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Friday, July 23, 2021
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Opinion
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion
Our View
Site at Oregon port should remain high-value farmland
A
dispute between farmers and
county commissioners in
Oregon’s Columbia County
over the rezoning of 837 acres of
high-value farmland adjacent to
the Port Westward Industrial Park
presents land use officials a case of
conflicting priorities.
It is a complicated case, but we
side with farmers and conserva-
tionists who are concerned that fur-
ther development won’t be compat-
ible with local agriculture, fish and
wildlife.
The property in question was
purchased by the Port of Colum-
bia County in 2010. It is adjacent to
the Port Westward Industrial Park
along the Columbia River. The land
was zoned as “exclusive farm use,”
or EFU, a designation intended
to protect and preserve Oregon’s
agriculture.
Port and county officials have
made repeated attempts to rezone the
land to attract new tenants that can
utilize the port’s deepwater dock,
Columbia Riverkeeper
Port Westward property along the Co-
lumbia River.
which provides 4,000 feet of water-
front access for large cargo ships.
Earlier this month the commissioners
approved rezoning the land.
It is the third time since 2014
commissioners have approved the
rezone. The decision was previously
remanded twice by the Oregon Land
Use Board of Appeals.
At the heart of the issue is a port
with an undeniably attractive location
for a variety of industries. Because of
its location on the Columbia River,
the port is self-scouring, meaning it
never has to be dredged.
Portland General Electric already
operates three gas-fired power plants
at Port Westward. Global Partners
Inc., a Massachusetts-based energy
company, also manages a transload-
ing facility to ship ethanol and bio-
diesel across the Pacific Ocean.
Further development at the port
could provide hundreds of jobs to the
area.
Port officials say they have no par-
ticular potential industrial customer
in mind, and are first trying to get
the land rezoned before seeking out
potential tenants.
However, Northwest Innova-
tion Works, the company behind a
rejected methanol refinery in Kalama,
Wash., has a lease option that was
approved by the port in 2019 to build
a facility within part of the rezoned
land at Port Westward, which has
raised worries about the site becom-
ing a hub for fossil fuels.
Opponents fear new fossil fuel
developments may pollute the air and
water, harming endangered salmon
Oregon ‘Wild & Scenic’
expansion raises land
management concerns
Our View
A
File photo
Two marbled murrelets.
The magical marbled
murrelet merry-go-round
F
or some reason — politics maybe?
— Oregon’s Fish and Wildlife Com-
mission can’t make up its mind about
the marbled murrelet. First the commission-
ers said the bird was endangered, then they
decided it wasn’t. Then earlier this month
the commissioners decided it’s endangered
again.
What changed? The winds of politics,
apparently, because the state Department of
Fish and Wildlife says the only thing that’s
happened to the bird is its population has
increased 2.2% a year for the past 19 years.
It’s hardly a species requiring heroic efforts
to rescue.
The department even recommended that the
commission not list the bird as endangered —
so much for “following the science.” Appar-
ently, that only applies if the science agrees
with the politics.
Among the concerns cited by the commis-
sion for increasing protections for the mar-
bled murrelet were climate change, changes
in the Pacific Ocean and oil spills. One won-
ders if a comet hitting Oregon shouldn’t have
been added to the list of factors over which
the commission has no control.
All of this would be little more than coffee
shop chatter if it didn’t hurt real people.
More than 3 million acres of state and fed-
eral forestland have been taken out of timber
production and designated protected habitat
for such birds as the marbled murrelet and the
northern spotted owl. That translates into lost
and contaminating farms within a
vulnerable, low-lying area.
Farmers in the area depend on sur-
face water for irrigation, and many
worry a spill at the site would con-
taminate that source. Not all farmers
in the area oppose the rezoning. But
while they are confident development
at the port won’t hurt their opera-
tions, it would in no way enhance
them.
Port officials say they have
answered LUBA’s questions about
the proposal’s compatibility with
surrounding farms and habitat.
Opponents have promised another
challenge.
We recognize that the site is
supremely suited to development.
Nonetheless, it should remain
farmland.
High-value farmland is more than
just a patch of ground with stuff
planted on it. Once paved over and
developed, it cannot be replaced.
Columbia County should keep it pro-
ducing food.
jobs and depressed local economies.
In other words, the birds are doing fine, but
the people are struggling.
It’s ironic that some of the same politicians
who promote more protections for birds such
as the marbled murrelet and the northern spot-
ted owl by shutting out the timber industry do
so at the expense of Oregon families.
Then they circle back and talk about “treat-
ing” publicly owned forests to reduce the
severity of wildfires and “creating jobs.”
Our question: Why not come up with tim-
ber sales that would reduce the threat of wild-
fires and still maintain adequate habitat for
birds that are threatened or endangered?
Then the forests wouldn’t need to be
“treated” at the expense of taxpayers.
Our suspicion is too many state and fed-
eral political leaders are bowing to the envi-
ronmental lobby at the expense of Oregonians
and the state economy. Environmentalists rou-
tinely use the state and federal endangered
species acts as a blunt instrument and to drag
agencies and citizens into court to stop log-
ging and other economic activities.
The result is real damage to real people.
“The only conclusion one can draw about a
decision to designate a species whose popula-
tion is increasing as ‘endangered’ is that it had
everything to do with politics and absolutely
nothing to do with science,” said Sara Dun-
can, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Forest
and Industries Council.
Or you can just call it another ride on the
magical marbled murrelet merry-go-round.
nyone who works the
land should be wary
of proposed legisla-
tion that applies federal Wild
& Scenic River designations to
4,700 miles of Oregon rivers,
streams, creeks, gulches, draws
and unnamed tributaries. The
bill, proposed by Sens. Ron
Wyden and Jeff Merkley and
promoted by environmental
groups, has already received a
committee hearing in the U.S.
Senate, the first step toward
passage.
S. 192, also known as the
“River Democracy Act,” would
apply half-mile buffer restric-
tions to proposed segments. If
approved, it could impact pub-
lic access, water resource man-
agement, forest and vegetation
management, ranching and
grazing, mining and other uses
on an estimated 3 million acres
of public lands — a land mass
nearly twice the size of the
state of Delaware.
Currently there are over
2,000 miles of Oregon riv-
ers designated as Wild & Sce-
nic. The Wild & Scenic Rivers
Act of 1968 was intended to
protect rivers with “outstand-
ing natural, cultural and recre-
ational values in a free-flowing
condition.”
Yet S. 192 only classifies
15% of the proposed segments
as rivers. The bill identifies
hundreds of streams, creeks,
draws, gulches and unnamed
tributaries for Wild & Sce-
nic designations, even though
many do not even carry water
year-round.
S.192 violates the spirit
of the 1968 law because it
bypasses a mechanism for
robust study and review of pro-
posed waterways to immedi-
ately add an additional 4,700
miles to the Wild & Scenic
Rivers system. If such studies
were conducted, many areas
included in S. 192 would likely
be found ineligible or unsuit-
able for designation.
Considering past use and
litigation of the Wild & Sce-
nic Rivers Act, the bill raises
a lot of questions about how it
will impact future access, pri-
vate property and water rights
and other traditional uses of
both public and private land.
Arbitrary land designa-
tions can have a chilling effect
on actions taken by federal
land management agencies,
including actions intended to
improve the land. For exam-
ple, a Wild & Scenic des-
ignation could discourage
efforts to stabilize riverbanks
to avoid losing farm and
range land to erosion. That’s
because federal courts have
GUEST
VIEW
Nick
Smith
consistently upheld legal chal-
lenges by environmentalist
groups against land manage-
ment activities based on these
designations.
For those of us concerned
about severe wildfires, we
are especially troubled with
how S. 192 would affect fuels
reduction efforts on federal
lands. Nearly half a million
acres of federally managed
forest land burned in west-
ern Oregon in 2020. Approx-
imately 280,000 acres burned
at moderate and high sever-
ity, meaning at least 60% of a
stand’s live trees were killed
in a fire.
We are already frustrated
with the slow pace of forest
management and fuels reduc-
tion work on federal lands.
Adding new restrictions and
bureaucracy on 3 million
acres of these lands will not
repair an already-broken sys-
tem. Despite claims made by
proponents, S. 192 does not
support wildfire mitigation.
Nothing in the bill directs
or authorizes federal agen-
cies to utilize all available land
management tools — includ-
ing mechanical treatments —
to reduce the risk of severe
wildfires, nor does it explic-
itly permit post-fire restoration
work, such as the removal of
dead and dying trees, to main-
tain public access. Rather,
the bill only allows agencies
to consider prescribed fire,
even though fire alone will not
address heavy and unnatural
fuel loads on already fire-prone
landscapes.
As Oregon experiences
another devastating wildfire
season, this is the wrong time
to add more layers of restric-
tions and bureaucracy on the
management of public lands.
Anyone with private lands near
these proposed Wild & Sce-
nic segments should also take
a close look at this bill to see
how it affects them.
Nick Smith is director of
public affairs for the Ameri-
can Forest Resource Council,
a regional trade association
representing the forest prod-
ucts sector. He is also execu-
tive director of Healthy For-
ests, Healthy Communities, a
non-partisan grassroots coali-
tion that advocates for active
management of America’s fed-
erally owned forests.