Max: So, I don't know much about what they do for contamination. I only worked there as summer help for two summers in a row, so it would be 2018 and 2019 for both times I worked there. And while I was there, I wasn't really involved in anything to do with chemicals. I was on the winder, so at the very end of the paper mill, it was where the paper would come out of the machine on a huge roll and I put it on the roll to be made into individual smaller rolls. That was my job there.

So, I didn’t really deal with many chemicals. From what I saw of their chemical containment, they were in plastic 500-gallon drums on the lower level of the paper mill. So, it’s a huge building. There’s three paper machines and I was on the number 3 machine. So, it’s two levels, you have the underside level and that’s the ground level. So, when you walk in you go up to the actual paper machine and then you have the under guts of it, you know. That’s where they store all the chemicals down there. I know it was always a very moist environment down there.

And like, you know, it was due to a lot of factors, it was hot in there constantly, the paper machine itself, like, we put off a ton of heat. So, like, on the machine floor, it was constantly 85 to 100 degrees incessantly all the time. And so, when you're walking in, I remember like walking the big bay doors and off to the right side, there was all where they stored what I was assuming are the chemicals for the processing. And they were stored in 500-gallon, I want to say, like totes. They're plastic totes with the galvanized crates over them. And that’s where I saw it. It was, honestly, it's probably not the best storage for it, because things like that leak, like plastic seals are not the best and like it was constantly moist and wet down there, rotting is a factor. You got a bunch of chemicals stored there constantly because you got to have a back fill of them because you can't run out of something. And I have been told by coworkers that were higher up in the place that there are chemicals there. Like if one drops out, it would kill everybody in the middle.

I’m sorry, what was the original question about contamination?

Riley: What do you know about it and what do you think is important to know about the site, like, just in general?

Max: Okay, so like, the sites are huge. But also, I know they have some personnel there to handle chemicals specifically. They have to. I never saw them, or at least I never knew it. And they weren’t there all the time, but I mean, they would come through once in a while to do a safety walkthrough. But like, this is also a bunch of blue-collar dudes. Like, we would not always follow safety precautions and stuff like that. And so, I'm sure with the chemicals there, like, they're not always followed to a T, like, obviously.

You get to a point where, like, you know, you do get complacent. No matter what job you're doing, like, especially with chemical stuff, you get complacent. And, like, I remember they would have to have trucks come in and there was like one guy on our crew that would go down there, and he was actually the qualified guy to go down there and help unload the trucks. And so like, you know, he would go down there, like, on the ground floor of it and they'd have a big pull through, and they would unload them with chemicals into certain tanks as well. Not only the 500-gallon tanks, but there were big, like, huge silos that you also have chemicals.

Riley: And that’s to remove them from the site?

Max: No, that would be to bring them in. Because they get expended on the paper. And also, with contamination, I'm not sure how the drainage worked in the facility, because, like, when we would wash down the machines into a big machine shutdown, I was only part of like two or three of them, but like, you would go under the machine and we would use a ton of water and like hose off a lot of the and pull things out. But like, underneath the machine is very wet. And it's a very, very wet and moist environment because on the far end, on the wet side of the machine, it starts to pull and then it goes through the entire machine, which is like the size of a football field.

And as it runs through that machine, it becomes paper, and it gets dried out. And so, I know in the wet section we would just wash it down and I don't know about where the drains would go. Because like, we would just wash it down and it would just go down the drains. And like, that's what I knew. And like, we'd go up there and just clean everything throughout the entire machine and get the machine cleaned. But as far as our actual like dumping process of where all that shit went, not clean. I don't know.

And, like, I'm sure on that wet side, like, the majority of it is pulp, but I'm sure there are some chemicals within that that are getting washed because the site is on the banks of the Columbia River. I drove to the Columbia to get to that site. It was on the docks. Like, so you have the Longview Port, and I want to say there was like a chemical plant, and then there was NORPAC. Okay. And so, all of that is right there on the edge of the plant. I'm sure it was not entirely to standard. And like, you told me yourself, like, they have been fine for ecological issues, right?

Riley: Yes, they have.

Max: From the people I worked with there and from what I saw, like, I can almost say with certain it wasn't handled to a T always. And, like I said, complacency with the job, people working there for 12 hours at a time, like, you get tired of it. And you just do whatever works. But you know, you’ve got guys that aren't thinking about the ecological impact that, you know, a huge paper mill could have. They're just there to make their money and leave.

Max: Of all the people that I hung around and like people that also worked there in the time that I was in Longview, no. Nobody was concerned about it. Nobody talked about it. Like, this was not a community concern. Like I said, there were a bunch of people working there and they were just happy to have a really good job at NORPAC.

Max: I know the positive effect of a lot of solely high school graduates with that education level can go there and get a really good job. That's a very solid job, and you know, you have a very set schedule. And you can go there and make very decent money and support a family and live a very good life with minimal education. But also, you know, you just go to work there right out of high school and get a good job and work your way up through the company because there is a lot when you get there. You know, you start in the position I started writing for a fifth hand on the winder, whatever that may be, and then you can work your way up. So, there is a lot of room for upward movement in that company. So that does support the community a lot, that's a big leg up.

And like, you know, in Longview there are a lot of people who just graduate high school and they don't feel like they're suited for college, so they don't go. And they end up going to either the logging industry or the paper industry, which are one in the same, essentially. But that's a lot of what people do in that town.

Well, then as far as community outreach, I know they do some sponsorships of things. They have company cookouts and stuff like that, but, like, it's still just a giant corporate machine when it comes down to it. Yes, they sponsor things to a certain degree. But, like, from what I've seen, like the sports I did in the community, I didn't see any NORPAC sponsorship.

Max: I think government should definitely be more aware of it, I mean, I'm sure they are to a certain degree. Like that would be the higher ups in the company, they deal with that kind of thing. But, like, I certainly hope there is some government oversight with the amount of the chemicals they store on site there. And I think there should be certain standards they have to uphold. And like, in the time that I was there, like I said, I only saw this for two summers, so probably in total, like six months of me working there. I only saw two or three times, like the higher ups come locked down the entire machine to check everything out. But I don't know if they even went to the underbelly of the machine where all the chemicals are kept, or if they would walk around the silos where you know, the largest part of these chemicals are kept. I don't know. But also, I know, like, there's a lot of rusty stuff there, like things are leaking, so that's also something to be aware of.

But there should definitely be some government oversight with the amount of dangerous chemicals they have on site, and the disposal of those chemicals. Because, like, seeing how you are right there on one of the largest waterways, I think in the world, the Columbia River. And, you know, a lot of people live off that. And like, there's so much down there and seeing how we're right next to the ocean as well, and it flows right out into that. That's probably something that we should be aware of, and there should be some ecological oversight from the government.

Max: Oh, it's a very positive view from the community outlook. Like, if you get out at NORPAC, you're like, oh, that's great. That's awesome. Because their main concern is you can go there and make really good money. That's where the concern ends. And like everybody knows if you're at NORPAC, you're making good dough. And so, they'll just go there and be happy that they're making money. But as far as like you actual ecological concerns from the communities, there's almost none that I've seen. And like nobody really cares. Because like, it really doesn't affect them too much because, yes, the only thing I could really see it affecting would be the fishing industry. And the fishing industry in Longview is really not present. It's just recreational. And even then, they're more worried about the hatcheries and everything else that they're messing up in the fishing industry or whatever, as opposed to NORPAC messing it up for them and, you know, dumping a bunch of chemicals into the river being right there and disposing of chemicals in not the best way. That's the least of their concern. They don't care.

Riley: Did you ever go fishing on the Columbia?

Max: Oh, a bunch.

Riley: Did you eat the fish?

Max: Oh, totally. But luckily, I came out okay.

Max: To a certain degree, yes. Yeah, totally, maybe more than I actually think once I actually start talking about it. And you know, I’m not a big fan of Weyerhaeuser. I don’t like the fact that you use pesticides over large parts of the forest. I don't like the fact that they're clear cutting and replanting trees too closely and don't allow for natural foliage. I don't like the fact that they’re harvesting so much of our forest. I've seen a lot of places I really personally enjoyed hunting at growing up that have been clear cut and wiped off the face of the earth. And it totally changes the whole ecosystem. And, like, it bothers me a lot when I see trash in the woods, and like, I don't like that. And so, yeah, maybe I am a little bit of an environmentalist.

And like, I don't like the fishing industry being interrupted. I don't like the fact that some people are getting more rights than others as far as fishing stuff goes. You know, big on just letting a natural ecosystem be its own thing. Interfering with that is not going to go well, in my opinion. And like coming from a town where, like, you know, it's all built on logging industry I'm not a fan of the logging industry at all. I don't like it. Especially seeing how like Weyerhaeuser will buy huge swaths of land and not let anybody use them unless they, you know, you get past their paywall of, you know, you have to buy a $350 key or $1,000 drive-in pass to hunt any of their lands and the only time they'll allow you to go through their roads if there's state land access on the other side.

And it's like, I have watched it in my lifetime cut off more and more chunks of land that you know, I used to go drive on roads with my dad as a kid, and now it's all closed off because of Weyerhaeuser buying those plots of land. And Weyerhaeuser and NORPAC go hand in hand because Weyerhaeuser cuts logs and they buy their logs. NORPAC uses their logs for pulp. And so, it's a lot of pulp industry. And so, yes, I'm not a big fan of these big companies.

Max: I have never heard anything. Living in Longview for, let’s say 23 years, there was never anything put out that I saw on the news or anything like that, where it's like, hey, you know, NORPAC we got a bunch of chemicals, just because nobody in Longview really cares. Because like a quarter of the town is employed by NORPAC. And they're not going to shut down one of the main employers of the entire town where all these people make their money. And like, they're not making nickels and dimes, they’re making money off this place. And so, they can’t just quit. And as far as the actual community of Longview, there's no ecological reason, like, they don't give a shit, they just go to work and whatever. And whatever happens to the chemicals, hopefully it just doesn't kill us.

And, you know, like, on a big machine site like that too, there's a million other dangers that people worried about besides chemicals to pollute on your day-to-day basis. Like, there were times when I was there when you’d have to go in between these huge rolls of paper,  you take little scabs of paper off these giant rollers, and you can get your arms sucked in. You're going through a machine and getting turned into a piece of paper. And, like, you're going to get every bone broken in your body. Physical safety concerns more than anything was what I was trained to be aware of.

And so, when I was there, there was an orientation, but it's a long time ago now and I was kind of like, just struggling to get through it. But I don't remember anything to do with chemical concerns. It was mainly hearing and eye protection that were their big concerns because that's what we were working with on a daily basis.

Iris: How long have you guys lived in Longview? If you don't mind me asking? 

• Diane: 50 Well, we moved here in '69, yeah, so 56 years. That's a lot. Is that right? Honey?

Iris: That's okay. I can do all the math on the back end when I'm typing it up. What brought you to Longview? 

• KC: Work, I was working at a steel mill in Portland Oregon and, they had a big layoff, and some of the guys heard about the Reynolds Mills company opening a mill up here in Longview. And so four of us got together and came up and applied, and all four got jobs, and we commuted back and forth from Portland for a year, and then we rented the house here. And then, how many years did we rent down there? 

• Diane: I think it was just a couple. 

• KC: And then we bought the house we're living in now. 

Iris: Okay, was that also a steel mill that you were in in Longview?

• KC: Not in Longview. It was aluminum cable. We had high-voltage, medium-voltage cables that brought power to your homes. It was a bare overhead cable, and also underground distribution cables. So, okay, and I was a production supervisor for almost 25 years. 

Iris: Oh, okay, well, I don't know if Diane told you, but I'm doing a senior project with a group right now about two sites in or three sites, I guess, in Longview and then Tacoma. We're looking at Commencement Bay. So in Longview, we are doing research about the Northern Pacific paper companies, the paper mill, and the West Rock site.

• KC: Okay. Well, after the mill here in Longview rentals closed, I went to work for Weyerhaeuser on a paper machine.

Iris: So that's that's the Northern Pacific paper companies mill, or is it a different one?

• KC: Well, just nippon paper. Now, right about 80% of what we produced when it was Weyerhaeuser was sent to Japan, and fortunately, the company, once a year, would send a couple of hourly guys and a couple salaried people to Japan to see what they did with our product.

Iris: Oh, cool. 

• KC: I was fortunate enough to be one to go. I was there for 10 days, and all paid for and taken care of by the company. So it was quite an experience.

Iris: Wow, very nice. How long did you work there? 

• KC: At Weyerhaeuser? Yeah, I think it was 13 years.

Iris: How was it working there?

• KC: Well, at 50 years old, I was doing work that 20 year old should be doing, right? It was hard work. Yeah, it was. It was hard and hot and difficult from time to time and you weren't a supervisor anymore, you know, I wasn't. I was an hourly person at that point, and when the union there found out that I was a former supervisor, they talked me into being a shop steward and on the standing committee working for the Union, as well as my doing my job. Of course.

Iris: In our research, we came across that they've had some not-so-much labor shortages, but because of the lumber regulations, they've had some labor shortages because of people leaving. Did you experience that when you worked there?

• KC: No. One thing I was impressed with. What way warehouses did their work was they had a lot of labor to do whatever jobs they needed to do, and we never had a problem with any shortages. In my area, yeah, well, that's all I know about.

Iris: And which area was that?

• KC: I worked on what they called L-3, which was a machine which made, you know, the milk carton stock you see in the stores, gallon milk cartons. That's the size of paper that we made. It wasn't like a newsprint or something like that. It was the heavy board.

Iris: Okay, yeah, that's really interesting, especially for this. We haven't talked to anyone who actually worked at these places, when you were working there, or since you guys have just been living there after, Or, I know like in city meetings, sometimes we've heard people or we've seen comments about people talking about it, about cleanups.

• KC: No, not really. They did have some one thing that happened when I was working there. They had a chlorine leak that shut down the whole operation. But they didn't really think about that. It was just, fixes the problem and go on. So you know. The night that happened, I was on shift working and had two machines that were in the area I worked in. The other one was a brown paper machine where they made the corrugated medium for cardboard. And we were working on that machine that night, and all of a sudden we saw this and smelled this green and yellow stuff that was on the floor, and, oh, “we have a chlorine leak somewhere”. And all the guys were going, Let's shut this thing down and get out of here. And I said, No, we're okay. It'll all be fine. But, yeah, that was an interesting situation. 

Iris: Yeah, so you weren't worried about breathing that stuff in or anything?

• KC: Yeah, Oh the workforce for us, the management seemed, I won't, yeah, they weren't too concerned about us working in that stuff. So apparently, it happened before, and there hasn't been any problems with it, but the guys are going, “This is crazy. We shouldn't be in this stuff,”  Especially, especially you can see it, you know, 

Iris: Yeah, I'm sure it smelled really strong. And you were you worried about it?

• KC: Was I worried about it? Yeah, of course, that's nasty stuff. And I guess the other thing that you talk about our cleanup is sometimes would get pulp spills outside of the plant on the grounds. And they had one company, I think, that Weyerhaeuser made a job for Cowlitz clean sweep that would come in and clean up our pulp spills. But, you know, I don't even know what they would do with the stuff after it got vacuumed up and stuff. But other than those two things, about the only thing I can think of right now. So,

Iris: If you don't mind me asking, do you live near the West Rock mill?

• Diane: Near which one? 

Iris: Either one, I guess?

• KC: Well, the Nippon. We're probably what, a couple of miles? I would say about two miles.

Iris: Okay, how do you feel about having it so close by, knowing about the like, spills, and stuff?

• KC: Oh, she was wondering if how we felt about the spills and stuff living that close to the now, they haven't had a problem for quite some time, so I don't know whether they've taken care of all that, but it's not a real concern for me anyway. 

Iris: Okay, so would you say that the Nippon plant is a good contributor to the community because of the jobs that it provides for the community.

• KC: Yeah, they're nice, high-paying jobs. Of course, I was never at the mill when they when weyerhaeuser sold, or that portion of the mill to Nippon Paper. So I don't know how they run it. I've talked to some of the guys that work out there, and they said, pretty much the same place, except the name is different, right? 

Iris: It's a really old site in Longview. I mean, it's one of the first, I'm sure you know this, one of the first industrial sites in Longview. 

• KC:  It was pretty much, some of the stuff we were working with was pretty archaic, but they've done a lot of upgrades to that place. Well, remember when we first moved here, the air was really awful, but and then they put in the air cleaning stuff, honey.

• Diane: Yeah, that's true. That's going away.

Iris: What was that about?

• KC: I can't remember the name of what they used to call it, the spills that they used to have out there, which would make the air terrible, air. 

• Diane: Yeah, it was almost like a, kind of like, kind of fog, in a way. I mean, you could see it. And when we first came up here, before we actually, when we came up, he brought me up here to show me around, because we were planning, at that point, on moving up here. Because he, what he did was we owned our house in Portland, and he was driving back and forth from Portland every day for his work every day, and because he didn't know if he was going to like the job or not. And so once he decided yes, he liked the job, we decided to sell our house down there, and. Yeah, well, not yet, but to move up here and rent a house. And then we rented our house out down there. And one of the first things that I told him was that we were driving into town after we got off the I-5 freeway, and we were coming into town was because the air was almost a gray, yellow-looking stuff. And I told him, I said, Well, look, I hope this isn't how it's going to be all the time. If so, I'm going to be standing out here on the roadway with a sign protesting the air, shortly after that, then they there was a big thing in the news that they were putting in some machinery that were air cleaners, and that made all the difference in the world.

Iris: Do you think that they did that because people were getting upset or just because it was pretty intense?

• Diane: Probably both, and I think also that the health issues here in down were well above the national averages, and they saw that there was a specific correlation between air quality at that time here, and how people's bodies were trying to manage it, 

Iris: Do you know around when that would have been?

• KC: Well, we came here and we moved up here in 69, by I think by 70 they were, I mean, they literally started doing that just right after we moved up here. I think it would have been about 1970 that they started the whole process of putting in the whatever they call them, the air cleaners, precipitators, yeah, okay, yeah, that's that reduction going with all our stuff going on too. It wouldn't be every day that that icky kind of air, but it would be often, and a lot of it had to do too with what, what? What's the word, which direction the air was the wind was blowing.

Iris: But since then, it has not been an issue.

• KC: It's not an issue. Now, I haven't smelled Mills for a long time. Oh, years and years. No, we do though have a friend that her doctor told her that if she didn't move out of the area, out of the close area she lived actually, honey, I think is about three miles to the to the mill from where we are, but our friend, because she lived about a mile closer than us, and she had super terrible asthma and bronchitis, and she was really sick a lot. And finally, her doctor told her, if you don't move out of that environment, you're not going to last another couple of years. And so she and her husband moved across the river to Kelso, and they bought a house on the hill, and her whole health profile changed dramatically. It was a great thing for her. So there was definitely a correlation. Yeah, in my mind anyway.

Iris: Did you notice anything like feeling different when you moved to Longview from Portland?

• Diane: Oh. Health-wise, yeah, I did not, but my husband, KC here, he sure did. He had a lot of problems with bronchitis and pneumonia and asthma, and he did not have that in the years we had been married before, until we came up here, and it was a regularly recurring problem for him. I used to have a saying when the leaves fell, so did I. 

• Iris: You got bad allergies? 

• Diane: Yeah, and I've been. Actually, he did go to an allergist here in town, and they designed a medication for him that he took shots for a couple of years, maybe two and a half years. Also, our kids did our or our daughter did, and actually, eventually I did too, because there was that I did. Have you took allergy shots for what, seven years? Yeah, I took them for seven years. The Doctor taught me how to give myself the shots. And, yeah, because I was having, I was having a lot of problems, the allergy oriented too. I had, you know, I had actually just forgotten about that it's a good thing you asked that.

Iris: It's good that you forgot. I mean, it, I guess it hasn't been an issue in a while.

• Diane: It absolutely changed, well, when I took the shots. Oh, actually, we'll just back up a little bit. When we had our daughter Deanna. This is Emily's mom from the time she was a tiny baby. She had a lot of health problems having to do with her breathing. And finally, at the age of, and she was she would have bronchitis and pneumonia a lot also. And finally, at the age of nine, her doctor said, You know, I think we need to get her into an allergist and have them do a real intensive testing on her and see what they can find out. Well, it turned out that she just lit up all sorts of they did all the little for they do the little pin pricks down your back and down your arms, and she just lit up like a Christmas tree. And even the wood we were burning in our fireplace, she and I turned out to both be allergic to, yeah, but from the time they started her shots when she was nine, and she took them for two and a half years. From the time they started her shots until she was in college, she never had so much as a cold. The allergy shots were an absolute miracle for her, and then when I started getting sore throats, I would literally get blisters in my throat. And I was how I was, about 40 years old. Then I'm thinking, somewhere right around in there. And so I went to an allergist, and, well, I went to an ear, nose, and throat guy, and I just called him up one day, and just, I just. It would be so painful. And I just said, I need help. I just need help. And so they had me come in and fill out a 10-page questionnaire on all sorts. I don't even remember the questions, but lots of them filled it all out, took it back. The doctor went over it in my presence, and he said, You, I think you have a severe problem with allergies. And so they did tests on me. And yes, I did have a lot of problems that lit up, and they created one for me. And I took, like KC mentioned, I actually took my shots for seven years, and it was like a miracle drug for me. It absolutely, completely changed my health. I would get maybe an achy cold once a year, and that was, that was it. So, boy, that was a chunk of it that I had actually just put completely out of my head until just right now. But yeah, I did have problems there at an earlier time, right?

Iris: But then they got better when the air got cleaner, or, like your allergies got less bad?

• Diane: With that, with what did you say?

• KC: Combination of both things? Probably. 

• Diane: Yeah, the time difference between when the air cleaners were put in and the time when I actually started seeing the ear, nose, and throat doctor, it was probably a good, oh, at least 10 years, I would say, because we moved up here and Deanna was born just. Just a year after we moved up here. And, yeah, and then they had put those air cleaners in right away. So yeah, it's kind of hard to remember all those things, get back that far. But yeah, it made it very much a difference. And then the doctor suggested it for KC, and he also took allergy shots, but you only took him for what, about a year? 

• Diane: Did you take them for two years?

• KC: Yeah

• Diane: And they actually did the same good, good thing for him, and then also they came out with the pneumonia shot, and that, that was a real wonderful thing. He's never gotten pneumonia again after that, and he had had it all, even through his childhood. He had a lot of problems with that kind of stuff, according to his mom,

Iris: Okay, so you always had that.

• Diane: I'm sorry. 

• Iris: Oh, sorry, um, I'm just wondering, how much the air quality made your guys' allergies worse. And I know you talked about earlier how it was so different when you moved, when the air was dirty, 

• Diane: Oh ,it set off things that we never experienced with our health. We lived in Portland at all.

Iris: Do you think that the company just saw people struggling and put in new regulations? Or…

• Diane: Oh, I'm sure that there was pressure put on them. I think that's mainly how anything gets done with companies, is there has to be pressure, otherwise they don't want to spend the money for stuff. I have no idea what led to it. I will make that very clear. At that time of our life, we were so busy raising we now had, you know, then, two little, little, little kids, and we were just busy just living life and raising our two little ones, and we really didn't pay much attention at all to City News, let alone national news, back In those early days, right?

Iris: Legally, through the Clean Air Act, they probably had to fix that.

• Diane: It may have been that… was when they actually started taking the steps that they did. I don't have any idea when the Clean Air Act came into realization. 

• Iris: It was the early 60s. So before that,

• Diane: Yeah, maybe certain portion of here, yeah, that may be it too. Don't know that. We just know that those cleaners weren't put in until after we got here, 

Iris: Right. Well, now there's kind of a big I mean, I guess its not a big thing, but both of those companies in Longview have been fined for their effluent discharge into the Columbia

• Diane: Are you aware of that? Is that anything that you learned about any when you worked there? 

• KC: No.

• Diane: And I don't recall really much of anything being in the newspaper. And we have been avid newspaper readers straight through from the time we moved up here. So if they if they had any big articles in the paper, we would have, I think we would have caught, you know, they we would have had an interest in that and and followed it in the paper. So there must not have been much in the paper, is what I'm guessing. 

Iris: Yeah, I guess not, we found only a couple of news articles. But we're not looking at newspapers. We're more looking at online stuff, because that's what we have. But okay, very cool. I don't have any more official questions for you guys.

Iris: Is there anything else that you feel like it'd be important for me to know for our situation? Situating ourselves. I mean, none of us. I've never been to Longview, which was too bad that I couldn't come down, because it would have been nice to like see just what's happening around.

• Diane: It's a very pretty town. 

• Iris: It sounds really pretty right along the river,

KC: There is one more thing I'll talk about: the quality of our water that we get from the city. We used to get the water out of the Cowlitz River, and that used to be really good water. And they, of course, after Mount St Helens blew, and they kept getting all that silk and stuff coming down the river, the sediment, to the city, would have to rebuild their impellers into their pumps and stuff. And so they decided that they were going to move the water supply from where it was out to Mid Valley. They call that area out there, it's out by the industrial mills. We don't even drink the water that comes into our house. We buy bottled water, and we buy water and buy gallon containers delivered on a regular basis to have decent water to drink. 

• Iris: Does it taste bad, the city water?

• Diane: Yes, it is.

• KC: It's terrible.

• Diane: It's got so much, what is it honey, that's in it?

• KC: I think it's just chemicals that are leaching in from the mills myself, but…

• Diane: Yeah, I know that's what everybody thinks. Is that there's because they drilled in? What they said in the paper was that they drilled underneath the bottom of the river in order to reach the area of water that they draw from. But it's got stuff in it. They filter it, and they do and they do things to it. We don't even like to think about what they must be doing do it, but what it was doing was it would damage like people's dishwashers and their piping systems in their houses. And anything you had that was glass that you could actually see making a change, it would get all kind of foggy looking with the kind of a layer of something, just, just a something that was that's in the water. And we just thought, Well, that can't be good for our bodies. And so we decided to start buying,

• KC: Well, you can taste the stuff, but yeah.

• Diane: And it used to be really the water used to be so good, and so good tasting here, before the mountain blue, that my parents, when they would come up here, the first thing my mom would do would be to get a big glass of water. She'd say, Oh, your water tastes so much better than Portland. Yeah. And then after the mountain blue, there was just so much of that silt coming down the river. And they were the Corps of Engineers. I was constantly having to… 

• KC: Rebuild. 

• Diane: What's the word for removing? They were constantly having to remove dredging. Yeah, they were doing lots and lots of that. They haven't done dredging for a long time, but we did see in the paper, oh, I would say within the last within the last year, I was going to say six months, but it's been longer than that, that they were considering having some more dredging done. I mean, the silt would just fill the river up with silt, and so they would have to come in and just, just try to scoop all of that out.

• Iris: Yeah, can't have that river flood.

• Diane: No, the concern of it was huge here.

Iris: Do people ever fish in the Columbia or the Cowlitz River? 

• Diane: I don't know if they eat, but let's eat what they catch out in the Cowlitz, the Columbia River. I know people. People do? We have friends that, he is a fishermen, and he fishes in the Columbia, and he's said it's changed a lot. It's not as it's not as there's not as many fish, I guess, as there used to be, because he ended up traveling down, took his boat down in California, and he just lived in California. Oh, here about three years ago, he did that, and he just rented a place and lived down there by himself and did his fishing down there in order to make a living. And I think he got to the age where he got too tired of doing that. Yeah, it's hard work, back up here where it's family. I mean, they still are, my friend, his wife and family members still lived here in town while he moved down there, and he would come home once in a while, some time off, you know, so he would get to see the family and stuff. But yeah, that people still, they still, they still fish to Colombia and sell the fish to stores and stuff like that.

Iris: Would you guys eat fish from the Cowlitz River?

• Diane: I don't, and neither does my husband, no.

• Iris: Because of the why not?

• Diane: Our concern has to do with the Hanford, up the river in Richland.

Iris: What's the Hanford?

• Diane: The Hanford is atomic energy. Yeah, it's an atomic energy place. And actually, my grandfather worked there. And what's happened is that the tanks that they've been storing the spent uranium in have started leaking. And this, this is widely known, because this is going on, and there's concerns that it's leaking into the Columbia, and one of the ways that they that they think that it shows that they can prove it, is because fish up in that area. Will they have, they'll like, have bumps on their bodies. They'll have fins extra, or some missing, or whatever. I honestly can't remember the exact things, but fish had physical changes to their body shape. And they believe that that was caused by the leaching of that into the Columbia River. And so that's why we don't eat fish. Don't eat fish out of the Columbia River. We're we, if we, if we're going to eat salmon, we go to the down, and what we buy is one that they tell you you really shouldn't be eating either. And that's the farm fish, salmon. Yeah. We actually like the flavor of it better. It's milder, but because it's farm fish, they said it's not all that healthy either. So we don't eat a lot of fish at all, period, but if we go to the coast, then we'll eat fish that's been caught in our ocean waters, and we'll eat it at the restaurants down there. 

• KC: Halibut. 

• Diane: Yeah, generally halibut, yeah, once in a while, some salmon. Yeah, but that's why it's because there's a lot of icky stuff that gets dumped into that river or leeches into that river, and including stuff that is affecting the water that we drink right here, yeah. So we end up, we end up spending about, I would say, an average of $50 a month buying water. Wow, yeah, and we've been doing that now for we started it a couple years, oh, it's, yeah, it's been probably, I would say five, yeah, probably five or six, because I think we already did it before COVID started,

Iris: Before that did you just use Brita filters or something like that? I'm sorry, did you guys just filter your water at home before you started buying water? 

• Diane: No, we were just drinking it, and we just decided, you know, what we need, we need to not do this. And you know, we talked among our friends, and they're all feeling the same way. And so a lot of us have purchased then delivered bottled the big bottled water, and you can purchase it here in town too, like at Walmart. And I think Fred Meyer's does too. No, I'm not sure about Fred Meyer's. Ours is delivered. So I don't know where other people get theirs.

Iris: You guys still live in like a earthquake sound, just maybe not quite as bad?

• Diane: We do live in a bad earthquake area. When, the before the mountain blew, before Mount St Helens blew, we would get earthquakes here a lot, and it was all associated with the underground movement of what was going on at Mount St Helens. And I would be sitting here at the dining room table reading the newspaper, and all of a sudden the table would just move away from me, and then back to me, away from me, and back to me, I would look up, and the chandelier overhead would just be swinging back and forth. Oh, doing it again. And it would do it a lot. And then finally they had that, the big eruption, right? 

• Iris: That was a huge eruption. 

• Diane: It was, it was quite ah that was quite something, quite something.

• KC: I was getting off of night shift the day the mountain blue, and the other Foreman and I were standing there talking. We looked over there, oh my goodness, something happened up there towards the mountain. And later on that day, we went over to the college River, and we were watching debris come down the river, and these crazy guys on these skidoos were skiing back and forth in front of all this stuff coming down the river. Oh my god, logs and pieces of houses and stuff that were coming down the river. 

• Diane: And we thought, well, look at those crazy people. What on earth do they think they're doing? And then he and I were talking about this just a couple of weeks ago, and it dawned on us that they actually may have been looking for bodies in the water.

• KC: Yeah, that was, that was crazy to be out there. One of those things. All you gotta do is fall. That'd be the last time you saw him.

• Diane: It was. It was quite something to observe. Wow, yeah, and there was people gathered on the banks of the river, like it was a parade of stuff coming down the river. It was awful.

• KC: Not knowing about all the destruction that was happened up, up the river.

• Diane: Yeah, what he, what my husband and his work buddy saw, was that huge mushroom plume, the plume of down past going up. Yeah, wow. Before that, we would just, every once in a while it would, it would give off kind of a puff, and you would just see this little white cloud come up. And we could see it from town here. But this one was a completely different, yeah, completely different thing. When it blew, it was like a big mushroom cloud. Wow, very dark and gray and.

• Iris:  Yeah, the whole side of the mountain exploded. Yeah, that's a once-in-a-lifetime thing to see.

• KC: Yeah, the first eruption didn't send ash our way. The second one did. And we dealt with all this gray sand coming down.

• Diane: Well, it was, actually, it was raining at the same time, and so it came down like thin mud. Or actually, I told KC, my husband here, I told him. I said, You know what it's like, it looks like thin cement, because every it coated everything in this gray coating.

• Iris: And that's nasty stuff too. 

• Diane: It was, yeah, it was and we've got a picture of KC up on our roof, and he has to, he had, and everybody had to do this. They had to scoop it out of the gutters, because it would just, it wouldn't wash out with the rain. The water would just, you know, go right through it and drain out and leave it and leave the sediment there. So everybody had to get up on their roof and scoop that out. And he would scoop it into a bucket that was had a rope tied on it, and he would lower it, like it down to me, and I would carry it out to the street, and next to the curb, I would dump it out. And every house had their little hill of.

• KC: And the city come along and pick up some piles. Yeah,

• Diane: They would come. They would come and scoop it up, and then run the sweepers behind it to get up as much of it as they could.

• KC: They piled it up over in Kelso and built a golf course on it.

• Diane: And it drains really well. That's the best thing about that golf course is you don't have to worry about it getting soggy, because the water just drains right through.

• Iris: It's a good use for it. And I know tephra is like, really, really great fertilizer too.

• Diane: Oh, it was amazing what our yards looked like next year. Oh, and our our lawns and our trees and everything were extra, extra healthy and beautiful, just from all of the minerals that was in that was like a we had it come down again another time and and it was a dry day, and that came down just like, kind of like sand or dust, and it would just pile up. We had to, we actually had to drive to Portland to a family member's funeral on one of those days when it was coming down. And so they told you that it would ruin your what was it on the car? Honey, that it was ruin what was it on the car? Honey, that it was ruined?

• Iris: Air filters? 

• Diane: Yeah, your air filter. So he took my pantyhose out there, covered everybody was doing, yeah, I mean, yeah, everybody in order to, in order to protect their cars, and they so he went out and he did that, and we, and we went, as we drove to Portland. It was still just coming down and and then the airflow from cars traveling would stir it all up as it was laying on the freeway, and you were just driving through that stuff. It was like driving through a sandstorm. 

Iris: Okay, well, that's all I have for you guys, and I don't want to take up too much of your Friday.

• Diane: Oh, they're all Saturdays to us.