"Hear that?" Houck asks, as he steers his kayak in the direction of a piercing cry.

An osprey rips the surface of the river and shoots into the sky with a salmon wriggling in its claws. The osprey's cries grow louder as it circles the sky with its prey, as if taunting the less-skilled fishermen below.

"Look, over there!" says Emily, 6, as she points toward a huge home sprawling along the bank of the river.

A blue heron strikes a pose on the mansion's private wooden pier, looking as leggy and exotic as a runway model.

"Good catch, Emily!" says her uncle.

Emily leans to one side of the canoe to get a better look at the heron and dips one of her hands into the water.

"Careful!" Bragdon warns. "Don't put your hand near your mouth after it's been in the water! Even just a tiny bit of that water will make you sick."

Emily yanks her hand back into the canoe. The idyllic facade bursts like a soap bubble.

A sewer runs through it

Portland, a city that prides itself on being green, uses the river that flows through it as a sewer. Each year, 3 billion gallons of raw sewage from the city's overloaded system spills into the Willamette and Columbia rivers. The city is under orders by the state to eliminate the sewage overflows by 2011.

The coho leaping from the water have been released from hatcheries. Wild fish need natural habitat to survive and they are increasingly scarce in a river lined with lawns, seawalls and industrial facilities.

The runoff from concrete surfaces also raises the temperature of the water beyond the tolerance of some cold-water fish. The National Marine Fisheries Service recently hit Portland and many other Northwest cities with a listing of several types of salmon under the Endangered Species Act -- opening them to the threat of citizen lawsuits if the fish are not protected.

Perhaps most surprising is the plan by the Environmental Protection Agency to declare six miles of the Willamette, in the heart of downtown Portland, a Superfund site. That area of the river, generally referred to as Portland Harbor, contains the pesticide DDT, polychlorinated biphenyl, heavy metals and carcinogenic compounds from petroleum products, among other toxins, according to the EPA.

The Willamette, one of 10 American Heritage Rivers and the lifeblood of one of America's most environmentally correct cities, a waterway where nearly 200 years ago the frontiersman William Clark dipped his paddle and marveled at the abundant wildlife as part of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition, is about to receive the additional distinction of making the EPA list of the nation's most contaminated hazardous waste sites.

Fish that melted foil

When the Audubon paddlers return to shore, they attempt to explain the paradox to a visitor.

"Pollution is relative," Metrazzo says.

Thirty years ago the Willamette was so contaminated that most of the fish died. Those that survived for any length of time were loaded with deadly substances.

"My former mother-in-law remembers putting a fish from the Willamette into the oven to cook it. It melted the aluminum foil," Metrazzo says.

The river has come a long way since the early 1970s. Oregon's governor at the time, Tom McCall, forced industrial sites along the Willamette to stop dumping their toxins directly into the river.

McCall also spearheaded an effort to rip out a freeway along the west bank of the river in downtown. The area was transformed into the 36-acre Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park, which today is alive with joggers, picnickers, concert-goers and festival crowds.

Fish from the Willamette no longer melted the aluminum foil in which they were cooked, and the river was touted as having made a major environmental comeback.

The city focused on reviving its downtown, developing a sophisticated mass-transit system and administering the state-mandated urban growth boundary that protects farmland and other rural areas from development.

Meanwhile, Portland turned its back on the river.

"We all thought we'd cleaned up the river back in the '70s. We know more now," says Linda Dobson.

Dobson is a key player in the Bureau of Environmental Services' Clean River Plan, which aims to educate people about the problems of the combined sewage overflows (CSOs) and the need to take care of the region's watersheds.

The plan includes financial incentives for homeowners to unhook their downspouts so they flow into their lawns and for commercial buildings to replace their black tar roofs with "eco roofs" of grass. It will also try to reclaim as many watersheds and floodplains as possible from developments.

'We're not an Oz'

Not that long ago, most cities considered the solution to pollution to be dilution. As populations swelled, however, and more green spaces turned into concrete, the amount of runoff pouring into rivers dramatically increased.

"We're not an Oz," Dobson says. "Just like every other jurisdiction in this country we've grown up in the same way and we're dealing with the same issues. The CSO problem is something that most cities are dealing with right now."

Portland has made incremental advances in reducing its sewage overflows since the Clean Water Act went into effect more than 20 years ago.

McCall made a major impact three decades ago by stopping large industries from dumping concentrated waste into the Willamette. But today's problem of non-point source pollution is more difficult to control.

"There's not a pipe we can turn off," Dobson explains. "The problem is what we put on our lawns for fertilizer. It's the oil somebody changed and poured down the drain. Even washing your car and having it drain in the driveway and go into the street.

"Streets are 40 percent of our landscape now. We want people to recognize that everybody lives in a watershed. Restoring the streams can support the wildlife, cool the environment and slow down erosion. It's an intricate web. You can't isolate and deal with one problem anymore."

The Clean River Plan is just one facet of the city's drive to implement a new strategy for the Willamette as the 2005 bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition nears. The long-range goal calls for restoring the river in a way that benefits not only salmon, but also society in general.

Ripping out another highway is one proposal on the table -- something most cities could not fathom. But Portland retains enough of its natural bounty to see the possibilities for reclaiming even more.

"We can dream here," says Bragdon.

'A lot of ambiguity and tensions'

The day after the river outing, Bragdon is back at work in the Metro building, a former Sears department store converted to office space in the Rose Quarter of Portland. Like most business cards of the area's public officials, Bragdon's is printed on recycled paper. The back of the card gives his home phone number.

As the presiding officer of the country's only directly elected regional government, Bragdon works at the center of the interlocking set of regulations and policies that define metropolitan Portland.

The urban growth boundary -- established in 1979 as a way to reduce sprawl and encourage more compact growth -- is the framework around which other political decisions and compromises are made. Many of the suburban towns within Metro have widely divergent views from the progressive ideas percolating in Portland.

The regional body "creates a lot of ambiguity and tensions, but it's an important tool," Bragdon says.

Metropolitan Portland has gained an international reputation as a model of smart growth, so Bragdon's schedule now regularly includes meeting with visiting urbanists from throughout the world who want to learn from the region's example.

"We had a guy here today from Japan," he says. "We've even had people from Italy."

Bragdon is mystified by the attention.

"Just being better than most places in the United States is not much of an accomplishment," he says. "Transportation is way underfunded here. We talk about our commitment to mass transit but it's still really puny compared to that of European society or Japan. We haven't really invested in it to the level it needs."

Traffic congestion continues to worsen despite 33 miles of light rail, extensive bus services, Portland's pedestrian-friendly downtown and a strong bicycle lobby.

Metro's "preferred" transportation plan calls for about $9 billion in spending on roads and transit over the next 20 years, but only $2 billion in revenue is projected. The region's voters recently defeated by 89 percent a proposal to make up the deficit through a gasoline tax.

Traffic is not the only problem. Metropolitan Portland's 1.5 million population is already putting pressure on housing needs within the urban growth boundary, and another 700,000 people are expected to move to the area during the next 20 years.

"We're going to make better use of land that's already in the urban growth boundary," Bragdon says. "But that's just a plan. When you go to find people to make investments in building something rather than in the American '50s style, it's very hard to do. It's easier for a developer to buy 50 acres of cornfields and bulldoze them then it is to renovate an old warehouse district."

The momentum of 30 years ago, when Portland underwent a city planning revolution under the helm of Gov. McCall and Neil Goldschmidt, Portland's mayor from 1973 to 1979, has slowed.

"It was kind of a golden era that we have yet to recapture," says Bragdon, whose family moved from New York to Portland in 1971, when he was 12.

But Bragdon, who left a career in the shipping industry to enter public service two years ago, believes that Portland's history of enlightened civic involvement may ultimately win out.

"There's a sense of hope here that we can do things differently," he says.

"I think we're at the stage now whether we see if we're going to do some of these utopian things we've talked about or whether it's just talk. We say we want to preserve the environment, but are people really willing to drive their cars less? We want to protect the river, but are people really willing to make the investment?"

Land use plan 'way short of sustainability'

Although he is a boyish looking 32, Erik Sten seems at home in the massive office he occupies in Portland's century-old City Hall. The Portland native was elected a city commissioner at the age of 28. He oversees the water bureau, which puts the endangered salmon on his plate, along with many other critical environmental issues.

"Our much-vaunted land use plan failed to take the river into significant account," Sten says. "It's still a better land use plan than just about anybody has, but it's way short of sustainability. We've taken our rivers and streams for granted."

Sten wants the state to extend its deadline for the city to stop overflowing sewage into the Willamette from 2011 to 2020. Along with City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, Sten is proposing an alternative plan to deal with the endangered fish and the sewage problem.

"The fastest way to solve the sewage problem is to make the pipes bigger," Sten says. "If you catch more rain, the pipes don't overflow. We've already spent $200 million on enlarging the pipes and we need to spend another $600 million. My fear is that we finish the sewage project. We have bigger pipes, bigger treatment plants, almost no sewage overflow and a river that fish still can't live in."

The alternative plan would have the city acquire more green spaces along the river and recreate natural areas. The restored habitat would absorb runoff while also giving migrating salmon resting areas.

"We're going to spend $600 million more on fixing the sewers and we have no dedicated money for fish habitat. Is that the right balance?"

But it is unclear whether the city can convince the state of the merits of the alternative plan, which would take longer and cost an estimated $1 billion.

"We ought to restore the river," Sten says. "It's important in all kinds of ways -- both in sustainability and in symbolism. It's the heart of our city."

It is also a kind of time capsule of Oregon's recent history. The east bank of the Willamette, directly across from downtown, is lined with a freeway that was built in the mid-20th century when the river was nothing more than an industrial zone.

The waterfront park on the west bank represents the idea in the 1970s that people should have access to the river for recreation. But the seawall built along the park made it uninhabitable for fish.

"The next phase," says Sten, "is to integrate the needs of both people and fish. The question is can an urban area live in harmony with the natural world? I think they can but we're a long way from doing that."

'The bigger fish'

Gil Kelley, Portland's new director of planning, is charged with bringing all the disparate ideas of how to restore the Willamette together into one cohesive vision. A Portland native, Kelley worked for 10 years as a planner in Berkeley, California, before returning to his hometown this year to lead the charge for the city's latest wave of revitalization.

"The river defines east and west in Portland," he says. "There's a lot of cultural and economic divisions between the two."

Building people's connections with the river would ultimately make the city more whole, Kelley says.

"I'd like to see creeks in neighborhoods turned into parks that lead down to the river," he says. "Everybody knows on some visceral level that the river is the center of town. It's our reason for being here and a potent source of our identity."

Ultimately, Kelley wants the highway on the west bank of the river moved, in effect extending the waterfront park next to downtown onto both banks.

From his office on the south side of downtown, Kelley can look out at the area of the Willamette that he hopes to see transformed. "We could take the whole stretch of river from the city limits to the mouth of the Columbia and create a green space that would be good for fish as well as people."

He admits that a substantial greenway on both banks of the river "may not be possible for many years to come," and he has no price tag for the long-range goal, which the city will begin promoting through a series of workshops in late September.

Kelley will have to win over the port and landowners along the river, along with myriad state and federal agencies in order for the city to get the support it needs for what it is calling the "River Renaissance" project.

"The city has made planning for the river and the river corridor its No. 1 community development priority," Kelley says. "It starts with the question of how can we restore healthy fish runs and maintain our role as a national transportation hub, including shipping. How do we restore the river corridor -- the city's front yard -- in a way that works for development, habitat and people's recreational space?"

The project is expected to take three years just to plan. The city is now holding workshops to get public comments on the long-range vision for the river.

"It's not, Let's go do a green thing and take some land from people,'" Kelley says. "It's going to be an economic boon on the development side. That may be the bigger fish out of this."

But some landowners, who feel they have already compromised with the city on proposed developments along the river, do not necessarily share Kelly's conviction.

'No easy answers'

A mile-long waterfront site known as North Macadam is a case in point. More than a dozen landowners are included within the 125-acre site that was used for shipbuilding and other heavy industry. The landowners have spent more than three years negotiating with the city over the requirements for a multi-use development that will provide jobs for 3,000 people and homes for another 3,000.

A framework for a riparian buffer with a minimum of 50 feet and an average of 75 feet to 100 feet was worked out by a committee but has yet to receive the city's seal of approval.

"We've worked out a compromise with them and we hope it will be sustained. However, there's pressure to broaden those buffers because of larger forces at work here," says Beverly Bookin, an urban use planner who represents two of the landowners.

"North Macadam is a key development area for the city of Portland to meet its job and housing goals for the regional plan," Bookin says.

It is also an extremely challenging project because of the massive cleanup necessary to remove contamination from the site, and the high expectations for the quality and density of the development.

"Certainly all citizens -- including property owners -- are very interested in balancing natural resources and development," Bookin says. "But if the hurdle for development is so high that the owners cannot afford it, they'll just let the land lay fallow and there will not be protection. It's an incredibly complex situation and there are no easy answers."

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