NEWS BRIEFS
ACTIVIST ALERT
• A community forum on possible improvements to Hwy. 126 between Veneta and
Eugene is planned for 6 to 8 pm Thursday, Oct. 6, at Elmira High School cafeteria.
RSVP by email at info@highway126.org or call 345-5091,
• Eugene’s Nobel Peace Park Project is inviting the community to an “Over-the-
Top” dinner gala from 5:30 to 8:30 pm Saturday, Oct. 8, and LCC’s Center for Meeting
& Learning. Author and noted human rights activist John Prendergast will speak,
along with Claes Nobel. Tickets for $60 a person available at www.
nobelpeacelaureates.org or call 485-1604.
• The Oregon League of Conservation Voters is planning parties around the state
Oct. 13 for the release of OLCV’s Environmental Scorecard for the Oregon Legislature.
See olcv.org for information.
CONTINUED FROM P.8 P.10
traffic.” The draft calls for advanced
warning signs when bike lanes or
sidewalks must be closed for construction,
cones marking four-foot wide new bike
lanes through construction and/or placing
“bikes in roadway” or “share the road”
warning signs when closing a bike lane is
unavoidable.
Unnecessarily and dangerously
blocking bike lanes and sidewalks for
construction projects is already illegal
under state and local law.
Eugene Code (7.100) adopts rules in
an ODOT handbook that states: “avoid
placing bicycles and pedestrians in
conflict with traffic.” The handbook and
code require advanced warning, a lane
with a “4-foot minimum width for
bicycles,” and bikes on roadway warning
signs. — Alan Pittman
WILL WOPR
EVER DIE?
The Western Oregon Plan Revisions
(aka the WOPR) has been killed, reborn
and killed again. The latest skirmish in the
battle over the Bureau of Land
Management’s effort to increase logging
on 2.2 million acres of public forests in
Western Oregon is another death blow, one
that conservationists hope will draw things
one step closer to killing the plan once and
for all.
The timber industry argued the WOPR
wouldn’t log enough trees — the plan calls
for about 500 million board feet of wood a
year — and sued. Environmentalists said
the plan, which would increase logging by
700 percent, is bad for old-growth and
mature forests. Enviros sued arguing that
the plan was illegal because there was no
Endangered Species Act consultation.
Some of the forests that were included in
the WOPR are home to ESA-listed species
such as the northern spotted owl.
Susan Jane Brown of the Eugene-based
Western Environmental Law Center
argued the case along with attorneys from
Earthjustice.
In 2009, Secretary of the Interior Ken
Salazar withdrew the WOPR, calling it
legally indefensible, but a federal judge in
the U.S. District Court in Washington,
D.C., ruled in April 2011 that Salazar acted
illegally when he did not ask for public
comment when he withdrew the WOPR.
So the WOPR returned and WELC and
Earthjustice re-filed their ESA-based
complaint, Brown says.
On Sept. 29, U.S. Magistrate Judge
Dennis Hubel in Portland recommended
that the plan be vacated, agreeing that the
BLM should have consulted with the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service and the National
Marine Fisheries Service. Brown says
Hubel’s opinion and findings must now be
endorsed by a federal judge. “I don’t
expect her to do anything different than
Judge Hubel did,” Brown says
Because of the Center for Biological
Diversity, more species in the Northwest
are moving toward the ESA protection that
is trying to help keep the spotted owl from
extinction. The group recently reached an
slant
• What does “overbuilt” mean when we talk about
new apartments in Eugene, especially around the UO
campus? We keep hearing from sources who should
know that developers have overbuilt demand,
while we also hear hammers pounding away on yet
another project. Maybe the best indicator is all those
“for rent” signs we still see on little houses around
the campus usually full of students by early October.
We’re wary of market forces and tax breaks from the
city these days.
• Downtown Eugene is booming with exciting new
construction that should reinvigorate the area. But
the downtown is at risk from a continuing effort at
downtown “crapification” by the city itself.
Locking trashed bicycles to city landscaping isn’t
likely to scare away street people. Stepping around
the unsightly city nuisance will, however, hurt
efforts to bring more business people and shoppers
downtown. Hyping downtown crime to justify the
“trash downtown to save it” approach does little to
help the area.
• It’s great to see the Occupy Wall Street protests
heating up in New York and in other cities across the
nation including Eugene. It’s about friggin’ time. It’s
been three years since greedy corporate fat cats
drove this country over an economic cliff. The
corporate executives got billions in bailouts, big
bonuses, tax breaks and no new tough regulations.
Regular Americans got mugged with the Great
Recession. The populist rage at Wall Street is felt by
Tea Partiers and lefties alike. Hopefully, it will bring
some real change.
administrators and professors. Columnist Steve Duin
said, “Lariviere has campaigned for increased
autonomy in a state with a diminished interest in
supporting higher education. He has emulated
Knight’s unapologetic commitment to run the
university like a business.” Lane Metro Partnership
director Jack Roberts, identified in his every-other-
Thursday column as “a Eugene businessman and
former Oregon labor commissioner,” concludes:
“The fact that President Lariviere’s action is so
controversial says less about the economy than
about a state that talks excellence while pursuing
mediocrity.” In a Sept. 22 Slant, we praised the
needed raise for faculty but called Lariviere’s raise
for administrators an “arrogant mistake.”
• So many social justice issues churning out there
today, and so many good documentary films
spotlighting them. A really good documentary
should move us to do something about the issue or
at least think hard about it. That perspective, plus a
new Eugene party time, is what motivates the Good
Works Film Festival, starting Friday, Oct. 7, at the
Bijou theater and moving to the Hult Center
Saturday afternoon. The event was created by
Cynthia Wooten, a former Eugene activist for social
justice and good times (she helped start the Country
Fair and the Eugene Celebration) and by Linda
Blackaby from the San Francisco film festival. The
Eugene festival will be a model for the rest of the
country. After the showings relevant community
groups will lead discussions, always provocative and
usually fun in this diverse city. For an artistic
advanced look, be sure to read John Locanthi’s fine
reviews in this issue.
• The west Eugene LTD EmX got yet another official
stamp of approval last week, this time from yet
another ODOT analysis of the project. It’s past time
to get this project built. A few anti-public
transportation wingnuts shouldn’t be able to block
hundreds of construction jobs and a rapid, livable,
green way to move for tens of thousands of people.
• Word is that tireless local defenders of civil rights
at the Civil Liberties Defense Center could use a
little boost to the group’s cash flow. Check out the
CLDC’s work — both locally and nationally — at cldc.
org and click on its link to donate or go to the ChipIn
page at http://bit.ly/q5Y9fq
• Two columnists, often far apart, recently wrote in
The Oregonian words of high praise for UO
President Richard Lariviere and his raises for
• More thoughts on banning dogs on 13th and
downtown, as suggested by Councilor Mike Clark:
Nobody likes slipping on fresh dog turds, but bigger
10 OCTOBER 6, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
issues are at play here. People who are homeless
can’t leave their dog companions at home, so
banning dogs is in effect banning people who are
homeless. Is that the unnamed agenda here? One
more way to discriminate against the unkempt and
disenfranchised members of our community? And
more than a few women in Eugene feel safer on our
streets with their trusty canines at their sides,
particularly after dark. The 13th Avenue dog ban is
making our streets less safe and less welcoming for
pedestrians out for an evening walk or going to or
from work around campus.
• PBS this week is airing filmmaker Ken Burns’ five-
hour documentary series Prohibition, and we expect
to see a lot of parallels with the counterproductive
War on Drugs that Richard Nixon imposed upon us
40 years ago in the spirit of Prohibition. The 18th
Amendment banning alcohol was short-lived, but our
nation’s four-decade-long drug policy has created a
massive, violent and untaxed underground economy,
international organized crime, an overloaded court
system, civil rights violations, corrupt prison industry
and border strife. Time to end our idiotic obsession
with drugs. Legalize them, regulate them, tax them.
Put a fraction of those trillion dollars spent on cops,
courts and incarceration into drug education,
intervention and treatment. We’ll all be better off.
• If you really like to be scared, read this warning
from a recent National Rifle Association mailing:
“Your constitutional right to own a gun is under
attack by anti-gun politicians and Obama’s hand-
picked political appointees, global gun ban diplomats
at the U.N., militant anti-hunting extremists, radical
billionaires and the freedom-hating Hollywood elite.”
• Wall Street got you pissed off and you want to
join the growing street protests? Bank of America
and other national banks added fuel to the fire with
their announcement of new fees for debit cards. Hit
them where they hurt. Move your money to a credit
union or other local financial institution.
SLANT includes short opinion pieces, observations and rumor-chasing
notes compiled by the EW staff. Heard any good rumors lately? Contact Ted
Taylor at 484-0519, editor@eugeneweekly.com
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