Portland General Electric filed suit Friday in federal court in Portland to condemn a piece of property where the Department of State Lands had granted a permit to the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde for a ceremonial fishing platform at Willamette Falls.
The lawsuit is the latest development in disputes over access to and redevelopment of property around Willamette Falls, a place of cultural and spiritual significance to Northwest tribes.
The Department of State Lands permit was granted in 2018 allowing the Grand Ronde to erect a temporary fishing platform and take 15 fish per year at the site, which sits below the hydroelectric dam that PGE has operated for the past century at the falls.
PGE’s filing said the Oregon Department of State Lands has asserted an ownership right “of indeterminate nature” in the property, but that the utility’s license to operate the dam with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission require it to maintain ownership and control of the property.
Andrea Platt, a spokesperson for the utility, said its No. 1 priority is the safety of people who use the site and the safety of its own operations. The company said it had offered to acquire the agency’s interest in the property for $150,000, but that offer wasn’t accepted. Consequently, the utility’s board of directors decided to utilize its condemnation authority under the Federal Power Act to acquire the Department of State Land’s interest.
Four other tribes have asserted their own treaty rights at the falls, and say the state and the Grand Ronde have bypassed a compromise plan to provide all with access to the falls. PGE filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last year to grant a perpetual cultural practices easement to the wider group, and Platt said Friday the company hopes that easement will be approved this year.
Delores Pigsley, tribal chair of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians Tribal Council, issued a statement Friday. “Nearly 20 years ago, the five tribes with treaty-based rights to fish at Willamette Falls entered into a compromise plan as part of PGE’s FERC relicensing process for its hydroelectric facility there for managing historic properties, allowing cultural access for tribes, and providing a process to resolve any disputes. One tribe and Oregon DSL has bypassed this agreed upon process, negatively affecting the Siletz Tribe’s access to Willamette Falls. … We support PGE’s efforts to restore equal treatment to all affected tribes.”
The Grand Ronde issued its own statement, suggesting the PGE’s safety concerns were a red herring:
“These proposed condemnation actions at Willamette Falls are nothing more than PGE trying to steal one of Oregon’s gems from the public trust. PGE’s only concern is protecting their business relationships with these tribes at the expense of Grand Ronde’s ability to exercise a legally authorized ceremonial fishery from a temporary platform at Willamette Falls. They are trying to circumvent a state process under a false narrative surrounding ‘safety’ and their claims that they have made every reasonable attempt to resolve this issue is simply not true.”
The disputed property sits at the base of the falls, just upriver from the former Blue Heron paper mill site in Oregon City that the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde purchased in 2019 and now plan to redevelop.
The Grand Ronde recently pulled out of the Willamette Falls Legacy Project, a decade-long intergovernmental collaboration to redevelop the old Blue Heron site. The tribe owns the property where a public riverwalk would be built using an easement, and is working on a multiphase development that would include a separate cultural and community center of its own at the site.
The remaining partners, which include Oregon City, Clackamas County, Metro and the state of Oregon, as well as the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, have said they plan to continue work on the riverwalk.
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