In the steep mountains of the Oregon Coast Range between the fertile Willamette Valley and the sandy beaches of the Pacific Ocean, lies the former town of Nashville, Ore.

It was near here that Carol Adams and her late husband, Bill Brown, founded the Coastal Range Food Bank, a charitable organization that serves the needs of communities struck hard by the struggling and economically depressed logging industry, chiefly central eastern Lincoln County and the northwest portion of Benton County. According to the Oregon State University Extension Services’ report, “Poverty and Food Assistance in Oregon,” published in November 2003, the eastern portion of Lincoln County ranked among the most impoverished areas of the state with 50 percent or more of the population below poverty level, as determined by the income guideline for federal food programs.

The food bank distributes about 2,500 pounds of food each month. But more than just a resource for food assistance, it serves as a second-hand clothing distribution center and a gathering place for community events.

“The food bank is one of a few in the state that is set up just like a market, where clients have shopping carts and pick the food items they need, unlike the Grange days when they were given a box of food they did not pick, depending upon their family size,” Adams explains.

Carol Adams (left) with Glen and Lola Green, regular food bank clients. Glen, 89, and Lola, 83, have been married for 64 years. "Without the food bank, we just couldn't exist," says Glen. "With all the help we've gotten, I can afford to take my wife out for lunch once in a while."

Disaster Strikes
In the winter of 2003, a fire nearly shut down the food bank in the town of Summit’s Grange Hall, which belonged to the state Grange organization, a fellowship of farmers. Because the hall had suffered extensive fire, smoke and water damage, Adams pushed to find another facility, not wanting to miss a single food distribution. She chose an old gas station in nearby Nashville, a once-thriving railroad and lumber community, now virtually abandoned.

Adams already had her eye on the site as a permanent location for the food bank and had been working to obtain the property for at least a year. But because of the site’s environmental issues, she was having little luck obtaining it. From 1934 to the 1970s, the site had been a country store, U.S. Post Office and retail gas station. The post office closed in the 1960s, the gas station in the 1970s. Abandoned for several decades, the station became an unattractive nuisance, drawing transients, squatters and drug dealers.

Garbage and abandoned vehicles accumulated on the property, further impacting the deterioration of the site as well as the community’s pride. A petroleum release was discovered and reported to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) in July 2001, after a limited site assessment was completed for a potential purchaser. The assessment indicated that leakage from substandard underground storage tanks (USTs) and the former pump island had impacted local soil and groundwater.

The potential purchaser walked away.

Adams then elicited the help of Charlie Landman, a legal policy advisor for the ODEQ Land Quality Division in Portland, who put her in contact with Jim Glass, a UST project manager for ODEQ’s Western Region. Adams negotiated a deal with the owner of the Nashville site, a large mortgage company located in Texas, which agreed to donate the property if the food bank assumed responsibility for the cleanup.

The mortgage company agreed and the food bank got its new home without missing a month of food distribution.

Cleanup Conundrum
With the immediate crisis over, Adams set out to obtain financing for the cleanup of the property to meet her obligation under the PPA. In 2004, she received a $100,000 EPA Brownfields Cleanup Grant. Since the operational budget of the food bank at the time was only $7,820, the EPA waived the standard 20 percent cost share. Additional funding for site assessment came from the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department (OECDD), which provided $20,000 towards the success of the project.

The cleanup effort involved the resolution of a number of issues, including:

• an impact evaluation of the water well release serving the food bank
• a determination of the extent of soil and groundwater impacts
• the decommissioning of the UST system
• the monitoring of the groundwater for a minimum of four consecutive quarters
• the preparation of a Risk-Based Evaluation report to obtain a No Further Action determination from the DEQ.

The food bank retained Klein-felder, a nationally recognized expert in brownfield redevelopment, to assist in the assessment and cleanup. Meanwhile, Adams administered the grant and moved the project forward despite several setbacks. An additional UST was discovered during preliminary site assessment activities, and the site team found that groundwater contamination extended beneath Nashville Road and onto the adjacent property.

Dad and son shopping at the food bank. The father lost his job in the lumber industry.

Despite the changes in scope of the project, the assessment and cleanup were performed within budget through a tremendous outpouring of community support and in-kind services. For example, Bob Hogensen, of Green and White Rock Products, Inc., of Corvallis, donated 10 yards of concrete for the reconstruction of the pad overlying the former tanks. Anderson Environmental Contracting, of Kelso, donated time and materials to help rebuild the old pump island overhang connected to the store and improve site drainage.

Technical Difficulties
The greatest challenge was the removal of the tanks and the soil remediation work due to the close proximity of the food bank building, the overhang and the Nashville Road right-of-way.

Through some very precise excavation work and structural bracing, performed by Anderson Environmental Contracting, all three USTs were removed along with a significant quantity of impacted groundwater to help restore groundwater integrity.

Following the removal of the USTs, prepacked groundwater monitoring wells were installed to keep costs down during installation and subsequent groundwater sampling events. As an additional cost-saving measure, low-flow sampling techniques were used to minimize the amount of purge water generated during sampling.

To handle the contaminated groundwater extending into the adjacent property, Adams obtained permission from the property owner to place a deed restriction on their property, limiting the use of groundwater until natural attenuation had reduced the gasoline concentrations in the groundwater to safer levels.

With the deed restriction in place, the risk-based corrective action report was prepared and the public comment period began. No comments were received, allowing the DEQ’s Jim Glass to prepare a No Further Action letter.

“If it was not for the help of Jim Glass and Charlie Landman of the Oregon DEQ, I couldn’t have done it,” says Adams. “I worked for years in the aerospace business and I had the privilege of working with the cream of the crop. And I can say that the ODEQ and EPA are full of dedicated, personable, fascinating individuals who were a privilege to work with.”

Ready Resources
Now that the potential threat to human health and the environment has been significantly reduced, Coastal Range Food Bank resources can now be redirected back toward construction of additional food storage buildings and the continued pursuit of its mission to assist communities in need.

“We are very busy at the food bank, getting ready for the locally supported Turkey Basket deliveries,” said Adams in mid-November. “Later this month, the Eddyville Charter School grades 1 thru 12 are conducting a food drive to help make Christmas better for a lot of their neighbors.”

Future plans for the food bank include the expansion of the food distribution service, the addition of a community garden and the replacement of invasive species with native vegetation to enhance local ecology.

Mark Underhill is a senior geologist with Kleinfelder in Portland, Oregon.