BY TOM LININGER
Going Coastal
Controversies rage in
Oregon’s coastal communities.
T
he Board of County Commissioners didn’t meet during
the second week of July, so our family scheduled our annual
vacation for this week. One of my wife’s relatives suggested Club Med, but our
family opted for Club Mud — the soggy Oregon coast. Our past trips to the coast had
always been pleasant and tranquil, if a little wet.
This time, the coast was neither tranquil nor wet. The sun was hot, and we found
some coastal communities embroiled in controversy.
In Florence we saw several lawn signs protesting the construction of a new casino
on tribal land near the city. The local reception for the casino couldn’t be worse if the
developers had hired Joe Pesci to handle their PR. Last week, the City Council voted
to exclude the tribal land in question from the city’s urban growth boundary, so the
casino can’t hook up with the city’s water and sewer systems. One casino opponent
told me that Oregon shouldn’t become the “Nevada of the Northwest,” and I certainly
agree with that sentiment, although the issue of tribal sovereignty is a complex one.
At the sand dunes south of Florence, riders of all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) are mad
that alcohol was banned throughout the dunes in May. When the commissioners
heard a presentation about the accidents attributable to alcohol at the dunes, I was
startled: Who’da thunk that alcohol and ATVs don’t mix? It seemed like a winning
combination to me, but you learn something every day in this business. My 3-year-old
son, who can’t pronounce the word “dune,” refers to these ATVs as “doom buggies.”
He’s a pretty perceptive kid.
F
arther down the road in Coos County, gun control is a contentious issue. I saw
bumper stickers proclaiming Charlton Heston is my president and This truck
insured by Smith and Wesson. Former Coos County Sheriff Michael E. Cook
suggested Coos commissioners should pass an ordinance requiring every household
to own a gun. This proposal was rejected, in part because of concerns about how po-
lice would enforce the ordinance. How would you like that job?
In Charleston, I visited with a waitress at a seafood restaurant who explained that
local fishers are frustrated with fishing quotas. A recent report by the Pew
Commission showed that fisheries are depleting rapidly. Groundfish landings off the
Oregon Coast have declined by 77 percent since 1990. Experts are discussing the pos-
sibility of “dead zones” off the coast in a few decades if present trends continue. Last
month, when the National Marine Fisheries Service appointed a panel to study the vi-
tality of coastal fisheries, representatives of the fishing industry filled 25 of the 31 va-
cancies. In other news, 25 foxes have been appointed to serve on the Henhouse
Commission.
At our hotel in Bandon, we saw a sign in our room asking us to take off our shoes
so we wouldn’t track in tar. The beaches looked clean to me, but I know that the South
Coast communities are still angry about the oil spilled by the New Carissa. And
wrecked tankers aren’t the only source of oil pollution. Every eight months, 11 million
gallons of oil — the same amount spilled by the tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989
— drains from land pollution into the oceans. At this rate, Spongebob Squarepants will
be saturated with oil by the year 2004.
Our family returned home by Friday so we could attend the Oregon Country Fair. I
knew I couldn’t miss this year’s fair when Joe Harwood of the R-G described it as a
mecca for “freaks, geeks [and] lawyers” (I qualified in all three categories, but they re-
fused to give me a discount at the gate). Congratulations to the fair’s organizers for
another great event. I hope that 20 years from now, the only “dead zone” in Oregon
will be on the main stage at the County Fair, where the band Wake the Dead covers
Scarlet Begonias.
Tom Lininger is the county commissioner for the East Lane District.
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