SALEM - With the clock ticking on the legislative session, no major environmental protection or restoration bill has passed in the Senate or House. Funding for some programs is tied up in a partisan budget tug-of-war, so environmental advocates are calling on Gov. Ted Kulongoski for help.

"The next two to four weeks are critical. It's rare that ... something becomes law that didn't pass either chamber by the month of May," said Jonathan Poisner, executive director of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters.

Poisner described Kulongoski this session as "not as vocal or public as we might have liked" on bills dealing with cleaning up the Willamette River, implementing the state's pesticide use reporting system and promoting biodiesel fuel use.

"Where's the governor's leadership on this? Environmental groups won't say that ... but I'm not shy about that," said Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, who is considering running for governor.

"Oregon became the model for the (federal) Clean Water Act of 1972. Where are we now? The Willamette is so disgustingly filthy, I wouldn't want to swim in it or fish in it," Walker said.

Kulongoski was criticized by some during the 2001 Legislature for not doing enough for the environment.

But Mike Carrier, the governor's natural resources policy adviser, said the governor wants the Legislature to work through the bills and that his budget strategy is to fund existing programs instead of creating new ones.

One bill would end so-called toxic mixing zones in the Willamette River.

Those are areas in which industries are permitted to dump into the river relatively high concentrations of toxics - from mercury to chlorinated water - with the idea that they dilute to normal concentrations outside the zone.

Environmental groups are lobbying to end the zones, or to at least mark them with buoys to alert people to the locations. Kulongoski has been silent on the issue.

He is promoting his own Willamette River cleanup program.

The plan calls for creating standards for the maximum amount of toxins allowed in the river and reducing a large backlog of applications for Department of Environmental Quality water quality permits.

"We really believe that those actions need to come first and are of a higher priority than introducing a heretofore new and untried policy decision," Carrier said of the plan to phase out mixing zones.

But Rhett Lawrence, with the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, said the governor's plan doesn't do enough.

"We're disappointed that there is no plan to address mixing zones at all. Not even any mention of it," Lawrence said.

Funding the state's pesticide use reporting system that was created by a 1999 law is another sticking point with environmentalists.

The program would require farmers and commercial pesticide applicators to report the amounts used and where.

The governor's budget includes money to restart the program, which never has been fully implemented for lack of money. The House's majority Republicans removed the funds in their latest budget proposal.

Carrier said Kulongoski remains committed to implementing the reporting system but wants the Legislature to work through the issue on its own.

"I think (environmental groups') hope and expectation is that he's going to weigh in immediately, and that's not how he envisions things working," Carrier said.

The exception, Carrier said, is the governor's April announcement that he will appoint a committee to study how Oregon can adopt auto emissions standards similar to those in California.

A bill pending in the Legislature would do that. Carrier said Kulongoski felt it was crucial to instead move forward to form a clean air council with a goal of creating an administrative rule to adopt stricter standards, instead of waiting on the Legislature.

Carrier said people need to realize that the governor has ways other than the Legislature to make policy.

"The people who believe that the six months every other year that the Legislature meets is the defining moment for a governor, or the key to successfully achieving their goals or his goals, have adopted a fairly naive view of how the world works," Carrier said.

"The 18 months in between is where the rubber really meets the road," Carrier said.

Even if the governor and environmental groups push for bills, many face tough opposition from some Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, said the mixing zone bill would be impossible - or impossibly expensive - for Oregon's industrial and municipal water users.

He said marking the mixing zones with buoys is preposterous.

"Come on. Those things are meant to make people fearful," Ferrioli said. He said many of the bills go too far and play on the "politics of fear."

Republicans also are concerned that toughening auto emission standards would have the unintended effect of raising auto prices.

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On the Net:

House Bills 3030-3035, 5003, 5029, 5074, 5075

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