ABSTRACT
When the northern Oregon Astoria Plywood Company was dissolved in 1992, a 16 acre toxic waste site was all that remained of the waterfront industrial property that had marked the eastern edge of the town since the 1870s.2 Although Astoria’s hillside perch above the Columbia River limits the flat land available for new construction, the environmental liabilities and economic costs of cleaning up the site precluded re-use of the mill’s former location. This lingering residue of industrial processing is not unusual. In the coastal Pacific Northwest, boom-bust cycles in natural resource industries have left a legacy that continues to shape the economic, environmental and social context of the region.
