For as long as I can remember - heck, since Hillary Clinton last lived in the White House - the wrangling over the cleanup of the Portland harbor has been as infuriating and intractable as a rush-hour rendezvous with the Ross Island Bridge.

After 16 years of gridlock, however, the Environmental Protection Agency is almost ready for your closing remarks.

Your advocacy. Your frustration. Your perspective on how to finally begin the rescue operation on a river that's hell on carp and bass and anything, or anyone, in the food chain that eats them.

As Cami Grandinetti, the agency's regional cleanup manager, told the Portland City Council in February, "We expect there will be substantial comments."

For much of the 20th century, an 11-mile stretch of the Willamette was a dumping ground for every toxic byproduct of the city's riverfront industries.

For all of this century, EPA and the "potentially responsible parties" for the Superfund contamination - including our very own city of quirks - have bickered over how to police the carcinogenic mess.

"In my view," city Commissioner Nick Fish says, "Superfund is the most significant environmental, regulatory, public health and jobs issue facing the city of Portland today and for the next decade."

Come May, the EPA will finally ask the rest of us to weigh in on a cleanup proposal that may cost $1.5 billion or more.

You can write in, or storm one of the as-yet-unscheduled public meetings. But, for God's sake, step up and say something.

You might argue, as Vigor Industrial's Alan Sprott does, that the feds' "draconian liability scheme" threatens jobs and economic investment on the waterfront.

You might agree with Bob Sallinger at the Audubon Society, who contends that the Lower Willamette Group - a coalition of polluters that counts the city and the Port of Portland as members - has prolonged the debate with inept feasibility studies and endless document requests.

Or you might ruminate with city Commissioner Steve Novick that an expensive cleanup would not "transform" the city as dramatically as a similar investment in bike paths and affordable housing.

But once the EPA unfurls that first draft of its historic proposal, you best get up to speed in a hurry.

"The public is going to have 60 days to read this document and absorb it," Sallinger notes. "The Environmental Protection Agency and potential responsible parties have had 16 years to discuss and negotiate and haggle over the process."

As Grandinetti concedes, "This is a complicated river," and the cleanup of the contaminated sediment is further complicated by the fact that the Superfund is broke.

Yes, federal law still requires that those responsible for the pollution pay for the river's restoration. But to date, the bill for this wrangling over what restoration means -- $62 million and counting - has largely been passed on to city ratepayers on their sewer-and-water bills.

Once upon a time, the state was charged with the harbor cleanup. Mike Rosen, then with the Department of Environmental Quality, recalls the meeting in the late 1990s when Environmental Protection Agency officials arrived in Portland to announce they would take command and complete the cleanup in three years.

"It's the only time in my career that I literally saw jaws drop," says Rosen, now on the Portland School Board.

Since the harbor was designated a Superfund site in 2000, all manner of things have come unhinged.

EPA has been underfunded, maligned and outmaneuvered. The agency desperately wants a record of decision before President Barack Obama leaves office, and the politics have only grown more intense as the deadline looms.

Rep. Kurt Schrader has hammered EPA for hurting "economic development in our region."

And because the city and major local employers are on the hook for a sizable chunk of the cleanup costs, Novick challenged Grandinetti at a council work session on how dramatically the effort will reduce cancer risks for city residents.

"All of his questions came straight from the talking points of corporate polluters," Sallinger says. "I thought that was very disappointing."

"I think dirty diesel vehicles are the biggest local environmental health threat," Novick wrote to me in a subsequent email. "We aren't spending lots of money on that."

If much about the proposed cleanup remains in doubt - especially the crucial balance between dredging and "natural recovery" - Fish insists no one should question the city's resolve.

"Some of the polluters may think they can drag this out for another 20 years in the courts," Fish says. "Some of the environmentalists may think they'll get a better deal with the new administration.

"Whatever the logic, I reject it. We want a plan."

Fishermen, kayakers, shipbuilders, ratepayers, provocateurs, gather round: At long last, the Environmental Protection Agency is asking what you want.

Will your comment, your questions, your passion count for anything?

A lot more than your silence will.

-- Steve Duin

stephen.b.duin@gmail.com