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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (May 27, 2004)
Eugene residents will pay hefty fees at Amazon Pool this summer. DEVELOPERS GET DISCOUNT WHILE POOR PAY FULL PRICE SALMON STILL PROTECTED BY PESTICIDE BUFFERS A poor family in Eugene has to cough up $175 for a summer pass to Amazon Pool this year under the city’s policy of recovering 100 percent of its costs for recreation pro- grams. But a developer hoping to make millions off rezoning a piece of land he speculated on to build a big box store on the edge of Eugene only has to pay 22 percent of the cost of pro- cessing a land use permit. City Councilor Bonny Bettman says the city spends about $800,000 a year subsidiz- ing developer profits by not charging for the full cost of processing land use permits. Rezonings and other land use changes can re- sult in “a huge profit for the applicant,” Bettman says. “The taxpayers should not be subsidizing that.” Bettman proposed increasing developer fees to about 65 percent of full cost recovery, still way below the 100 percent the poor fam- ily has to pay for having its kids learn to swim and have fun. But the city budget committee, stacked by Mayor Torrey with conservatives, balked. The city council could reconsider the de- veloper subsidy, but Bettman hasn’t had any luck in the past. “This is an issue that I’ve brought up every single year,” Bettman says. “We have some of the lowest development [charges] in the state of Oregon.” —Alan Pittman The Seattle District Court has denied a mo- tion to suspend its January 2004 injunction prohibiting the spraying of certain pesticides near salmon streams. The pesticide industry group CropLife and grower groups had re- quested a stay that would remove safeguards for salmon while they appeal the ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In a strongly worded opinion written on Tuesday, May 18, U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour denied the industry request for a stay and underlined the need for the in- junction’s protections for threatened and en- dangered salmon. Coughenour’s order stated, “In enacting the ESA (Endangered Species Act), Congress expressly preferred the preservation of endan- gered species, deprived of the ability to protect themselves against the perpetual technologi- cal crusade of ever-expanding humankind, over the preservation of chemicals that have the potential to make extinction of these species imminent.” Coughenour also faults the Environmental Protection Agency for its lack of compliance with the law that made the injunction neces- sary, and for its poor communication to pesti- cide users about the injunction’s requirements. His ruling further stated, “If the EPA had expended as much effort in compliance with the ESA as it has expended in resisting this ac- tion, the lawsuit might have been unneces- sary.” —AS • Post-election rumors are flying like crazy about Nancy Nathanson’s future. She hasn’t conceded her defeat to Kitty Piercy as mayor of Eugene. This has led some to speculate that Nathanson is planning a write-in campaign for mayor. If that’s possible, why is her campaign phone number disconnected? Or some say she’ll do a write-in bid for her old Ward 8 City Council seat. She could ask Chris Pryor to withdraw. If that happens, how about a Ward 8 write-in runoff between Nathanson and Mitzi Colbath, who lost to Paul Holvey for a State Legislature bid, but whom many wanted to run for council? Nathanson says ”I have no specific plans for the future at this time. I’ll be looking at that later.” Meanwhile, she says she’s recuperating from a “hard and busy campaign season.” • David Barsamian, wild and witty founder of Alternative Radio, was preaching to a large choir last Monday in the First Methodist church in downtown Eugene. He drew boisterous applause in recounting the reasons and need for “ regime change” in Washington. He brought equal approval when he complimented the crowd for recent “regime change” in Eugene. His offering of “good news” included the books on bestseller lists critical of the Bushies: Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward, Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke, Worse than Watergate by John Dean, The Politics of Truth by Joseph Wilson, and LOGGING FUELS FIRES, DOESN’T PREVENT THEM President George Bush wants to cut down the Northwest’s forests in the name of saving them from wildfires. But a leading forestry scientist said this week that it’s exactly such indiscriminate logging that has fueled Western forest fires. Duke University forester Norman Christensen said this week in a press release that logging lit- ters the forest floor with saw- dust and debris that fuels fires. At the same time, re- moving trees increases wind speed by removing wind breaks and increases tempera- tures by removing shade, ac- cording to Christensen. He adds, “As a result, ground fuel fires that break out can spread faster and far- ther than they would normally.” —AP NEW TREE-SIT RAISES STAKES FOR TREES, PEOPLE Several members of the Cascadia Forest Defenders (CFD) have erected two tree-sits on the site of the Straw Devil timber sale in the southern Willamette National Forest, near Oakridge. The tree-sits are of a new design, suspended more than 100 feet in the air by a complex network of ropes anchored to as many as 25 trees per platform, each covering several acres. If any of the ropes are tampered with or the trees are felled, the structure will drop and down will come tree-sitter, all the way from 100 feet up. “We will not tolerate vio- lence on the part of the forest service toward forest ac- tivists simply protecting the last of the wild beauty in our region,” says CFD member Evelyn Whisps. This will be the second summer that CFD has occu- pied the Straw Devil sale in an attempt to halt the destruc- tion of the old growth forest. Straw Devil is host to numerous nesting sites of the threat- ened and rare Oregon Red Tree Vole, one of the primary food sources for the endangered Northern Spotted Owl, along with other species. The Red Tree Vole and the site of the tree- sits were formerly protected under the Survey and Manage Program contained in the more. Barsamian added his recommendations for relevant reading: Melville”s Moby Dick, Orwell’s 1984, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and Greene’s The Quiet American. In the “good news” category he also listed Michael Moore’s new film and he told us to see The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, The Fog of War, and a movie made in 1966, The Battle of Algiers. • Democrats, Greens, Independents, check your mailboxes. Because you live in a pivotal state in the ‘04 election and because the Bush campaign has all the money in the world, you may have received a lovely color picture of Laura and George. That’s what happened to our Democratic friend over at the coast. Here’s his account: “My lovely color pic of Laura and George Bush came from Bush-Cheney ‘04, and above the signatures (big and bold, of course) it says ‘To (my name): Thank you for your early commitment and dedication as a Charter Member of the campaign in Oregon. Grassroots leaders like you are the key to building a winning team. Best Wishes.’ “And then the sigs, Laura Bush, George Bush. The letter with it is from Marc Racicot, chairman, and starts out ‘Dear Friend,’ but the Friend is struck out and my name is written in. It is all very, very slick. I’m supposed to send back a Receipt Confirmation Form, and also money, from $1,000 down to ‘other’. These people should be running the war!” MAY 27, 2004 7
