The Department of State Lands wants to stop homeless people from camping on a public-owned beach along the Willamette River. Officials are asking the public for comment by June 1 on a proposed five-year moratorium.

The land, on the west bank of the river at river mile 13.75, is supposed to be cleaned up by Zidell's ZRZ Realty Co. after its years of industrial pollution. In 2011, the state Department of Environmental Quality ordered the company to deal with the historic soil contamination of 3,000 feet of shoreline after years of leasing the property for barge building.

According to previous The Oregonian/OregonLive reports, there were dozens of oil spills on the site from the 1960s to the 1980s. Fires burned docks and buildings. Workers who dismantled ships salvaged transformers full of toxic PCBs and burning PCB-laden wire insulation to salvage the underlying copper. They buried debris in open pits and shored up the riverbank with scrap metal, asbestos and other debris.

Within a year of the DEQ order, Zidell installed a sediment cap to keep the contaminated soil from moving around and planted vegetation on four acres, which the company is supposed to oversee until 2038. But company officials claim that the number of homeless people who camp on the land has increased in recent years and their tents and fires are destroying the vegetation.

The Department of State Lands said that the damage to the plants also jeopardize the integrity of the sediment cap -- and possibly the whole remediation effort.

The closure would affect overnight camping only on state-owned land above where low tide waters hit the bank. People could still use the land during the day.

To weigh in on the proposed ban, call Justin Russell at 503-986-5219, email him at justin.russell@state.or.us or write him at Department of State Lands, 775 Summer St. NE in Salem.

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger