PARVIN BUTTE
MINING TO RESUME
On Valentine’s Day Lane County Hearings Official
Gary Darnielle ruled that Greg Demers and the McDougal
Bros.’ Lost Creek Rock Products can go ahead and mine
Parvin Butte, despite possible negative effects on the rural
community that surrounds the butte.
Lane County staff fined LCRP for mining without a
site review in November and December. The quarry
appealed the fines. A site review is a process in which
those living close to a mine can have input on the hours the
mine operates, how many trucks leave the mine and go
through neighborhoods and at what speeds, and addresses
other effects that an operation that involves dynamiting
and rock crushing can have on its neighbors.
“The Big Boys win again, smash the little people,
disenfranchise them from their own neighborhoods just so
greed can again rear its ugly head again,” frustrated Parvin
Butte neighbor Arlen Markus says. “Give corporations all
the rights but the people none.”
Darnielle ruled that the language in the Lane County
code is unclear on the site review issue. He suggested the
code be rewritten “to more evenly balance the protection
of existing mineral resources with the protection of
surrounding neighborhoods.”
The butte is in Commissioner Faye Stewart’s district.
Stewart says he has no comment at this time on Darnielle’s
decision, but that he has asked over the past seven years
that the code be clarified. He says if a final decision of no
site review needed is reached, the neighbors could turn to
agencies such as the Department of Environmental Quality
or Lane Regional Air Protection Agency for enforcement
of environmental issues.
Dan Stotter, who has been representing the Parvin
Butte neighbors in their fight against the mine, says that
site review is needed because a 200-foot buffer is not
enough to protect neighbors from the noise, dust and
environmental impacts of the mine. It also doesn’t address
the effects that large truckloads of gravel racing through
neighborhoods might have on residents and their children.
Stotter says county staffers were right to demand a
site review and the “county board should support their
staff by seeking review of this decision.”
If the board decides to review, the decision would then
move either to the Land Use Board of Appeals or Lane County
Circuit Court. The commissioners have scheduled an executive
session to discuss the issue for Feb. 22, as EW went to press.
Stotter was not the attorney in this dispute, as it was
between Lane County and the developers, but he is the
attorney for a Parvin Butte-related case involving a bridge.
Darnielle also decided on Feb. 14 that the bridge LCRP
wants to build leading to the butte is permissible. The
neighbors are involved directly in that case and have
challenged the bridge because of issues including worries
over flooding and effects on endangered salmon in a stream
through the property. LCRP says the permit for the bridge
isn’t needed because the bridge is for “forestry” on the
property, not for the mining. Stotter says, “That’s strange
because it (the bridge) leads straight to the quarry mine.”
Demers and the McDougals have been making
headlines over the past year, not only for their efforts to
mine Parvin Butte, but also for an attempt to get a massive
water right out of the McKenzie River that would allow
them to control and sell water to rural Lane County towns,
and in Demers’ case, for owing millions of dollars in taxes
while applying for federal grants to fund a project
associated with the mine.
— Camilla Mortensen
PEOPLE UNITED
IN EUGENE
It’s not every day that a majority of Eugene’s City
Council, Stephen Colbert, Oregon Country Fair and
Occupy Eugene have a cause in common. But the far-
reaching, unpopular Supreme Court decision on Citizens
United has given those concerned about the future of
democracy a reason to come together.
Last week the council voted 6-1 to call for a resolution
supporting an amendment to the Constitution that would
clarify that corporations aren’t people. This week
democracy activists are holding People United: More than
a March, at 11 am Feb. 25 at the Free Speech Plaza.
“It started as a protest that’s become a celebration of
human personhood,” says event organizer Marcus Farley.
“We’re asking everyone to bring a simple sign that says
my name is ‘blank’ and I am a person.”
“The regal fiction of corporate personhood is
unacceptable,” he says. “It represents a tilting of power in
our country right now that has basically rendered
democracy a joke.”
To see Stephen Colbert’s take on the joke, go to http://
wkly.ws/17a
— Shannon Finnell
DEFAZIO BILL LOGS FOR
COUNTY MONEY
Congressman Peter DeFazio’s long-awaited forest
plan has gone public, but the bill is under fire from
conservation groups, and it’s questionable whether the
controversial proposal that aims get funding for Lane and
other cash-strapped counties will go anywhere at all.
The draft plan put forth by DeFazio and Reps. Greg
Walden and Kurt Schrader called the “O&C Trust,
Conservation, and Jobs Act” is billed as a “balanced forest
health and jobs plan,” but Eugene-based Cascadia
Wildlands and other conservation groups are casting a
critical eye upon it.
It was thought by many that DeFazio’s timber and
conservation trust plan would be a part of a bill put forth
by Washington Republican and chair of the House Natural
Resources Committee Doc Hastings. The Hastings bill,
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