Aerial of the Columbia Sewage Treatment Plant, 1954.
City of Portland (OR) Archives, A2001-007.41.
Columbia Sewage Treatment Plant, 1954
Vintage Portland
Aerial of the Columbia Sewage Treatment Plant, 1954.
City of Portland (OR) Archives, A2001-007.41.
Vintage Portland 
5001 N Columbia Blvd. Portland first began treating its wastewater in 1952. Before then the city’s industrial discharges, agricultural waste and sewage emptied directly into the Willamette River and Columbia Slough. The water became dangerously contaminated. When Portland citizens realized it would take new infrastructure to help clean up the problem, they approved a $12 million bond issue to build a wastewater treatment facility.
And starting with these efforts we can now swim downtown in the Willamette…
We? 😳😲😧😱🤢😬🤒🤔
Well, ‘we’ as the general collective population who inherited the sins of the past.
Today
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5958096,-122.7183672,1464m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
Great Picture.
I wonder where that irrigation water came from ??