NEWS
>>> CONTINUED FROM P. 8
We hear the Eugene Airport is super busy over
the holidays with more than 1,800 people departing
the day after Christmas, up about 17 percent over
last year. Cathryn Stephens, deputy airport director,
predicts Dec. 27 and 30 will also be big days for
arrivals and departures. She says the more typical
departure rate is about 1,100 a day.
“Survival Skills for Artists” is a 10-week course
geared toward visual artists who are “seeking the
tools to move their art into the professional art
arena,” offered by the city of Eugene’s Cultural
Services in cooperation with LCC. Classes meet
evenings between Jan. 8 and March 12 at the Hult
Center. Tuition is $125. See hultcenter.org or call
682-5000 or stop by the Hult Ticket Office weekday
afternoons.
Need access to capital? Email spam often touts
free “stimulus” money for small businesses, but
Oregon residents can apply for legitimate
microloans
(below
$35,000)
through
Entrepreneurial Development Services (eDev).
Individual Development Accounts (IDA) is a
program that provides matching small business
grants to individuals who submit a business plan,
take a financial literacy course, complete 30 hours
of training, and otherwise qualify. BJ Jones of the
Backstage Bakery in Cottage Grove recently
completed the IDA process. eDev has offices at
1445 Willamette St. in Eugene and the phone
number is 463-4627.
Community Mediation Services, a Eugene-
based nonprofit, has a new home at 93 Van Buren
St. and will be offering its annual 40-Hour Basic
Mediation Training on Fridays, Saturdays and
Sundays beginning Feb. 8. The training is designed
to provide “conflict transformation” skills for the
workplace, home or in community volunteer
service. Early registration by Jan. 25 is $625. See
communitymediationservices.com or call 344-
5366.
Bicycles donated to St. Vincent de Paul are
being refurbished and resold for $15 to low-income
individuals and families, and some are being given
away for free, according to Shane Ayrsman, St.
Vincent’s mechanical coordinator and former owner
of Revolution Cycles in Eugene. More than 150
bikes have been inspected and repaired, many of
which would have gone into metal recycling or left
to rust. Unwanted bikes can be dropped off at St.
Vincent’s donation centers around the valley. See
svdp.us or call 345-0595.
ACTIVIST
LERT
• Occupy Medical is seeking monetary
donations to make it through the long, wet winter.
OM tells us “We are doing what we can to treat and
prevent the spread of diseases like pertussis, HIV,
hepatitis, diphtheria and pneumonia. Your support
saves lives.” St. Vincent de Paul was providing
financial assistance, but the funds ran dry in
December. Checks can be made out to Occupy
Medical and mailed to the Tamarack Center, 3575
Donald St., Suite 230, Eugene 97405. The group’s
nonprofit status is pending.
• The State of the County Address will be at 10
am Monday, Jan. 7, at Harris Hall, 125 E. 8th Ave. in
Eugene. Eugene’s 2013 State of the City Address
will be at 5:30 pm Wednesday, Jan. 9, in the lobby
of the Hult Center. Donations of canned food for
FOOD for Lane County will be collected at the door.
connecting her front teeth to her palate, a broken jaw, mul-
tiple through-and-through lacerations to her face, both eyes
swollen shut, strangulation marks to her throat and skin
removed from her thigh and knees, possibly from being
dragged. Farish says that, after immediate reconstructive
facial surgery, his sister is healing, but her jaw remains
wired shut.
Sergeant John Umenhofer of the Springfi eld Police De-
partment says, “We’re still investigating, but at this point
we still don’t have a lot of information about what hap-
pened or where it occurred” because the victim was unable
to provide information. “If anyone has any information we
urge them to call us,” he says.
Farish says that other kids have come forward to re-
port being attacked in the area, but his family is having a
hard time getting the information out. “People need to be
warned that these people are still on the streets,” he says.
“‘There’s no public threat’ is what people have been told,”
he says. “I don’t know what justifi es a public threat.”
Farish set up a Facebook page, “Justice4Love,” to get
the word out in hopes of catching the assailant (wkly.
ws/1ep). Warning: there are graphic photos of the girl’s in-
juries. He also created a SELCO account called “The Love
Fund,” where people can donate to her signifi cant hospital
bills for her emergency reconstructive surgery. “They’re
going to be staggering,” he says. — Shannon Finnell
FOREST PLANS
MADE IN SECRET?
Private citizens, members of Cottage Grove’s Forest
Web and former Lane County commissioner Jerry Rust are
concerned the decisions about Oregon’s public forests, and
specifi cally the O&C forests that have been used to gener-
ate cash for counties, are being made in secret. Rust and
Cristina Hubbard of Forest Web held a press conference
and delivered letters to Gov. Kitzhaber’s offi ce on Dec. 18
asking him to open his O&C “timber panel” up for citizen
participation.
Tim Raphael, a spokesperson with the governor’s of-
fi ce, says he has not yet seen the letters in the offi ce. He
adds, “The governor is pleased with the substantive discus-
sion underway and has approved extending the meetings
into January.”
O&C counties were in the past funded by logging on
federal Bureau of Land Management O&C forests and lat-
er as logging slowed, by Secure Rural Schools payments.
Those payments have dried up, and the O&C counties, in-
cluding Lane, are looking for funding.
The panel is made up of county commissioners, forest
industry representatives and conservation groups. Conser-
vation group Oregon Wild, a vociferous opponent of the
DeFazio-Schrader-Walden forest trust plan that would di-
vide the forest between logging and conservation, was not
invited to be on the panel.
Hubbard says she and Rust wanted to call attention to
the fact that the timber panel is not open to public comment
and that there have been “no public comments or hearings
since DeFazio fi rst introduced the bill.”
An Oregon reporter for the conservative think-tank
funded Watchdog.org, who attended Rust and Hubbard’s
press conference in Salem, was reporting that Sen. Ron
Wyden would introduce a Senate version of the O&C trust
bill, but Wyden spokesperson Tom Towslee says the story
was inaccurate, and Wyden’s offi ce doesn’t know what
the results of the committee’s discussions will be. He says
Wyden “will obviously look very closely with what they
come up with.”
lighten up
BY RAFAEL ALDAVE
10
December 27, 2012 • eugeneweekly.com
Hubbard says Forest Web is concerned about the tim-
ber trust and forest plan because Cottage Grove, where the
group is based, is surrounded by BLM lands with private
properties checkerboarded among O&C lands. She says if
the O&C lands are managed like private industrial timber-
lands, then clear-cuts and pesticide sprays could take place
next to Cottage Grove residences and farms. She also says
the plan exempts the logging portion — which, Hubbard
says, “is starting to look more like 70 percent” of the O&C
forests — from federal environmental laws and “that’s re-
ally critical.”
The concerns regarding decisions about logging public
forests being made in secrecy are at the county level as well,
activists say. Lane County resident Mora Dewey attempted
to attend the meeting of the Association of O&C Counties
(AOCC) that was held in Eugene in early December. Dewey
says she has been working to make the AOCC meetings
public since 2009, because though the membership of the
AOCC is elected public offi cials, the group itself is private.
Commissioner Faye Stewart, who was at the AOCC meet-
ing, confi rms that it is a “private volunteer organization” and
that Lane County has paid dues for 2012-2013.
In previous budget cycles, Lane County paid $37,000 in
dues for its AOCC membership. The County Commission
voted 3-2, with Rob Handy and Pete Sorenson voting no,
to sign a memorandum of understanding with the AOCC in
August to allow the group to represent Lane County during
the BLM’s forest planning.
Dewey attended part of the AOCC meeting but was
asked to leave for a “private” discussion. She says she
questions how a private group made up of public offi -
cials can make decisions affecting public lands in secret.
— Camilla Mortensen
POLLUTION UPDATE
Nine more local facilities’ industrial stormwater pollu-
tion control plans are up for public comment this week.
These plans are for facilities that have applied for Clean
Water Act permit coverage under the new industrial storm-
water permit issued by Oregon Department of Environ-
mental Quality (DEQ), and that took effect July 1. Com-
ments are due by 5 pm on Jan. 3. The facilities (all located
in Eugene) are: Pierce Fittings, Precision Machine &
Mfg, Rear’s Mfg, Peterson Pacifi c Corp, Quality Metal
Finishing, Pennington Crossarm Co, Pacifi c Recycling,
Parker-Hannifi n Corp, and Real Wood Products. Visit
wkly.ws/1e5 to see stormwater plans, and wkly.ws/1e1 to
comment.
During the past year’s reporting period, which ended
July 1, Pacifi c Recycling’s discharges exceeded permit
benchmarks for suspended solids, copper, lead and zinc,
including a copper discharge of over seven times the
benchmark in their current permit. That copper discharge
exceeded the benchmark in the new permit (the permit for
which they’re applying for coverage) by 37 times. The
worst results are from Dec. 28, 2011.
DEQ sent Norpac Foods, Inc. a pre-enforcement
notice on Dec. 13 for illegally allowing food process-
ing wastewater to discharge to waters of the state at its
Stayton food processing plant on Nov. 14. The wastewa-
ter discharged to a roadside ditch that fl owed to the San-
tiam River. In referring the violation to DEQ’s Offi ce of
Compliance and Enforcement for formal enforcement,
Senior Water Quality Specialist Robert Dicksa noted
that Norpac’s violation might have caused signifi cant en-
vironmental harm. Norpac’s permit expired in April of
2000, and has been administratively extended by DEQ.
Norpac owns the Santiam and Flav-R-Pac brands.
— Doug Quirke/Oregon Clean Water Action Project
If you are reading this, you survived the end of the world.
Congratulations! Happy New Year!