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News Briefs:  Berry Wars | Blocking Blodgett | Weaver of Words| Bad Time To Secede? |No Yucca Nukes | News: Quagmire: Wetland highway headed for legal morass. Happening People: Dennis Todd. BERRY WARS The sound of saws at the Berry Patch timber sale 20 miles east of Eugene are the opening shots in this summer�s ancient forest wars. Berry Patch is the first old-growth timber sale to be logged on the Willamette National Forest in more than three years. The purchaser of Berry Patch -- D.R. Johnson of Riddle, Ore. -- bought the sale in 1996, just before the bottom fell out of the market for large diameter old-growth logs. After receiving market-related contract extensions for years, the Forest Service is forcing the company to complete the logging. øThe Forest Service is still stuck in the dark ages of forest management,Ó says Jasmine Minbashian, who coordinates the Northwest Old Growth Campaign, a coalition of 13 Oregon and Washington conservation groups working to end old-growth logging. øThe timber industry has outgrown its dependence on timber from older forests, but the agency keeps offering them mature and old growth trees, usually at rock bottom prices so it�ll sell.Ó Minbashian points to a formal petition recently submitted to the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management from Dr. Daniel Hagen and 14 of the Northwest�s leading natural resources economists that called on the agencies to end logging of mature and old-growth forests on federal lands. According to the Old Growth Campaign, there are more than a dozen timber sales that would clearcut more than 2,000 acres of old growth forest on the Willamette National Forest that could be sold as early as this summer. Last year the Willamette lost $30 million on its timber sale program, more than any national forest in the country (see EW 6/28/01). A recent tour of the Berry Patch sale showed there were more than 100 giant Douglas firs felled in two separate logging units. Some of the largest trees were more than six feet wide and 400 years old. Several Forest Service law enforcement agents were keeping watch on the area. Tree-sitters have occupied the North Winberry timber sale about a mile to the north of Berry Patch for more than three years. øThis is public land and the public is pissed,Ó says Rachel Kingston of the Cascadia Forest Defenders, a group involved in tree sits and other direct action against Willamette National Forest timber sales. øWe�re not going to just sit around as the Forest Service logs the last 10 percent of Oregon�s old growth in our own backyard.Ó -- James Johnston Back to Top BLOCKING BLODGETT Several members of the Cottage Grove community, along with support from the Cascadia Forest Defenders (CFD) of Eugene, have constructed a tree-sit at the Blodgett timber sale. Blodgett is located in the Brice Creek Watershed of the Cottage Grove Ranger District of the Umpqua National Forest. The forest advocates are protesting the sale of old-growth trees and have erected the tree-sit in order to defend the sensitive network of biodiversity that makes up the last native forests in the Pacific Northwest. Meera Subramanian, a local citizen, says, øAll other means to stop the destruction of these irreplaceable old-growth forests have been thwarted by the Cottage Grove City Council, the Forest Service, even Congress. None of these things have worked.Ó The Blodgett timber sale includes massive old growth hundreds of years old. There have been numerous sightings by the citizens of bear, cougar, rare butterflies, spotted owls, pileated woodpeckers and many small mammals. The tree-sitters say they plan on staying at Blodgett until this forest is permanently saved. Slant Ç July 4 is when we tend to get all jazzed about patriotism and our great country, but the threats to our freedom have changed since many of us were kids. Freedom and flag-waving used to be about liberation from oppressive governments. We stood up to the Nazis, the Soviets, the North Koreans and North Vietnamese -- and today we rant about evil Iraqis and the Taliban. But where is the flag-waving and patriotic fervor when our freedom is threatened by arrogant corporate power, the destruction of our environment, the erosion of our rights and the corruption of our government at the highest level? True patriots recognize the real threats to our freedom and fight to eliminate them. Let�s wave some flags while we do it.   Ç If you doubt the power of the radical right, consider the personal attacks made in the past week against Oregon�s own Justice Ted Goodwin for writing an opinion that says the pledge of allegiance should go back to the way it used to be before the Eisenhower administration played politics with it. øUnder GodÓ should be deleted, the opinion said, because that violates the constitution by mixing church and state. Probably the most famous jurist to come out of Oregon, Goodwin was graduated from the UO School of Journalism and UO School of Law. Governor Hatfield appointed him to the Oregon Supreme Court; President Nixon appointed him to the US District Court. The son of a Baptist minister, he�s a national lay leader in a mainstream Protestant church. Not exactly the irresponsible atheist described by one member of Congress. SLANT includes short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes compiled by the EW staff. Heard any good rumors lately? Contact Ted Taylor at 484-0519, editor@eugeneweekly.com The Blodgett timber sale encompasses about 200 acres of mostly old growth and mature forest and will cut 1.76 million board feet of timber if the sale is not stopped. The community of Cottage Grove and CFD demand the Forest Service do the right thing and protect the native forest in this sale. The residents of Cottage Grove and CFD are also demanding that Allyn Ford, the President and owner of Roseburg Forest Products, the purchaser of this sale, refuse this and all other old growth and native forest sales. The Blodgett timber sale was offered to Ford as part of the øReplacement VolumeÓ program in order to øreplaceÓ a second-growth sale in the Siuslaw National Forest. Other Cascadia sales that are Replacement Volume are North Winberry, Slap and East Devil (Willamette NF), Peak and Silver-Sturgis (Rogue River NF), and Felix (Umpqua NF); all of which have been given to Allyn Ford. Mr. Ford is also the Chairman of Umpqua Bank, the target of a recent boycott because of its association with forest destruction. Back to Top   WEAVER OF WORDS Former Congressman Jim Weaver took on school funding, corporate taxation, the timber industry and nuclear waste in his keynote address to the Pacific Green Party (PGP) at the party�s convention in Eugene June 23. Weaver, still undecided on whether he will run for governor on the PGP ticket in November, called for a progressive sales tax dedicated only to education. Necessities, such as food, home heating and medicine, would not be taxed under Weavers proposal. He also called for the creation of an Oregon estate tax, saying øIt�s time the billionaires paid their way.Ó He said corporations that send jobs overseas should also be taxed. øUntil Nike opens a shoe plant here to employ Oregonians, Nike should be taxed.Ó Weaver called for a zero-cut policy on national forests and suggested that Oregon øuse the money that is now subsidizing the timber industry to clean our Oregon�s lakes and rivers, providing thousands of jobs.Ó Weaver opposes the plan to truck radioactive waste through Oregon communities on its way to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. øEach load is a dirty bomb thousands of times more powerful than anything Osama bin Laden could concoct.Ó The call by Pacific Green Party leaders Lloyd Marbet and Dan Meek for a public takeover of PGE was echoed by Weaver. He added that restoring the pensions of PGE employees who were robbed by Enron should be a priority. Instant run-off voting is also crucial to reform Oregon politics, Weaver said, because it allows voters to more clearly express their choices. It also brings ignored third party issues into campaigns, resulting in a more informed electorate. Warning of what he terms the ømedical industry complex,Ó Weaver called for cost controls on health care and a universal single payer health care system as proposed by the ballot initiative HealthCare for All-Oregon. Of the current administration, Weaver said, øThe dangerous fanatics around Bush are the most frightening characters I�ve ever seen in our government. If the Constitution survives them it will be a miracle.Ó Back to Top   BAD TIME TO SECEDE? A new progressive political party with bad timing is calling for Oregon and Washington to secede from the US and form the Republic of Cascadia. The Cascadian National Party (CNP) was formed three days before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, and has not received much attention since. The founder of the party is John Phillip of Seattle. øMany factors have contributed to why the CNP was started,Ó says Phillip. øOverpopulation of our region, our environment is being ruined, the farce that was the 2000 presidential election, plus our personal freedoms are under attack.Ó Phillip declined to say how many (or few) members he has in his organization, but he�s hopeful the idea will catch on. øCNP believes there�s a chance to wipe the slate clean and start fresh by establishing our own government to shape our own destiny and needs and not those of Washington, DC, and those in the multi-global corporation world,Ó he says. Phillip says the idea of breaking away has been around for years, but øthis is the first time that a political party has been created to call for sovereignty of our respective states.Ó The party�s website (www.angelfire.com/wa3/cascadia/) has logged about 3,400 hits so far. Phillip can be reached at cascadia2002@attbi.com -- Ted Taylor Back to Top   NO YUCCA NUKES The US Senate votes July 9 or 10 on the proposal to make Yucca Mountain, Nev. the nation�s repository for high-level nuclear waste. If the Senate approves the proposal, truckloads or railcars of nuclear waste from Hanford and the Trojan nuclear power plant will roll through Oregon on the way to Nevada. Senator Wyden has committed to voting against making Yucca a nuclear dump. Senator Smith, on the other hand, appears poised to repeat the yes vote he made in the Energy Committee in favor of the Yucca proposal. According to staff at Public Citizen, Senator Smith was considering abstaining on the Yucca vote in the Energy Committee June 5, but received a phone call from Vice-President Dick Cheney asking him to support the Bush administration position and vote yes for Yucca. And he did. On June 24, Cheney came to Portland and helped raise $300,000 for Senator Smith�s re-election efforts, a move that has raised some eyebrows. Yucca opponents are still waging an active campaign and are urging Oregonians to contact Sen. Smith at oregon@gsmith.senate.gov or (202) 224-3753 with the message øno nuclear dump at Yucca, no radioactive roads or rails.Ó Back to Top CORRECTIONS/CLARIFICATIONS In the 6/27 Calendar, the price of the July 4 20-30 Club Freedom Festival was incorrect. The price is $3, $2 for kids 6-12, children under 5 are free. $2 parking, $1 parking with Bi-Mart card. The event was incorrectly listed as free. EW regrets the error. Back to Top   Quagmire Wetland highway headed for legal morass. BY ALAN PITTMAN The Eugene City Council will likely approve the West Eugene Parkway (WEP) by a narrow margin this week, opponents of the project concede. But that doesn�t mean the battle over the wetlands-destroying and sprawl-inducing highway is anywhere near over, they say. Opponents will continue to fight the highway in the courts and with state and federal agencies. The project will øslowly die a tortured death in the courts,Ó predicts Rob Handy, a local transportation advocate opposed to the highway. Lauri Segel, Lane County staffer for 1000 Friends of Oregon, says her group already has attorneys reviewing a number of øegregiousÓ violations of land use and transportation rules and will likely file an appeal next month to the state Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA). Segel and 1000 Friends allege a long list of WEP legal violations including: Ç By delaying improvements to existing roads to fund a new highway, the WEP violates the Oregon Highway Plan, which prioritizes improving the efficiency of existing highways before adding new roads. Ç The WEP is illegally segmented and does not include funding for all the interchanges and other road components that it needs to properly function. Ç The WEP decision involved inadequate public participation and consideration of alternatives. Ç The WEP is promoted as a solution to local traffic problems but does not include the required local cost sharing for such projects. Ç The city has failed to coordinate with ODOT on plans for new Wal-Mart and Target stores that have added to traffic problems on West 11th. Ç The highway violates state planning goals for protecting agricultural lands, open spaces, and scenic and natural areas. Ç The highway violates the state planning goal of preventing urban sprawl by fueling growth in Veneta and other areas outside the urban growth boundary. The case against WEP could be bolstered by the Eugene Planning Commission�s near unanimous votes in April against the project. The planning commissioners expressed frustration that the plan amendments for the highway disregarded a decade-long regional transportation planning process, would destroy rare wetlands planned for protection, increase congestion, and promote sprawl. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) has also weighed in with continuing concerns that the highway may violate the state planning goal of protecting natural areas. ODFW comments that the project will destroy 55 acres of wetlands, including 16 acres of native wetland prairie. The Willamette Valley has already lost 99.5 percent of its wetland prairie, according to the agency. The parkway may threaten 29 different at-risk species that depend on the wetlands, including rare types of geese, turtles, sparrows, snakes, bats, larks, bluebirds and rabbits, according to ODFW. øDeer, small mammals, birds, turtles, frogs and snakes are frequently killed on high volume roads. Road kill rates are highest in areas where the road bisects heterogeneous, high quality habitat like the western section of the West Eugene Parkway,Ó ODFW wrote. If WEP makes it past the state LUBA appeal, the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project could still be challenged in federal court next fall after it�s finalized. The adequacy of the proposed wetlands mitigation could be a major issue, according to Handy. ODOT will have trouble finding the 110 acres or more of land in West Eugene to provide suitable mitigation for destroying the wetlands, he says. øWe�re running out of room.Ó The segmentation of the WEP project and the failure to consider alternatives will also be issues at the federal level, says Rob Zako, a local citizen transportation advocate. To free up funding for the WEP, the city delayed plans for several other road projects related to the highway, Zako says. But federal rules require the project to be funded as a whole, he says. A coalition of local citizen groups is also working with a Portland consultant in studying the feasibility of alternatives to improving transportation in West Eugene. Federal law requires consideration of alternatives in an EIS, but Zako says, øthey haven�t really fairly and in depth looked at whether the congestion problems could be solved without building a new road.Ó Building the WEP will also require the approval of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which used federal land conservation money to buy and protect wetlands that will now be destroyed by the parkway. BLM has expressed concerns about how the noisy highway will impact its plans for a nature center and paths in the wetlands. Land speculators, developers and construction companies have lobbied hard for the city to build the parkway. Last November, WEP supporters spent a record $120,016 to narrowly pass a measure in support of the highway. Frontier Resources and its president Greg Demers was the largest single contributor at $12,500. Frontier owns at least 214 acres of land in and around Veneta that could jump in value if the WEP feeds sprawl in the area. Demers� attorneys recently wrote a letter to city councilors threatening to sue them for land speculation losses if they don�t approve the highway. The letter states that without WEP, øMany landowners in the vicinity of the Parkway will be deprived of their reasonable investment-backed expectations.Ó Dennis Todd øI love teaching bright students,Ó says Dennis Todd, associate director of the UO�s Clark Honors College. øI can create my own courses. We just finished a class on the Human Genome Project.Ó A native of Helena, Mont., Todd arrived in Eugene in 1965, in search of culture and a degree in biology. He repaired foreign cars at his Phoenix Garage in Springfield for seven years in the �70s before returning to the UO for a PhD in forest ecology. He began volunteering at the Oregon Country Fair in 1977. øI was on the recycling crew -- I owned a dump truck,Ó he recalls. øI�ve volunteered continuously ever since.Ó As OCF construction coordinator, Todd oversaw installation of a water system and expansion to the Left Bank in ¥91. A founding member of the fair�s land use committee, he has written grants to fund wetlands mitigation projects and an experimental wastewater uptake forest using native plants. øDennis has been key to six major projects to enhance and restore the landscape as habitat,Ó says OCF general manager Leslie Scott. øHe�s very low-key, but wise and focused on the land and all its living inhabitants. And he�s really a good grant writer.Ó -- Photo by Paul Neevel Happenin' People Archives Nominate A Happenin' Person Table of Contents | News | Views | Arts & Entertainment Classifieds | Personals | EW Archive