Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 2013)
ACTIVIST LERT • The Eugene Sustainability Commission will meet at 4 pm Thursday, Aug. 1, at the Eugene Public Library downtown. Babe O’Sullivan is the contact at 682-5017. • Sen. Chris Edwards, House Majority Leader Val Hoyle and Rep. Nancy Nathanson will hold a town hall meeting on the recent Legislature from 6 to 7:30 pm Thursday, Aug. 1, at the Prairie Mountain School cafeteria, 5305 Royal Ave. in Eugene. • World Breastfeeding Week is Aug. 1-7 and Daisy CHAIN (Creating Healthy Alliances in New-Mothering) is sponsoring “The Big Latch On” at 10 am Saturday, Aug. 3, in Monroe Park, 950 Monroe St. in Eugene, part of a worldwide effort to set a record for simultaneous breastfeeding. Springfield Mayor Christine Lundberg plans to speak. • Health Care for All-Eugene meets at 7 pm Tuesday, Aug. 6, at EWEB with Sue Sierralupe of Occupy Medical Clinic. For more than a year the clinic has given free health care to those without medical insurance. A review of the statewide meeting in Eugene with representatives of 90 HCAO-supporting organizations and chapters will be discussed. Open to the public. Call Ruth Duemler at 484-6145. • The annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki commemoration will be from 6:30 to 9:30 pm Tuesday, Aug. 6, at Alton Baker Park’s small shelter, located near the duck pond. A 6:30 pm community potluck will be followed by a 7:30 pm program calling for a nuclear free future, featuring Mayor Kitty Piercy and other speakers, Eugene Taiko, Obon dancing and music by the Yujin Gakuen Children’s Peace Choir. The event will close at dusk with the floating of candles honoring nuclear bomb victims, while Koto master Mitsuki Dazai plays traditional Japanese music. Contact CALC at 485-1755 or calcpeace@efn.org. POLLUTION UPDATE BOZIEVICH MAY SEE CHALLENGER IN 2014 Despite fears that the pattern of attacks on progressive Lane County commissioners from the right over the last sev- eral years would scare good people away from politics, pos- sible progressive candidates are already starting to explore running for the West Lane (Jay Bozievich) and East Lane (Faye Stewart) commission seats. Dawn Lesley, a soon-to- be graduate of the 2013 class of Emerge Oregon, a training program for Democratic women, is exploring a run against Bozievich for 2014. Lesley, who is a water/wastewater energy effi ciency en- gineer at Cascade Energy, Inc., has formed the candidate committee Dawn Lesley for Action, according to the Ore- gon Secretary of State’s website. The committee is reporting $3,500 in contributions, and while most donations have been small, under $100, City Councilor Alan Zelenka is among those who have given $250 or more. When contacted by EW for an interview on her possible bid to replace the libertarian Bozievich, Lesley said, “I am considering a run for the West Lane County Commissioner seat; I haven’t made any fi nal decisions.” County Commission seats are nonpartisan, but Lane County’s commission votes have been sharply divided along political lines. The County Commission’s votes affect every- thing from land use to logging to water protection. Lesley has a master’s in biosource engineering from Or- egon State and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in biology. Lesley will be graduating in September from the Emerge Oregon program, she says. According to Emerge board member Kamala Shugar, the program provides 70 hours of training and the graduates come out “ready to run.” Shugar says 54 percent of Emerge graduates run for offi ce and 81 percent win. Board members cannot endorse graduates per Emerge policy, Shugar says, but she points to the successes of previous graduates, which include, in the Oregon Legislature alone, House Majority leader Val Hoyle and Reps. Jennifer Williamson, Jessica Vega Pederson, Shemia Fagan and Alyssa Keny-Guyer. As EW has previously reported, East Lane’s Stewart is facing three progressive candidates: Kevin Matthews, Jose Ortal and Joann Ernst. The East and West Lane commis- sion seats represent the largest swathes of rural land in the county. Sid Leiken’s Springfi eld seat is also in play on the fi ve-member Lane County Commission for the 2014 elec- tion. — Camilla Mortensen 26 PESTICIDES, RELATED CHEMICALS FOUND IN AMAZON CREEK Is your bug spray getting into the Willamette River? According to sampling done by the Long Tom Watershed Council (LTWC) over the past two years, some of the most frequently found pesticides in Amazon Creek are DEET, a chemical used in insect repellent sprays like OFF!, and diuran, an herbicide that interferes with photosynthesis. At a LTWC public meeting on July 24, Kevin Masterson of the DEQ and Jason Schmidt of the LTWC presented the results of the sampling and discussed the potential and largely un- studied danger of mixing multiple chemicals in creek water. Masterson explained that DEET, which is applied direct- ly to the skin to repel mosquitoes, is detected all across the country because it dissolves easily in water and breaks down at a relatively slow rate. Its presence in Amazon Creek could be due to people washing off with hose water, which slides off paved areas and directly into the creek water, connecting to the Willamette River through the Long Tom River and eventually getting to the Columbia River and Pacifi c Ocean. Other pesticides infi ltrate the creek in a similar way, when rain washes chemicals off plants and pavement and pours through storm drains into the creek. Schmidt and Masterson took water samples from fi ve dif- ferent sites along the creek and looked for approximately 105 pesticides and breakdown products, and the sampling showed 26 chemicals present in Amazon Creek, detected at varying levels of frequency. “The good news here is that while it shows we’ve got a lot of detections, most of them are under the benchmarks the EPA Offi ce of Pesticides has set for aquatic life,” Master- son says. The benchmarks show how highly concentrated a chemical can be in the water before it starts to have an ad- verse effect on organisms. In general, as long as the chemi- cal level is below the EPA benchmark for a certain species, the water continues to be safe for that species. One concern Schmidt and Masterson shared at the meet- ing dealt with the unknown impacts of 26 different chemi- cals mixing together at different concentration levels in the creek water. “It’s another wild card in this whole mix of is- sues here because if we fi nd eight chemicals in one sample, what does that mean relative to additive percentages for the toxicity in a species?” Masterson asks. “Those are some un- knowns that we need to take into account and prioritize.” — Amy Schneider EAGLE PARK SLIM (revisited) December 1997: “I’m the brokest famous man in town,” says veteran musician Eagle Park Slim, talking his blues. “I’ve had trials and tribulations.” As a kid, Slim learned Chicago and Delta blues from artists who played his parents’ roadhouse in Eagle Park, Ill. “Harmonica Sam could blow out a brand-new harmonica on the first song,” says Slim, who started blowing Sam’s castoffs at age 9, learned guitar from Johnny Wright at 11 and fronted his own band at 13. In the 1960s and ’70s he had bands in East St. Louis and Denver. “Six months at Pepper’s Lounge,” he recalls. “Every night there was a fight.” Broke when he hit Eugene in 1980, Slim became a fixture as a street musician, next to Brownie’s on the downtown mall. Since his second open-heart surgery in 1993, Slim works mostly indoors. His steady gig is Wednesdays at the Black Forest Inn. “He loves the music,” says bartender Sasha, “loves to tell stories.” BY PAUL NEEVEL HAPPENING PEOPLE Comments to Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) regarding industrial stormwater pollution control plans for two B & R Auto Wrecking facilities (one in Albany and one in Corvallis) are due by 5 pm on August 9. Visit goo.gl/ScwdH to see stormwater plans, and goo.gl/iMDQb to comment. It should be noted that while DEQ is required to respond in writing to comments on stormwater plans, it recently came to light that DEQ considers mere written acknowledgement of receipt of comments to fulfill this requirement, which appears to violate the intent of the law. DEQ sent a warning letter to Vivian Rooke of Scott Township, Pennsylvania on July 9 concerning Rooke’s failure to have a legal septic system at property owned by Rooke at 81251 Lost Creek Road in Dexter. DEQ’s letter followed three separate Lane County letters over the course of the last year. The county did not receive a reply to any of those letters. NEWS 2013 update: Slim still plays outdoors in the summer, especially at the Oregon Country Fair, where he has appeared every year since 1981. He sets his chair in the shade close to the Bangkok Grill. “They feed me and I bring a lot of business,” he says. Slim has also played at events in Denver, Seattle and Portland this year. Catch him at Off the Waffle, 840 Willamette, during the First Friday Art Walk on Aug. 2. eugeneweekly.com • A ugust 1, 2013 7
