Y CIVIC
STADIUM
OF CHOICE
Eugene City Councilor Alan Zelenka
this week handed the 4J School Board a
bag of lemons for lemonade.
Zelenka called proposals to tear down
the historic Civic Stadium lemons and said
combining the YMCA and Save Civic
soccer proposals with backing from the
owner of Market of Choice presented an
opportunity. “This is your opportunity to
make lemonade out of lemons,” he said
and handed over the bag of fruit he bought
at Market of Choice.
Zelenka said the proposal from Rick
Wright to consider a YMCA and Save
Civic collaboration with Wright’s financial
backing was financially and legally doable
for the school district. “I’m pretty sure
they can do it, whether they will choose to
do it is a different story,” he said. “It’s a
significant game changer.”
Zelenka said the city of Eugene does
not legally commit to having to choose
among offers in its requests for proposals
for selling property, and 4J could open a
new process that would give the YMCA/
Civic collaboration time to put together a
detailed offer.
The collaboration could offer 4J more
financial certainty than the Fred Meyer
happening people
proposal, according to Zelenka. The
shopping center is contingent on getting
permits for a controversial demolition and
a store that could compete with other area
businesses.
Zelenka said that the collaboration still
needs to figure out its financing for a
combined project that could cost roughly
$30-$40 million. But he said combining
YMCA and Save Civic fundraising with
local business backing will help. “It becomes
more of a community project,” he said.
The city could also help by working
with the collaboration to allow off-site
parking at the adjacent high school to meet
city code requirements, according to
Zelenka. The city has given the UO similar
waivers for its arena and stadium projects.
The city could also help by finding
another site for the Fred Meyer proposal.
Nearer to downtown, “there’s a lot of
underdeveloped areas,” Zelenka said.
Asked about whether the city could
help Fred Meyer locate at the large, former
Eugene Clinic site on Willamette, Zelenka
said, “that’s an interesting idea.” — Alan
Pittman
KIDS: DON’T
DRINK THE
TOXIC WATER
Triangle Lake residents say that not
only have their bodies tested positive for
herbicides, a recent test showed the
chemical imazapyr is in the water their
children drink at Triangle Lake Charter
School. School officials say the levels are
too low for concern.
Day Owen, along with his rural activist
group the Pitchfork Rebellion, has been an
outspoken critic of toxic herbicide use in
the Triangle Lake area in the Coast Range
west of Eugene. He says after the school
went ahead in December with a “chop and
squirt” technique of applying herbicide to
plants growing in a clearcut that surrounds
the school, a concerned parent decided to
take a sample of the drinking water.
Owen says he and other parents had
asked the school board not to apply
Arsenal, an herbicide containing imazapyr,
within 60 feet of the school. “It should
never be used near a well,” Owen says. He
says that the chemical “sinks deeper into
the ground than other herbicides and has a
long track record of polluting groundwater
and wells.”
The first day his daughter, Ivana,
returned to school after the chemical
application, Owen says, she had to go
home sick after spending 45 minutes in a
classroom with an open window near the
recent chemical application. Owen says
his daughter’s throat was so swollen she
could hardly breath.
The water sample, taken in April, was
sent to the USDA for testing, Owen says,
and the result was a positive result for
imazapyr. According to an article in the
Journal of Pesticide Reform, formerly a
publication of the Northwest Coalition for
Alternatives to Pesticides, the chemical
breaks down into quinolinic acid, which is
a neurotoxin that causes headaches and
depression, nerve lesions and symptoms
similar to Huntington’s disease.
But school Superintendent LeAnne
Raze says, “I have been in contact with
both DEQ and USDA and unofficially they
have told me that the testing result is 1,000
times lower than a level that would initiate
safety concerns for our students.”
“The children have been drinking some
level of imazapyr from drinking fountains,
and that same well water is used to prepare
the food in the kitchens,” Owen says.
He says the parents involved brought
the information from the test to the school
board May 18 and let it know about these
results.
Owen says, “We don’t want our
children drinking any amount of weed
killer,” and that he wants parents to be
notified of the test as well as for more
testing to be done. “It’s important for
parents to know and make an informed
choice,” he says. He says he is also
concerned about the effects and interactions
of unnamed “inert ingredients” in the
chemical mixture that was applied as well
as interactions with 2,4-D and atrazine, the
herbicides found in the urine of 21 Triangle
Lake area residents, including Owen and
two children.
Raze did not respond to a question of
whether the school intends to conduct its own
test for the chemical. — Camilla Mortensen
CITY UNSAFE
FOR
PEDESTRIANS
Eugene-Springfield ranks as the most
dangerous metro area in the state for
pedestrians. In the past ten years, drivers
killed 63 pedestrians in the area, according
to data released by Transportation for
America (TforA) this week.
In Eugene, drivers have struck and
injured 141 pedestrians in the last five
years, killing 11 people, according to state
accident data gathered by the city.
Amid such street carnage, the city of
Eugene will hold its first-ever Pedestrian
Safety Summit from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm
Wednesday, June 1, in the Library Bascom-
Tykeson room.
TforA’s “Dangerous by Design” study
faults politicians and transportation
planners for not funding and building
streets that are safe for humans: “Sadly, it
is the elderly, children and minorities who
are killed and injured in disproportionate
numbers, due to this failure to build roads
with everyone’s safety in mind.”
BY PAUL NEEVEL
MO BOWEN
On Friday, May 27, artist and gallery owner
Mo Bowen celebrates the first anniversary of
her Voyeur Gallery with an opening reception
for her own exhibit of photographs, paintings,
mixed media and scanography. “I just
recently heard the name ‘scanography,’” she
says. “But I’ve been doing scanner art since I
was a kid on the Xerox machine in my dad’s
print shop in Chicago.” Bowen earned
degrees in photography and psychology from
Dominican University in her hometown, then
moved west and spent a year rock climbing
in the Sierras before joining her sister in
Eugene in 2004. She continued to
photograph and have exhibits while working
various jobs until early last year, when her
boyfriend noticed a recently-vacated small
storefront at 547 Blair. After three months of
carpentry and painting, Voyeur Gallery
opened on May 28, 2010. “Every month we
have a new show. We do an artist discussion
and an audience critique,” she says. “Those
are great nights to engage the community
and challenge the artist.” Bowen’s 6 pm
opening coincides with other Whiteaker-area
gallery receptions on the Last Friday Art
Walk. She will offer a free gallery talk at 7 pm
on June 9 and a $30 scanography workshop
at 7 pm on June 16.
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MAY 26, 2011 7