Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 5, 2017)
3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2017 Chinese ban on waste imports Poll: Majority puts Northwest recycling in limbo oppose state tax on health care Too many contaminants By PARIS ACHEN Capital Bureau By CASSANDRA PROFITA Oregon Public Broadcasting Apparently, people in the United States haven’t been doing a very good job of sort- ing trash from recycling — and the Chinese government has noticed. China doesn’t want loads of paper and plastic waste that often have contaminants like dirty diapers inside. So, the government is crack- ing down on the shipment of recyclable material from the U.S. By the end of the year, much of the mixed plastic and paper in recycling bins will be banned from China. That leaves companies in the Northwest without buy- ers for much of the material they collect from curbside bins, which could mean recyclables will end up in a landfi ll. Peter Spendelow, natural resource specialist with the Ore- gon Department of Environ- mental Quality, said the loss of Chinese buyers is a major dis- ruption in the recycling market. It’s unclear where all the paper and plastic will go instead. “We’ve seen markets go up and down before, but this is big,” he said. “When the major buyer cuts out with almost no notice — it’s going to be a struggle for a while. There’s just no way around it.” Recycling companies have warned regulators that they Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian China is concerned about the amount of contaminants in U.S. waste. may need permission to trash recyclables while they look for new buyers. Some, including Far West Recycling in Portland, are slowing down their operations to more carefully remove gar- bage to meet China’s new stan- dards for contamination. Far West outreach manager Vinod Singh said he’s most con- cerned about where his com- pany is going to send all of its mixed paper — things like junk mail, catalogs, small cardboard boxes and packaging — which will only increase with the holi- day season approaching. “China is by far the big- gest consumer of mixed paper,” he said. “They’re the global consumer.” There’s already fewer buy- ers because China is still in the process of reissuing licenses to recycling companies. Mean- while, prices for recyclable materials are dropping. So, while Far West is spending more to sort trash from recycla- bles it’s also making less on the materials it’s selling. “People are starting to get nervous that we’re putting things on order that won’t get there before the ban kicks in,” he said. Spendelow said Northwest recyclers used to sell mixed paper to local paper mills, but two of those mills in Oregon have closed in recent years and one in Longview, Washington, stopped taking mixed paper. Spendelow and Singh both agreed that people who are putting materials in their recy- cling bins can help the cause by making sure they only put the approved recyclable items in their curbside bins. “The public can’t help much for fi nding markets for these materials,” Spendelow said. “But this is a good time to really think about what you’re putting in your bin and make sure you’re not putting in things that don’t belong there.” Things like garden hoses, plastic bags and Christmas tree light strings don’t belong in the curbside recycling bin and cause major problems at the sorting facility. “They get wrapped around the screens and they clog up the machinery,” he said. “They just slow up the process and send your things on the long road to the landfi ll instead of the short road.” Attorney claims a ‘staggering’ number of Boy Scouts were abused By ANDREW SELSKY Associated Press SALEM — Three former Boy Scouts are suing the Boy Scouts of America and its Port- land-area chapter for $21 mil- lion, alleging it hired a known pedophile who then sexually abused them in the 1970s. One of the attorneys who fi led the lawsuit said his fi rm has handled close to 100 sim- ilar cases against the scouting organization, and that the num- ber of victims is “staggering.” The Boy Scouts of America knew of thousands of cases of scout leaders sexually abusing scouts over decades, attorney Peter Janci said. “Following their founding in the early 1900s, by 1935 the Boy Scouts had already caught 1,000 scout leaders who had sexually abused Boy Scouts,” Janci told The Associated Press in an email. “Boy Scout documents and testimony show that there were more than 2,000 secret fi les on pedophile scout lead- ers created just between 1965 and 1985, and more than 6,000 were created from 1970- 2007,” Janci said. The Boy Scouts claim to have destroyed many of the fi les, he added. The lawsuit against the Boy Scouts and its local chap- ter, the Cascade Pacifi c Coun- cil, says Calvin Malone was kicked out of scouting after he had been caught abusing at least one scout in Califor- nia in 1970. The suit says that Malone was hired to be a scout leader in Portland in 1974. Internal scout documents Janci provided show the Boy Scouts warned the Cascade Pacifi c Chapter, soon after it hired Malone in 1974, that he had provided alcohol to scouts, but made no mention of sex- ual abuse. Janci said Malone has testifi ed that he abused a scout in California and that the boy turned him in to the Boy Scouts. Janci says the Boy Scouts knew of the abuse and started a secret fi le on Malone. The three former Boy Scouts in Oregon said they were allegedly sexually assaulted by Malone in 1974 and 1975 when they were 10 to 13 years old. After being fi red from the Boy Scouts in Portland in 1975 — documents show it was because he had spent more than $1,000 in scout funds on himself — the Boy Scouts allowed Malone to rejoin scouting in Montana, the law- yers said. Four men have sued the Boy Scouts in Montana for sexual abuse Malone allegedly perpetrated there. Malone was convicted of rape and child molestation in 1993 and is being held in a special detention facility for sex offenders in Washington state. The Boy Scouts of Amer- ica said Wednesday it can- not discuss ongoing litigation. But Matthew Devore, chief executive offi cer of the Cas- cade Pacifi c Council, said in a statement that “the Boy Scouts of America is outraged there have been times when scouts were abused and we sincerely apologize to victims and their families.” Devore said since these alleged crimes occurred, the Boy Scouts have strength- ened efforts to protect youths, including screening for adult leaders and staff, crimi- nal background checks, and requiring two or more adult leaders be present at all times during scouting activities. The alleged abuse and cov- er-ups recall scandals hitting the Catholic Church for shel- tering pedophile priests, Janci said. “We don’t know the num- ber of victims, but we know that there were thousands of perpetrators,” Janci said. “There were likely exponen- tially more pedophiles who were not reported.” SALEM — Most Ore- gonians oppose a proposed $600 million tax on health insurance policy premiums to fund the state’s Medicaid program, according to a sur- vey by icitizen. About 58 percent of 645 respondents surveyed online by the Nashville pollster said they oppose the tax, while 35 percent support it. Icitizen did not verify whether respondents were registered voters, only that they were Oregon residents. Three Republican state lawmakers want to refer parts of the law — which raises a variety of revenues to help the state pay for the Oregon Health Plan, the state’s version of Medicaid. “We have not done any polling so I have nothing to compare it to, but I would say it is consistent with feedback we have received from folks who signed the petition,” said state Rep. Julie Parrish, R-West Linn, who spearheaded a petition for the referral. Petitioners must gather nearly 59,000 signatures by today to place the referral on the ballot for a January special election. ‘Connect some dots’ The survey asked respondents: “There is an effort to refer Oregon voters a new, nearly $600 million tax on health insurance pol- icy premiums. The money is intended to cover the costs of the Oregon Health Plan, the state’s Medicaid pro- gram. Would you support this new tax on health insur- ance premiums?” Parrish said the repeal represents only $380 mil- lion out of the $600 million tax. “We’re not referring the entire thing,” she said. Petitioners, who include Parrish and Republican state Reps. Sal Esquivel of Med- ford and Cedric Hayden of Roseburg, want to repeal a 0.7 percent tax on hospitals and providers. Other sections of the law they want to refer to vot- ers are taxes on insurers, the Public Employees Ben- efi ts Board and coordinated care organizations, the regional provider networks for Medicaid patients. They also want to stop a provi- sion of the law that allows insurers to increase premi- ums by up to 1.5 percent to recover costs of the insurer assessment. Patty Wentz, spokesper- son for the Oregon Health Care Coalition, said the poll appears to be timed to achieve a political end. “Let’s connect some dots. You have a push poll with wildly inaccu- rate information released a few days before signature turn-in by a political opera- tive who has been supported by the same extreme right- wing groups as the chief petitioner, such as the Ore- gon Firearms Federation,” Wentz said. “This is a cyn- ical political ploy with no relevance to reality, to the actual referendum, and what’s at stake for the one million Oregonians who count on the Oregon Health Plan and the more than 210,000 people whose pre- miums will increase if the referendum doesn’t pass. Oregonians who want accu- rate information should read the ballot title and the fi scal impact estimate that were created through a bi parti- san public process and are posted online.” Division on DACA Respondents, who were registered users of icitizen, fi lled out the online survey online between Sept. 13 and Sept. 28. The responses were weighted to c ensus benchmarks for gender, age, race, education, region and party identifi cation in the state. The margin of error is 3.9 percentage points for the full sample of 645 respondents. The survey also gauged Oregonians’ views on other state policies. A new law expand- ing coverage of reproduc- tive health care, including abortion, to people of all incomes, U.S. citizenship status and gender identity garnered 49 percent support and 50 percent opposition. Respondents also were almost evenly split over a new law to reduce criminal penalties for possession of heroin, cocaine and meth- amphetamine from a felony to a misdemeanor. A majority of respon- dents, 54 percent, oppose sanctuary cities, which pro- hibit police from profi ling immigrants and from assist- ing federal authorities in enforcing federal immigra- tion law. More than half of respon- dents, 51 percent, support ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The program allows undocu- mented youth brought to the country as children to legally work and attend school here. Capital Bureau reporter Claire Withycombe contrib- uted to this report . Judge won’t release Iraq War veteran fi ghting deportation By GENE JOHNSON Associated Press SEATTLE — An immi- gration judge in Washing- ton state declined to release an Iraq War veteran from custody Wednesday while he fi ghts the government’s efforts to deport him. Chong Kim, a South Korean immigrant and green card holder from Portland, struggled with drug addic- tion, homelessness and post-traumatic stress follow- ing his time in Iraq in 2009 and 2010, leading to convic- Clatsop Post 12 Baked Chicken Dinner tions for burglary and other charges. Kim’s lawyer and friends have said he has done well since completing a substance abuse treatment program run by the Department of Veter- ans Affairs early this year. But immigration agents arrested him in April and brought him to a detention center in Tacoma, Washing- ton. They plan to deport him because of his convictions. “It’s just wrong to be deporting an Army veteran,” said Matt Luce, 41, of Trout- dale, who attended high school with Kim and traveled with three other former class- mates to the hearing Wednes- day. “Despite his convictions, he was on and continues to be on the right path. This is just a travesty of justice.” Kim’s attorney, Tim War- den-Hertz of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said that Immigration Judge Theresa Scala found that the government met its burden to show that Kim posed a danger to the public or a risk of fl ight, though he said she did not explain her rationale in court. Warden-Hertz planned to vappeal the decision, which he said illustrates the diffi - culty of obtaining bond in the immigration detention system. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment Wednesday. In an earlier statement, the agency said Kim had been arrested after “it was deter- mined he has a prior felony conviction in Multnomah County for attempt to com- mit arson in the fi rst degree, among other charges.” ORGAN CONCERT Saturday, October 7 4:00 pm with Rice Pilaf, Veggies, Salad and Bread First Lutheran Church, 725 33rd Street, Astoria Friday Oct. 6 th performed by Paul Tegels 4 pm until gone $ 8. 00 6PM “Karaoke Dave” ASTORIA AMERICAN LEGION Clatsop Post 12 1132 Exchange Street 325-5771 of Pacific Lutheran University A free-will offering will be taken. Kim joined the National Guard in 2005 and served in Iraq in 2009 and 2010 before being honorably discharged. He came to the U.S. more than 35 years ago, at age 5, and he became a legal perma- nent resident in 1981. He does not speak Korean, his friends have said.
