You really think someone is on the take? Isn't incompetence more likely?

Probably both.

Yet this is the same guy who says of Kashmir military rebels-
"The only effective way to deal with them is to kill them."

The corruption may indeed be happening and apparent at the Northwest plant, but it's hard to believe an extremist- someone who condones killing as a viable solution to his or her problem. I mean, if he can be extreme about one subject why not another? Hard to trust a conclusion coming out of the same mouth.

pdxkona, they're not "military rebels", they're terrorist scum.There has not been any major conflict settled without violence. Ever.

The only negotiation that these terrorist would be content with is one that gave Kashmir to Pakistan. Of course, then they would start by slaughtering the Hindu Kashmiris and the Hindus would respond by attacking the Muslim Kashmiris.

Then, by your logic, they would have to negotiate with those terrorists (and they would also be terrorists) and satisfy them by turning Kashmir back to India. Which would in turn, set off a new round of attacks.

We are dealing with humans here, not some fanciful construct of a college class. Real people, the ones involved in the killing and dying, don't give a rip about "negotiations".

Real people will kill for nothing at all. a little ideology or religion only gives them more reasons.

Always has been, always will be.

Grow up.

Wow, I used to think that DEQ was busy fining and shutting down places like Columbia AMERICAN Plating. I worked with them in the highly dispersed world of household and small business (CEG) waste. In the small fry world there is no money to pay the lawyers for the court battles, so compliance is mostly about educating the good neighbors and blustering and bluffing when a business craps on the sidewalk. I was always under the impression that they were policing the fully regulated (Large Quantity Generators) of hazardous waste.

DEQ and OSHA had numerous violations on which they could have fined or closed this company, but they failed to do so. This is a big fish---on the hook---you couldn't reel it in?

I have been working at a squeaky clean plating factory for the past year now. If bad neighbors are allowed to pollute in squeaky clean tree hugging Oregon, how can we compete in a global market where corruption is the order of the day?

We can't. Listen to the flushing sound Americans as you vote to de-fund those incompetent bureaucrats.

I am not sure if someone is "in on the take," though it is certainly possible. Oregon and Portland have a long history of bribes and payoffs for officials to “look the other way.” Apparently we have not move that far forward with eliminating corruption and quid pro quo. When the public eye waders some are tempted to take matters into their own hands.

The problem is really more fundamental to our political system. Businesses carry a lot of weight with politicians and fund many a campaign. Enforcing pollutions laws creates a backlash against politicians; i.e. accusations they are unfriendly to business or that America can’t compete with other countries that allow higher levels of pollution. Without a huge disaster or a large number of people demanding that the pollution be stopped, why would the politicians push this issue? Their campaign funds disappear and half the voting population considers them “unfriendly” to business.

Particularly when such issues aren’t pounded into the publics head by the media, said issues are under the radar. Most Portlanders don’t know anything about this situation. Unless the Oregonian (haha) is going to make a big deal out of this, large numbers of voters will be largely ignorant of the situation.

Also our laws are not harsh enough. We lock people up for ridiculous amounts of time for drug offenses, yet polluters often slink off into the sunset with the profits generated from operations that produce pollution, leaveing the public holding the bag, ala superfund program.

If we want to stop this type of thing from happening, we need to make polluters scared to pollute by putting in place automatic harsh penalties and punishment for those who violate pollution laws. Mandatory minimum sentences for the business owners/managers and substantial monetary fines for polluters would be a good start. Make it personal and make expensive for businesses to break pollution laws. Use the money generated to fund enforcement. Make business scared to pollute. Ah, what a pipe dream

TimNE. What is the point of greatly increased penalties when we don't even enforce the ones we have? More draconian penalties would just push the polluters to relocate to an area with lesser penalties.

How can you say that the pollution laws need to be stiffened when they haven't been enforced?

Hence the pipe dream statement at the end of my post. I thought I offered my opinions to why enforcement doesn't happen. Would you like to me add, in "addition to enforcing existing laws?" No problem. I would think that would go without saying.