2021 in response to years of protests after campus police fatally shot Jason Washington, a 45-year-old Black man who was trying to break up a fight outside a sports bar in 2018. “While this may seem like a step backward in our ongoing efforts to achieve lasting change, it does not alter our commitment to actively pursue a campus safety system that prizes deescalation, respects the dignity of our diverse campus community, and finds a path to return to regular unarmed patrols on campus,” Percy wrote. In an accompanying video, campus security chief Willie Halliburton called it a “hard decision,” adding that he had not “abandoned unarmed patrols” and that his nine officers would have discretion whether to carry a firearm.
POLICE OCCUPY WASHINGTON CENTER: At the direction of Mayor Ted Wheeler, the Portland Police Bureau flooded the zone this week at Portland’s de facto drug bazaar, the square block between Southwest 4th and 5th Avenues north of Washington Street. Dealers and users had mobbed the vacant 1960s-vintage complex in recent weeks, and a young woman died March 31 of a drug overdose, putting pressure on the city and the buildings’ owners—the Menashe real estate family—to do something. What a difference some cops make. The sidewalks were clear almost immediately. Nothing is free, though, and attention to one hot spot means others go unpatrolled, says Sgt. Susan Billard, who staked out the building earlier this week. She’s under orders to have two officers at the site at all times. “When we put all these resources into an area, the blocks outside of it start to see the effects as well,” Billard says. “Having to staff this location with two officers every hour can be a real challenge.” But help is on the way, Billard says. “We’ve hired a hundred officers that are going to be going through the training process. I’m super excited about getting them out to the street.”
FORMER OREGON LOTTERY CHIEF BETS ON CITY HALL: Barry Pack, a longtime high-level state government official, has come full circle, taking a job on Mayor Ted Wheeler’s staff last month. Pack, a top aide to former Gov. Kate Brown when Brown was secretary of state, most recently served as director of the Oregon Lottery from 2016 to 2023, overseeing strong revenue growth and the agency’s expansion into mobile sports betting. Now, Pack is back working for the city of Portland, where he began his career in government 30 years ago. Pack says he’s working on special projects, including the expansion of Interstate 5 through the Rose Quarter and the Interstate Bridge replacement, and aiding the city’s transition to the new form of government voters approved last year. “My time is split between serving as the mayor’s representative on all things charter transition,” Pack says, “and working directly with the transition team in the Chief Administrator’s Office building a new government structure.”