TO THE EDITOR
ARSENIC IN THE AMAZON
CARE TO JOIN US?
Public health and safety — two values
that a community must not compromise or
our children, family, friends and animals
wind up at risk — especially when the com-
promise concerns the deadly poison of ar-
senic.
Our City Council may vote soon on a
compromise for developing the two southeast
Eugene parcels to allow about 25 houses to
be built and keep the rest parkland.
Twenty-five houses might seem fine
enough to appease developers, but any
ground disturbance puts arsenic into the
Amazon Creek. The DEQ has listed the creek
as holding all the arsenic it can safely carry
— any more and the deadly poison will harm
our life and animals. Any development will
cause more arsenic in the creek. This is a dis-
turbing concern as kids play in our creek, and
people’s pets swim and drink from it.
The creek flows through the whole city
and is a very important water body for
Eugene. Millions of dollars have been spent
to improve it, and this effort goes to waste if
the water becomes unsafe. On top of poison-
ous waters, the city might be at risk for a
Clean Water Act lawsuit if it allows this with-
out any specific ways to mitigate the arsenic
problem.
Please contact the mayor and your council
representative. Urge them not to poison our
waters and compromise our health and safety.
Anne Guthrie
Institute for Wildlife Protection
Eugene
Cascadia Forest Defenders has been a part
of the Eugene community since the mid
1990s, during the days of Warner Creek and
the infamous “salvage rider.” For over the
past decade, CFD has been active in the an-
cient forest protection campaigns of Fall
Creek, Straw Devil, Winberry, Blue River
Face, Biscuit and Sten (where treesitters were
shot at on multiple occasions).
Over the past year, CFD has been in-
volved with: the Victoria’s Dirty Secret cam-
paign; pressuring timber baron Aaron Jones
to stop logging in Eugene’s drinking water
source, the McKenzie River watershed; urg-
ing Market of Choice to stop banking with
Umpqua Bank (StUmpqua), whose board of
directors are the most notorious clearcutters
in Oregon; working with Northwest
Ecosystem Survey Team (NEST) to climb
trees to find red tree vole nests, resulting in
the protection of thousands of acres of
Oregon’s forests.
Like any all-volunteer entity, CFD has
gone through many metamorphoses and evo-
lutions over time. Currently, CFD is looking
to increase our community involvement by
encouraging more of Eugene to directly par-
ticipate in what we’re doing. We would like
to formally invite anyone who has ever had
the desire to empower themselves to harness
their passion, positive energies and creativity
to protect the forests that sustain life on this
planet to be a part of CFD.
All of us at CFD urge you to attend a gath-
ering (free food!) on the first and last
Thursday of every month at 6:30 pm at the
Grower’s Market on 4th and Willamette.
There is no limit to the amazing things we can
do if we put our heads together. The timber
beast is soiling itself in fear just thinking
about us.
CFD will be heading to the ancient forest
for an Action Camp/Skills Share in June. For
more information email us at forestdefend-
ers@riseup.net
May the forest be with you!
Julie Anderson
Eugene
POKING FUN AT NUNS
I was upset by the caricature of a nun on
the front page of the May 31 issue of the
Weekly. Although I’m confident that you
meant no harm, here’s why it upset me:
I am close to many Catholics, both reli-
gious and secular. Many have spoken of the
deep hurt they and their families have felt as-
sociated with the anti-Catholic prejudice, dis-
crimination and stereotyping that is pervasive
and accepted in our culture. (Poking fun at
nuns is one example.) Anti-Catholic bias has
historical basis in the oppression of poor and
working-class immigrants, many of whom
have been and are currently Catholic (think:
Irish, Italian, Eastern European, Latin-
American). It can justify violence and has
been used to divide people who would other-
wise feel a natural alliance, particularly
working people of different religious and cul-
tural backgrounds.
Catholic culture is viewed as out-of-step
with the dominant (more individualistic)
Protestant culture, which dovetails more
smoothly with capitalism. In reality, I’ve
come to notice that many of the Catholics that
I am close to have taught me much about
being human. I believe that Catholics, as a re-
ligious and cultural group, have held onto
many beautiful qualities and values that the
dominant culture often finds in short supply,
such as: warmth, generosity, cooperation, to-
getherness, humility, integrity and social jus-
tice.
As a paper, you can help us put our atten-
tion on what is positive about any culture, in-
cluding Catholic culture, rather than un-
awarely contribute to ridicule and divisive-
ness. Let your editorial choices have an im-
pact that unites us.
Cameron Hubbe
Eugene
4 JUNE 14, 2007
TORCHED EARTH POLICY
Regardless of whether you consider
Stanislaus Meyerhoff, Kevin Tubbs, et al. to
be eco-terrorists or environmental activists,
isn’t it ironic that they chose to set fires to
protest, among other things, global warming?
Tom Arnold
Eugene
IT’S EMBARRASSING
Alan Pittman’s lead article (5/24) about
“Biking to a Better Eugene” misses the point.
As does the city’s recent Biking and Walking
Summit where vocal bicyclists dominated 95
percent of the conversation. While 40 percent
of folks may ride a bike sometimes and per-
haps 20 percent of them may even commute
to work occasionally, probably 60 percent of
those in Eugene will never ride a bike. Nearly
95 percent of residents, however, could and
would walk to some of their destinations
some of the time. The city should focus on
pedestrian issues the way they do for these
vocal bicyclists.
Safely walking along a four-block section
of Acorn Park Road is dangerous example of
how NOT to do it. This neighborhood off
West 11th near Fred Meyer did its part to hold
the urban growth boundary over the last 20
years. They “densified” nearly 40 percent
with increases in new homes, apartments,
Section 8 housing and a large subsidized sin-
gle-family node.
The city did not require any of those 13
developers to pay the real costs to allow these
new residents to walk to the park, schools,
grocery stores, retail outlets, restaurants or
the nearby bike path by completing sidewalks
along the unimproved Acorn Park Road.
Now that the developers are gone, longtime
residents are left with big increases in both
pedestrian and car traffic. The funding for
sidewalks now is left to the property owners’
taxes.
The worst offender is the developer of the
Richardson Bridge Apartments, which is sub-
sidized Section 8 housing. The developer got a
special waiver to not complete an 80-foot sec-
tion of sidewalk which would connect their
residents (who often walk) to the bike path
right next to them! Instead they and their chil-
dren walk on the roadway everywhere since
the deep ditches leave no shoulder at all.
The city’s lack of pedestrian focus has left
110 miles of uncompleted sidewalks in
Eugene, according to a 2004 survey. “We
have no money for that,” is what city officials
say. Of course when Hynix went in 12 years
ago, they “found the money” to build 1.8
miles of seldom-used sidewalks along 18th.
If the city can’t pay, then let’s find a mecha-
nism to have developers pay.
Vancouver and Victoria, B.C., have side-
walks everywhere and painted crosswalks
at every block. Here in “green Eugene,” we
have people trying to walk all the time along
dangerous, no-sidewalk, no-shoulder sec-
tions of roadways like Highway 99 as it
crosses over the railroad tracks near
Roosevelt. It’s embarrassing.
The city’s sustainability initiative needs to
focus on pedestrians, not just bicyclists.
Tom Schneider
West Eugene
132 WAYS
Thanks for the cover story (5/24) on bik-
ing in and around Eugene; we need it now
and forever. Biking is the best solution to our
spoiled, addicted culture of style and speed,
waste and pollution. So why has biking in
Eugene droped in the last few years? Since
we began bike lanes and curb ramps here in
1972-73?
The UO Community Planning Worshop
has helped brainstorm 132 ways to improve
biking and walking here in Lane County. The
plan has priorities for developing biking and
foot-travel-friendly programs, places and
routes. They worked with Eugene’s city advi-
sory committee. Their published document is
long and detailed, showing potentials for
simplifying our bike-friendly communities
over the next five years — assuming our
economy keeps growing.
We already have traffic, air pollution and
the madness of speeding to market for im-
ported junk through power grids of toxic
stress. What we need now is more “Food Not
Lawns” and green belts around Eugene
where we can use bikes to haul around our
foods, herbs and tools.
Micheal Sunanda
Eugene
CAREER-DRIVEN
In response to Brian Bogart (Viewpoint,
5/17), war is only an instrument of career
politicians, no one else — not even the mili-
tary or employees of military contractors
want the war.
The solution is simple, but the solution can
only be effective if applied on a worldwide
basis — no force or group can ever hope to de-
feat career politicians and career bureaucrats.
Frank Skipton
Springfield
QUESTION PRIORITIES
Having lived in New York for seven
years, I am familiar with the effects of terror-
ism: bloodshed and collective mourning.
This kind of suffering simply does not com-
pare to incidents of property destruction tar-
geting corporations whose policies harm in-
dividuals and the environment, incidents
where not one human was injured. Terrorism
is the trauma and intimidation caused by the
violence of the Ku Klux Klan; it is the maim-
ing and killing of civilians that our govern-
ment is responsible for in Iraq.
We have to question our priorities when