B Y K E L LY K E N O Y E R
• Impact Your Health Eugene, a free community health
care event, returns to the Lane Events Center, 9 am to 5 pm,
Sept. 24 and 25. Organizers say the event is “intended to
serve those who need and could never hope to pay” for
health care necessities including free diabetes screenings,
consultations with medical doctors and eye doctors, and free
dental exams, cleanings, fillings and extractions. There will
also be representatives from local drug and alcohol recovery
support groups. Volunteer medical professionals from any
field are still needed; equipment will be provided. Some
professionals can gain continuing education credits by
volunteering. For more on receiving care, volunteering to
provide care, or to support the event in other ways, contact
Randy Meyer at 541-937-2786 or randy@
caringhandsworldwide.org.
• Centro Latino Americano is seeking mentors for its
youth mentoring program. The program serves at-risk Latino
youth in the community and offers community engagement,
increases their social skills and connects them with
resources. Mentors are needed for one-on-one mentoring
relationships with youth as well as group mentoring, which
includes two-hour sessions twice a month and monthly
group outings. If you are interested in mentoring call 541-
687-2667 or email mentor@centrolatinoamericano.org. And
on Sept. 23 Centro is organizing a DACA renewal clinic for
those who need to renew their applications before Oct. 5 in
order to meet the current government deadline. Each
application costs $497, and Centro is raising funds to cover
the costs for as many young immigrants as possible. They
estimate that about 120 local people are in need of these
services. Go to centrolatinoamericano.org to donate to the
effort via PayPal.
• 350 Eugene hosts a Fall Membership Potluck and
Meet-up at First United Methodist Church, 1376 Olive Street
on Sept. 28. Betzi Hitz of 350 says, “At 6 pm bring vegetarian
food or drink to share and your own plate/bowl, cup and
eating utensils.” At 7 pm the guest speaker is David Stone
from Friends for Douglas Fir Monument, and there will be
campaign updates and action break outs. The lead campaign
for the coming year is the fight against the Pacific Connector
Pipeline and Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas (LNG) export
terminal.
• Womenspace ‘invites the public to join us in
remembering victims, standing up for survivors, and fighting
for a safe community.” A Vigil for Victims and Survivors of
Intimate Partner Violence is the opening event for Domestic
Violence Awareness Month. The nonprofit says, “Together, we
will remember victims killed by an intimate partner, celebrate
survivors who have overcome abuse and support community
members who are currently surviving abuse from an intimate
partner.” Community members of all ages and genders are
encouraged to attend 6 to 7 pm Sunday, Oct. 1, at Wayne
Morse Free Speech Plaza in downtown Eugene.
•The nonprofit Community Veterinary Center is having
an open house 2 to 4 pm Oct. 1 at 470 Highway 99 North in
Eugene. The event celebrates the completion of a new
addition, a surgery and x-ray room, financed totally by
numerous donors across Lane County. Info at communityvet.
org.
• CAHOOTS-Metro (aka Springfield CAHOOTS) is now
available 24 hours per day, every day, as of Sept. 1. CAHOOTS
(Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) got a federal
grant from Lane County for mobile mental health crisis
intervention and was already available 24-hours per day in
Eugene, with two vans in service during peak hours, for
reasons primarily related to addiction, homelessness and
poverty, the group says. Each CAHOOTS team consists of an
emergency medical technician or registered nurse and a
mental-health crisis worker. Services provided include crisis
counseling, transportation to shelter and treatment facilities,
family mediation, first aid and more — all at no cost. In
Eugene call the Eugene Police Department non-emergency
dispatchers at 541-682-5111. And for CAHOOTS-Metro,
covering Glenwood and Springfield call the Springfield Police
Department non-emergency dispatchers at 541-726-3714.
For more info visit whitebirdclinic.org.
• An interfaith group including Sikh, Quaker, Muslim and
Christian communities has been working together to feed
the hungry. The volunteers feed an average of 300 people
every Sunday at First Christian Church at 12th and Oak in
Eugene. If you wish to help, please join them either 10 am to
noon Saturdays to prepare food and set up the dining room,
or 7 am to 10:30 am Sundays for cooking, serving and
cleaning up breakfast.
6
September 21, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
AN ECCO STUDENT
SURVEYS THE
CLEARCUT NEAR LCC
PHOTO: STEVE CONNELLY
A CLEARCUT PROTEST
Possible McMansions near LCC cause concerns
D
riving up 30th, you may have noticed a massive
gash in the forest next to Lane Community College.
The clearcut adjacent to LCC may soon be home
to McMansions, thanks to a few well-known land
profiteers who operate in the area: the McDougal
brothers. But LandWatch Lane County has filed an appeal to
fight the planned development there.
High school students at the Lane Community College
Early College and Career Opportunities (ECCO) program
protested the clearcut near their school during class on Fri-
day, Sept. 15. Several dozen students walked out of their
classroom, accompanied by an instructor, to check out the
clearcut nearby.
ECCO LCC instructor Steve Connelly says, “That day
the students organized themselves to go see the clearcut.”
Connelly came along for the ride.
The clearcut spans over 130 acres adjacent to LCC,
despite Oregon Department of Forestry rules limiting
clearcuts under the same ownership to 120 acres.
The forested area changed ownership in May to three
different companies owned by Norman and Melvin Mc-
Dougal: Leelynn Inc, Wiley Mt. Inc, and McDougal Broth-
ers Inc. The McDougals are a pair of well-known land
developers with a spotty reputation thanks projects such
as the mining of scenic Parvin Butte, a landfill that kept
catching fire, and an attempt to get a water right on the
McKenzie River that was ruled water speculation.
“We came back to school this year and there’s this huge
frickin’ gash above the school that’s set up to have a bunch
of 4,000- or 5,000-square-foot houses on,” Connelly says
of the clearcut near LCC.
KC Westphal, a 17-year-old ECCO student, says she’s
frustrated to see the forest coming down to make way for
large houses “because we only have 2 percent of our forests
left in Oregon.”
Her classmate Paisley Eidemiller, 16, says they decid-
ed to check out the clearcut after hearing the construction
noises and seeing the gaps in the forest. “We were walking
across the tree graveyard, as I like to call it,” Eidemiller
says. “It hurts to feel like that’s gone, and that it’s no longer
going to be a part of that community, and when we look up
there instead we’ll see people looking down on us.”
Lauri Segel-Vaccher at LandWatch Lane County says
her organization is already tracking the McDougals’ plans
for that land. The land is zoned F2, which is forested rural
land. According to Segel-Vaccher, F2 zoning generally re-
quires that parcels are over 80 acres, and each parcel is only
permitted one “forest template dwelling.”
But an odd loophole in county code, she says, allows
parcels that are already under 80 acres to undergo property
line adjustment. She says this is the McDougals’ plan —
to divide up the larger plots into pseudo-subdivisions for
large, mansion-style houses, but with far fewer regulations
than a subdivision would have within the Eugene urban
growth boundary (UGB).
“I’ve been asking for code amendments to address this,”
she adds.
The developers would sell the parcels for a tidy profit
after getting approval for each plot to have a dwelling and
a well, she says, adding that the McDougals have done this
before across the county. “The approvals go with the prop-
erty not with the owner,” Segel-Vaccher says, meaning the
new owners of the parcels won’t have to do any paperwork
to get approval for wells or housing. She says the McDou-
gals “turn forestland into home sites.”
She says this is a major environmental concern because
those parcels may not have enough water to sustain six
different wells and the needs of six different households.
None of this requires testing by the county, thanks to the
F2 zoning. “The planning commission has the belief, buyer
beware. That is their attitude when it comes to water,” Se-
gel-Vaccher says of Lane County.
Since the land is outside the UGB, the new develop-
ments won’t be hooked up to municipal water or sewer.
This means there will also be a septic tank attached to each
house. “If there weren’t so many of them in such close
proximity it wouldn’t be a big deal,” she says, but septic
tanks fill up and leak over time, and “people don’t neces-
sarily repair or replace them the minute they start leaking.”
The high school students at ECCO say they plan to pro-
test the clearcut in the future, and they may soon have an
opportunity. Segel-Vaccher says that her organization has
already sprung into action. “The organization I work with,
LandWatch Lane County, has filed an appeal of a proposal
they made to the county. It was also appealed by a neigh-
bor.”
She adds, “What we’re appealing is the county’s ap-
proval of these lots being lawfully created.”
EW reached out to the McDougals for comment, but
didn’t receive a response before press time.
Those interested in supporting LandWatch Lane Coun-
ty’s appeal can attend a hearing scheduled for 9:30 am
Thursday, Oct. 5, at the Lane County Customer Service
Center located on North Delta Highway.