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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (April 3, 2014)
ACTIVIST LERT • A Eugene Police Commission public forum will be at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 3, at the Harris Hall, 125 E. 8th Ave. The commission will take comments on professional police stops policy and bias-based policing. Call 682-5852 or email carter.r.hawley@ci.eugene.or.us. • 350.org Climate Activists are holding their first general monthly chapter meeting at 7 pm Thursday, April 3, at First United Methodist Church, 13th and Olive. Email 350eug@riseup.net for find them on Facebook. • The 12th Annual ¡César Chávez, Presente! community celebration begins at 5:45 pm Thursday, April 3, at Hamlin Middle School, 326 Centennial Blvd. in Springfield. This free, family-friendly event will feature performances by ¡Mariachi del Sol! and the A3 Dance Group. Community groups will also be offering children’s activities and information. Sponsored by Springfield Alliance for Equality and Respect (SAfER) and the Springfield School District. • Boston law scholar, author and TV commentator Wendy Murphy will present the 2014 Lorwin Lecture on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties from 6:30 to 8 pm Thursday, April 3, at Columbia 150 on the UO campus. Her topic is “How Title IX Finally Won Its Rightful Seat at the Civil Rights Table of Justice — and Why the Legs are Still So Wobbly.” See WendyMurphyLaw.com. • ODFW and OSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine will co-host the 2014 Wildlife Rehabilitation Conference from 8 am to 4:30 pm Saturday, April 5, at LaSells Stewart Conference Center on the OSU campus. Licensed wildlife rehabilitators and others interested in wildlife rehabilitation are welcome to attend. The event is free but pre-registration is required, see wkly.ws/1pi. • The LCC Native American Student Association will hold its annual powwow from 1 to 7 pm Saturday, April 5, in LCC Building 5 on the main campus. Open to the public. Call 463-5238 or 465-5337. This event was rescheduled due to severe weather in December. • Noted author Josh Ruebner will speak at an event from 7 to 9 pm Sunday, April 6, at the Corvallis Public Library, 645 NW Monroe St. Ruebner is an expert on the Middle East and author of Foreign Policy in Focus and a new book, Shattered Hopes: Obama’s Failure to Broker Israeli- Palestinian Peace. POLLUTION UPDATE The city of Eugene sent “request for corrective action” letters to three Eugene businesses, A&K Development Company, Oregon Ice Cream Company and Oregon Tread Rubber Company, in late February for various Clean Water Act violations. All three companies were cited for deficiencies in employee education and monthly inspections, while A&K was also cited for a having an undisclosed drainage; Oregon Ice Cream was also cited for storing hazardous materials in previously unidentified areas, storage of hazardous materials without secondary containment, and unpermitted discharges; and Oregon Tread Rubber was also cited for storage of hazardous materials without secondary containment. All three letters classify the violations as “significant” and require follow-up within 30 days. Doug Quirke/Oregon Clean Water Action Project LANE COUNTY AREA SPRAY SCHEDULE • Weyerhaeuser, 744-4600, plans to backpack spray 8 acres near Norris Creek with Velpar L, Velpar DF, Transline and/or Forestry Garlon XRT with additives methylated seed oil and/or non-ionic surfactant. See ODF notice 2014-781- 00306, call Stewardship Forester Brian Peterson at 935- 2283 with questions. • Union Pacific Railroad has notified the city of Eugene that in mid-March it began spraying their tracks in the Eugene area. The spray pattern is 24-feet wide, 12 feet on each side of the center of their tracks. Chemicals used include Accord XRP, Activator 90, Oust XP and Perspective. The spraying will continue for the next few weeks. Call Jan Bohman, 582-5587, for more information. Compiled by Jan Wroncy and Gary Hale, Forestland Dwellers: 342-8332, forestlanddwellers.org. NEWS RURAL RESIDENTS WORRY OVER NEW MINING OPERATION “Here we go again. Big money moves into a neigh- borhood and excavates 40 feet into the ground near the river,” Wende Hitchcock says in exasperation. She says a gravel site along the Coast Fork of the Willamette Riv- er near Delight Valley Road has applied to the Depart- ment of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) to expand its operations, including excavation and asphalt production. Hitchcock and other neighbors fear impacts to the rural community from noise and trucks to pos- sible affects on wildlife and water. They will be having a meeting to discuss their con- cerns at 6:30 pm Monday, April 7, at Head Start, 79980 Delight Valley School Rd. Mike Miller of NW Mineral Resources has fi led an operat- ing permit for an approximately 23-acre site in addition to a 70- acre grandfathered mine site a half mile northwest of Saginaw. The area is zoned for aggregate resources (gravel mining) but according to a letter to reviewing agencies from Vaughn Balzer, a reclamationist with DOGAMI, the area has been in agricultural use since 1968 and “these soils are considered prime soils for irrigated farming.” Hitchcock says she has owned her property near the proposed mining operation for 30 years and though she knew about the older, exhausted mining site near the riv- er, she didn’t know that what appeared to be an agricul- tural area near her house was actually zoned for mining, let alone for asphalt production. She says neighbors are ‘Here we go again. Big money moves into a neighborhood and excavates 40 feet into the ground near the river.’ IT’S ABOUT TIME A PRIL 3, 2014 • EUGENEWEEKLY.COM EQUISETUM HYEMALE, SCOURING RUSH B Y D AV I D WA G N E R T he romantic song of chickadees cheering up the morning is living proof of the arrival of spring. When the sun comes out after a heavy rain shower, all the birds sing joyfully. There will be more and more vegetable starts in racks outside the local market while the neighborhood gardens are dominated by spring blooming flowers. It is really too early to plant much besides peas and onions. It is not too early to clean up the beds to stay ahead of the weeds. For the next couple of weeks the windshield of my pickup will be dusted with a yellow powder; is pollen. Incense cedar sheds pollen in January, the dawn redwood in February and Douglas fir in March. All these cone-bearing trees use the “success in numbers” method of pollen dispersal. Their tiny, dry pollen grains weigh practically nothing. Tossed on whirling winds like Ping Pong balls in the ocean, it is only against formidable odds that a pollen grain gets blown into the protective bracts of the seed cones and perform their dance of birds and bees. Without either birds or bees, the wind-pollinated trees stick to the old reliable strategy: Make enough pollen grains to fill the air. After the pollen are shed, pollen cones descend from Douglas fir trees by the millions. Living under a Douglas fir canopy, I have to scoop them out of my gutters by the bucket load. Studied under a lens, they are stalks of golden brown lilies in extreme miniature. David Wagner is a botanist who has lived in Eugene for more than 30 years. He teaches moss classes and leads nature walks. He may be reached at fernzenmosses@me.com. E lighten up BY RAFAEL ALDAVE 8 worried that the noise and pollution of mining could af- fect their wells, nearby nesting eagles and osprey as well as the Head Start school and nearby Saginaw Vineyards. Balzer says this sort of confl ict is happening more and more in rural Oregon. Quarries were traditionally located on the outskirts of town, but as towns grow and more people move into rural areas, their homes are near one of hundreds of areas that were zoned for mining 30 or 40 years ago. Miller says the sand and gravel he plans to mine is for the community of Cottage Grove, and he adds, “We are just trying to get the rock quarry up and running so it is a viable, usable service for the community that hasn’t been operating to its full extent.” He says the fact that the area was zoned for mining is public record, and “select neighbors bought knowing it was sand and gravel,” who , Miller says,are now making it diffi cult for him to oper- ate. “Everybody thinks we are these bad guys, but we are working under the regu- lations the county gave us,” he adds. W E N D E H I TC H C O C K Balzer says his under- standing is that the permit “does require a site plan re- view at the county and that would typically come with some form of public input.” Site reviews deal with is- sues such as roads used for trucks hauling gravel and noise and dust abatement. EW has asked Lane County if there will be a site review but has not heard back by press time. Hitchcock says several of the neighbors suffer from asthma and neighbors worry they won’t have any input on what happens in their community. “We don’t have any say in the matter,” she says. — Camilla Mortensen ugene City Councilor Chris Pryor claims that for purposes of city aid there are the people homeless by circumstances and people homeless by choice. The first group deserves some city help, as long as it costs no money. The second group does not deserve the time of day, and as the theory goes, they are not technically homeless. Its members have chosen to sleep in doorways and under bridges in rain and snow — presumably, for the hell of it. If these urban campers are that way by choice (a premise many homeless experts call an urban legend), it follows that they have purposely rejected the conveniences of living in a home. What’s the risk then that these urban campers will now want to take advantage of any aid that tries to give the legitimate homeless some of the conveniences of living in a home?
