Eugene weekly., February 06, 2014, Page 6, Image 6

NEWS
Greater Goods is closing after 23 years in
Eugene. Joan Kleban is retiring and she has
been a good friend to EW and a consistent
advertiser all these years. We wish her well
and expect she will continue to be a positive
force in our community. We also appreciate her
dedication to offering fair trade, hand-made
products and folk art from around the world.
Fair trade goods promote social and
environmental sustainability, rare qualities in
developing countries and even here at home.
Greater Goods is located on High Street across
from 5th Street Public Market and will remain
open until the inventory is sold.
Lane County Farmers Market started its
winter market Feb. 1 and will continue, rain or
shine, from 10 am to 2 pm Saturdays at 8th
and Oak downtown. We’re still waiting for some
kind of breakthrough that will provide a
permanent year-round market, at least
partially indoors. The city is sitting on $500,000
in urban renewal funds to help make it happen.
Corvallis is expecting a new hotel
downtown. “The estimated $18 million project
is expected to bring to life a 130-room upscale
hotel situated along the riverfront,” according
to Lisa Lawton of Eugene, Cascades & Coast.
Tom Nelson, the city’s economic development
manager, says the project could be completed
as early as March 2015.
We hear work continues on the Candlewood
Suites hotel in Glenwood and acreage near the
Valley River Inn has been purchased for a 100-
unit hotel. Eugene Airport officials say a
proposed hotel site near the air field is currently
undergoing additional land evaluations. And
the Eugene Hilton has completed a $5.5
million renovation of all its 269 guest rooms,
corridors and the Share Small Plate Bistro.
The annual KLCC Microbrew Festival is
coming up Friday and Saturday, Feb. 7-8, at the
Fairgrounds. See our Calendar.
A community forum on Obamacare will be at
6 pm Tuesday, Feb. 11, at the Eugene Public
Library, sponsored by The Main Street Alliance
of Oregon and the Eugene Downtown
Neighborhood Association. See DNAeugene.org.
Looks like Hoodoo ski area finally has
enough snow to open Friday, Feb. 7, and the
resort hopes to maintain a Thursday through
Sunday schedule until the end of the season.
Call the hotline at 822-3337. Willamette Pass
has been open Wednesday through Sunday
with limited operations. No night skiing this
season. Call 345-SNOW. Farther away, Mt.
Bachelor has 10 inches of fresh snow and is
open daily. See mtbachelor.com.
POLLUTION UPDATE
Comments on the stormwater pollution
control plan for Natron Wood Products LLC’s
facility in Jasper are due to Oregon Department
of Environmental Quality (DEQ) by 5 pm on
Feb. 10. Visit goo.gl/ScwdH to see stormwater
the plan and goo.gl/iMDQb to comment.
Comments to DEQ regarding the erosion and
sediment control plan for Phase 3 of
Willamalane’s Sports Park on South 32nd
Street in Springfield are due by 5 pm on Feb.
11. Visit goo.gl/Yp4iAK for information on how
to make arrangements to view the plan and
comment. DEQ assessed a civil penalty of
$4,000 against Georgia-Pacific Toledo, LLC
for hazardous air pollution violations at its
Toledo pulp mill. Toledo is about 7 miles inland
from Newport.
— Doug Quirke/Oregon Clean Water Action Project
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February 6, 2014 • eugeneweekly.com
CRISIS PREGNANCY CENTER
OPENS UNDER NEW NAME
On Feb. 4, the newly renamed Dove Medical Pregnancy Di-
agnosis Clinic, a crisis pregnancy center (CPC), held a grand
opening celebration. Pro-choice advocates such as Planned Par-
enthood have criticized CPCs for giving patients false informa-
tion about abortion, including that abortion causes breast cancer,
can lead to sterility and is psychologically damaging.
Dove Medical is “a faith-based, patient-centered organiza-
tion that encourages informed decision-making about unintend-
ed pregnancy,” says Beverly Anderson, CEO of Dove Medical.
The organization was started in 1985 as Lane Pregnancy Support
Center.
A video posted on YouTube in 2012 (wkly.ws/1om) intro-
duces Lane Pregnancy Support Center as “dedicated to saving
babies’ lives and saving people’s souls.” In it, Anderson says
that 90 percent of women who see ultrasounds “choose life,”
which a study published in January in the journal Obstetrics and
Gynecology debunks. The video continues, “With your help, we
can save another generation of the unborn, one life at a time.”
‘Dove Medical is a faith-based,
patient-centered organization
that encourages informed
decision-making about
unintended pregnancy.’
— B E V E R LY A N D E R S O N , C E O O F D O V E M E D I C A L
Anderson says she runs the only organization in the area
where pregnant women can “take the time just to discuss the de-
cisions they’re facing.” Critics of CPCs say that the clinics stress
the importance of time in the decision-making process because
delay can eliminate the option of getting an abortion.
A 2010 undercover study by Planned Parenthood Advocates
of Oregon found that of the 40-plus CPCs surveyed in Oregon,
all of them were providing misleading information to their pa-
trons, says Jimmy Radosta, communications director of PPOA.
Planned Parenthood is concerned about the CPCs that pro-
vide false or misleading information to young, low-income
women at a vulnerable time in their lives and that mislead them
with medical intake forms and staff in lab coats, Radosta says.
These facilities are not categorized as health care providers and
are mainly run by volunteers in an unregulated environment.
Last year, Planned Parenthood introduced SB 490 into the
Oregon Legislature in an effort to change some of the practic-
es often employed by CPCs. The bill would have required that
certain health-related organizations and businesses, including
CPCs, clearly disclose information about the nature of their
services. It would have prohibited these places from releasing
health information about a patient without that person’s writ-
ten consent, a stipulation already required of Oregon health care
providers through HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Ac-
countability Act). The bill did not make it out of committee but
will be modified and reintroduced next year, Radosta says.
Unlike other CPCs, Anderson says Dove Medical complies
entirely with HIPAA regulations by granting patients access to
their medical records and actively protecting patient confiden-
tiality. She adds that Dove has a licensed nurse on duty during
all open hours and the initial paperwork includes the transparent
truth that the facility does not refer for or perform abortions.
Anderson opposed SB 490 because “individuals and orga-
nizations have the right to craft their message however they
choose to.” She told The Lund Report that “the bill was spe-
cifically designed to target crisis pregnancy centers because they
espouse anti-abortion views.”
While Radosta was clear that he was not familiar with the
specific practices of Dove Medical, he saw more honesty from
its website than from other CPCs.
“We are pleased to see Dove Medical’s website promises ac-
curate information and makes it clear they do not provide abor-
tion referrals,” Radosta says. “We hope that they continue to
adhere to this.” — Carolina Reid
SAVING THE FISH AND THE BIRDS
It’s looking like a good week for Oregon’s native little fish and
its potato-shaped sea birds. News that the diminutive Oregon chub
is slated to be removed from the endangered species list is mak-
ing big headlines, and a just-announced settlement between the
Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) and environmental groups
means more hope for the threatened marbled murrelet, a sea bird
that nests in Oregon’s coastal old-growth forests.
If the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to remove the Or-
egon chub from the list of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife un-
der the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is finalized, then the chub
would be the first fish delisted due to recovery. The nationwide
announcement was made at the McKenzie River Trust’s Berggren
Watershed Conservation area near to where the chub were found in
2001 on the trust’s Big Island property. Prior to that, Oregon chub
were last documented in the McKenzie River watershed in 1899.
Marbled murrelets, on the other hand, are still struggling not to
drop from threatened to endangered status on the ESA, and Josh
Laughlin of Cascadia Wildlands is hoping a settlement with ODF
will help the small sea birds, which can fly up to 90 miles per hour.
Cascadia Wildlands and other environmental groups sued to
stop logging in coastal state forests and protect the murrelet in
2012. Laughlin says the settlement means the “state is canceling
28 reckless old-growth timber sales” in its forests occupied by the
marbled murrelet. He says 26 of those sales are in the Elliott State
Forest south of Eugene. He says the state has also revised its “take”
policy, making its policy on killing or harming the birds “much
more robust.” Previously he says the state was “essentially playing
fast and loose with the law.”
Michael Kron of Oregon Department of Justice, which repre-
sents ODF, says, “The parties have jointly informed the court that
we expect the case to be resolved within 21 days.”
There will be more public accountability when it comes to log-
ging in murrelet-occupied forests, Laughlin says, and rather than
making “Swiss cheese” of the forests and “postage stamp-sized”
murrelet reserves, there will be contiguous habitat around the
stands of trees in which the threatened birds are found.
The settlement will provide immediate relief for imperiled mur-
relet, Laughlin says, which have declined at a rate of 4 percent a
year, mainly due to habitat loss.
Cascadia Wildlands is also working on the issue of the 3,000
acres in the Elliott that the State Land Board voted to sell in De-
cember 2013. Laughlin says there is a sealed-bid process going on,
the results of which will be released March 28.
Laughlin says if those public lands are sold for logging “it
would be horrible for the Elliott,” but if they are sold into conser-
vation and “preserved for Oregonians and critters teetering on the
brink of extinction” then it could be the “conservation feat of the
century.” — Camilla Mortensen
TRANSPHOBIA
SPURS PIELC PROTEST
One speaker’s stance on gender identity is causing contro-
versy around an upcoming environmental conference at the UO.
Among its keynote speakers, the 32nd annual Public Interest En-
vironmental Law Conference (PIELC) Feb. 27 to March 2 will
feature radical feminist Lierre Keith of Deep Green Resistance
(DGR). A heated debate on PIELC’s Facebook event page (wkly.
ws/1on) about Keith’s position that people who are transgender
aren’t really the gender with which they identify has generated
hundreds of comments. Some enviros are petitioning PIELC and
UO to cancel Keith’s talk.
“I find it disturbing that the co-directors of PIELC think that
Keith’s ‘perspective on environmental issues and activism’ are
separate from her perspective on transgender people,” says Shel-
ley Cater, a long-time PIELC attendee and one of the protest’s
organizers.
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