BILLS
BILLS
BILLS
WHAT'S GREEN
ON OREGON'S
LEGISLATIVE
AGENDA ?
By Camilla Mortensen
I
n a wonky way, Oregon’s 2011 legislative session will be exciting when it
resumes on Feb. 1. Oregon has a $3.5 billion deficit, unemployment is still more
than 10 percent, more than 1,600 bills have been introduced, the Oregon House
is 30 Republicans and 30 Democrats, an even split, and everybody’s got an agenda,
some greener than others.
Senate Republican Leader Ted Ferrioli has a dog agenda. He’s introduced
Senate Concurrent Resolution 3, which would designate the border collie the state
dog. Eleven other states do have state dogs. Our neighbor to the north, Washington,
designated an official state endemic mammal — the marmot — in 2009, and here
in the Beaver State not only is our state animal, obviously, the beaver, we also have
a state rock, the thunder egg, and a state tree, the Douglas fir.
But when not deciding really important things like whether border collies are
more symbolic of Oregon than, say, Labradors (which at least have webbed feet)
Oregon’s Legislature will be voting on issues that affect not only our economy, jobs
and whose dog is the coolest but the environment as well.
EW checked in with eco-oriented groups, locally and around the state, to find
out what their priorities are for this year’s session, the first since Oregon voters
passed Ballot Measure 71, requiring the Legislature to meet annually instead of
every two years. Priorities run the gamut from ridding the ocean of plastic bags to
making sure cougars aren’t hunted with hounds.
TOP GREEN BILLING
Each year, more than 50 environmental
groups in Oregon coordinate their top
priorities for bills in the Legislature. Jon
Isaacs, executive director of the Oregon
League of Conservation Voters, says this
“forces the entire community to really
prioritize and say, ‘these are the things
that all of us agree are really important.’”
OLCV, through its Education Fund,
sponsors and facilitates this group of
dues-paying organizations, called the
Oregon Conservation Network. The goals
reflect a diverse coalition of members
from the Surfrider Foundation to various
Riverkeeper groups to smaller groups
like Oregon Toxics Alliance (OTA) based
in Eugene. OLCV then lobbies based on
these priorities, Isaacs says, though the
individual groups may still work on their
own causes, even if they didn’t make it to
the top of the list.
Just because an issue doesn’t get top
12 JANUARY 27, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
billing doesn’t mean it won’t go through.
Two issues that Lisa Arkin and OTA have
worked on — the ban on field burning
and integrated pesticide management in
schools, a technique of pest-and-weed
control that leads to lower toxic chemical
usage — were not on OLCV’s list in the
past, though they were passed into law.
Isaacs says after field burning passed in
2009, the network put a process allowing
important new priorities to be added to the
list that might come up over the course of
the session.
Arkin says that this year OTA is hoping
HB 2188, the “safe public places” bill,
will expand integrated pest management
beyond schools to public places such as
state forests, public parks, public buildings
and grounds, as well as land and rivers
adjacent to public highways.
This year the top priorities for OLCV
are banning plastic bags, updating Oregon’s
bottle bill, banning Bisphenol-A from kids’
food and drink containers, improving
energy efficiency and establishing a system
of marine reserves as well as state forest
reserves.
A quick check with Lane County area
legislators didn’t yield much in the way
of results when it comes to eco bills, at
least not yet. Sen. Chris Edwards was
out of the country, and several legislators
didn’t respond to an email inquiry before
press time. But local politicians have come
through in the past on bills such as banning
field burning and pesticide management,
and OLCV has given them high ratings on
Project Vote Smart for their environmental
positions. Reps. Paul Holvey, Nancy
Nathanson and Phil Barnhart earned 90s
out of 100 points. Sen. Floyd Prozanski got
a 79 and Sen. Edwards earned an 86. (Sen.
Ferrioli, the border collie guy, got a 10).
Reps. Nancy Nathanson and Phil
Barnhart have introduced bills related to
public transportation, a green goal.
Nathanson’s office says her top priority
is improving Oregon’s rail system for both
passenger and freight lines. Barnhart says
he introduced Senate Joint Resolution 17,
at the request of Tom Bowerman, which
proposes an amendment to the Oregon
Constitution that would allow money from
taxes on fuel, and on owning, operating or
using motor vehicles to be used for public
transportation services. The amendment
would be referred to voters for approval or
rejection at next regular general election.
In the 2009 session, Attorney General
John Kroger made strides for the
environment when the Legislature passed a
bill allowing him to create an environmental
crimes unit from existing funds in order to
crack down on polluters. This year, Tony
Green, the AG’s communications director
says there is “nothing new” legislatively
from the office on environment issues.
BAGS AND BOTTLES
The ban on plastic bags has been
erroneously pitched as “bad for business,”
says Brock Howell, former policy advocate
for Environment Oregon. An organizer for
the Great Pacific Cleanup, he says plastic
bags are an ocean problem and are the
number one item found in beach cleanups.
But despite that pitch by groups like Save
the Plastic Bag Coalition, Howell says,
so far more than 500 small businesses
have endorsed the campaign; so have the
Northwest Grocers Association, Fred
Meyer and paper-bag maker International
Paper. Commissioners Pete Sorenson and
Rob Handy and Mayor Kitty Piercy have
endorsed it also, along with businesses
such as Kiva.
Howell says the bill would not stop
shoppers from bringing their own plastic
bags if they wanted to and would call on
stores to use and charge 5 cents for recycled
content paper bags. SB 536 also would stop
local governments from imposing charges
on checkout bags or other bags provided to
customers.
Howell also points out that a recent
headline-making announcement from
OSU scientist Angel White critiquing
exaggerations of the Pacific Garbage Patch
doesn’t detract from the message of how
bad plastic is for the oceans and marine
life. White says the debris may act as a
vector for introducing invasive species into
sensitive habitats and that it is extremely
costly to remove. An unknown amount of
plastic sinks to the ocean floor as well.
Oregon’s Bottle Bill had dramatic results
when it first passed in 1971, with beverage
bottle litter dropping by 83 percent in just
a few years. In 2007 the bill was updated
to include water bottles, including flavored
water such as vitaminwater, though sports
drinks and teas were not included either in
the ’70s or in the 2007 update. Environment
Oregon would like to see the bill include
newer drinks and increase the bottle and
can deposit to 10 cents.
The group would also like to see retailers
use the unclaimed deposits on bottles,
which they’ve been holding on to and not
disclosing, to make the bottle program more
efficient. Environment Oregon estimates
that about $30 million to $40 million in
deposits stay with the retailers each year
due to unredeemed bottles.
Another would-be bottle bill on the
OLCV agenda is aimed at baby bottles,
sippy cups and other food and beverage
containers used by infants. OLCV says
that Bisphenol-A (BPA) disrupts children’s
brain development and is linked to chronic
health problems, such as diabetes and
breast cancer.
The BPA-Free Baby Bill, which has yet
to be introduced in the Legislature, would
also ban using the chemical in sports water
containers and require cans containing BPA
to say so on the containers.
Isaacs says Sen. Jackie Dingfelder of
Portland will be sponsoring the BPA bill.
Dingfelder is also the sponsor of a bill that
would require genetically modified fish
and shellfish to be labeled as such, and an
energy bill, SB 164, which would create
a state energy commission made up of
five citizens appointed by the governor to
establish statewide policy and priorities.
RESERVES
Also on the list of top priorities for
enviros in the upcoming session is the goal
of creating both new marine reserves and
establishing state forest reserves.
The 2009 legislative session passed a
marine reserves bill that created two pilot
sites along with four sites for future study.
Proponents say these reserves support
marine habitat, yielding more fish and
seafood for the economies that depend on
them. OSU studies have shown that reserves
allow fish to grow larger and result also in
more fish in areas surrounding the reserve.
Isaacs says there are recommendations
from stakeholders, scientists and fishing
representatives to create more reserves in
this session.
Ivan Maluski of the Oregon Sierra Club
says the group hopes to spearhead the
“first-ever protected forest reserves on state
lands.” Rep. Deborah Boone has introduced
HB 2736, a bill that Maluski says he hopes
by the end of the session “will have created
a new mechanism to protect special places
on state lands like the Tillamook, Clatsop
and Elliott state forests for clean water,
recreation, fish and wildlife, and carbon
sequestration.”
Cascadia Wildlands has been angling
for several years to preserve Coast Range
old-growth trees in the Elliott State
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