Given that log4j.properties is a resource I think it should belong in uportal-war/src/main/resources.
Log4J expects it to be in WEB-INF/log4j.propreties and putting it in src/main/resources would cause it to be in WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties.
The build process could be changed to copy the resource from WEB-INF/classes to /WEB-INF
Also, for consistency reasons with the other modules like uportal-impl that have their log4j.properties in resources, it makes sense that it belong in uportal-war/src/main/resources