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
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