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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MAY 28, 2019
How the state almost clearcut a scenic river
Timber sale
canceled near
Nehalem River
By ROB DAVIS
The Oregonian
Protections were coming
to the Nehalem River.
In late February, the
state parks commission
agreed the river that ambles
through the heavily logged
Coast Range should be des-
ignated as a scenic water-
way. State water offi cials
concurred.
Environmental groups
had been pushing the
cause for years. Calling
the Nehalem scenic would
require landowners and log-
gers to consult with parks
offi cials on ways to reduce
visual impacts of future
clearcuts or other projects
along the river.
All the designation
needed was Gov. Kate
Brown’s signature. The
only time Brown desig-
nated scenic rivers, just
four months lapsed between
the formal recommendation
and the governor’s order.
Yet when the Nehalem
landed on the governor’s
desk earlier this year, advo-
cates with the environmen-
tal group Oregon Wild said
the governor’s staff told
them it wouldn’t be signed
until after the Legislature
adjourned, delaying its
implementation until 2020.
Things were “very del-
icate” in the state Senate,
Oregon Wild conservation
director Steve Pedery said
his group was told.
Translation:
Brown
needed state Sen. Betsy
Johnson’s support on more
important things. And the
Nehalem is in the Scap-
poose Democrat’s district.
Although Johnson wouldn’t
respond when asked her
position on the scenic des-
ignation, she routinely sides
with timber interests on leg-
islative matters. She’s taken
more than $100,000 in cam-
Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian
The state backed away from a clearcut near the Nehalem River.
paign money from timber.
The delay meant the
Oregon Department of For-
estry had more time to work
on clearcutting a section of
the Nehalem that parks staff
cited as particularly sce-
nic. Discussions about sell-
ing the state-owned tim-
ber began a year before the
state started trying to pro-
tect the Nehalem.
While the scenic desig-
nation sat unsigned by the
governor, the Department
of Forestry pushed forward
to cut 70 acres of hemlock,
alder and fi r, some as old as
80 years.
The
state
agency’s
planned clearcut sat entirely
in what would become the
scenic corridor.
Legal defi nition
One sunny day in May
2017, staff from the Ore-
gon Parks and Recreation
Department donned life
jackets, piled into rafts and
slid into the Nehalem’s
inviting waters.
The undammed river
starts in the highlands of the
Tillamook State Forest, coil-
ing back on itself like an
uroboros as it zags almost
119 miles through the
Coast Range, ending where
Nehalem Bay empties into
the Pacifi c.
The bureaucrats’ mission:
Decide whether the views
along a 17.5-mile stretch of
river met the state’s legal
defi nition of scenic.
Was the scene pleasing,
We Specialize in Septic
System repair,
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“as viewed from the river
and related adjacent land”?
If it was, the Nehalem
could be designated as the
latest scenic waterway, a
program created by a large
majority of Oregon vot-
ers in 1970. A scenic des-
ignation requires landown-
ers to notify state parks staff
about development plans
within a quarter-mile of the
river and try to fi nd ways to
avoid things that look bad. If
they disagree, a landowner
just needs to wait a year
before doing what they want
anyway.
It’s not the strictest
requirement. But most of
the time, state offi cials say,
it works.
Though rivers can be
continually added, the effort
has languished since its cre-
ation. Before Brown rec-
ognized scenic stretches of
the Molalla and Chetco riv-
ers in 2016, none had been
named since 1988, when
voters added to the list of
rivers originally designated
in 1970. On their 2017 fl oat
trip, the state employees
undertook a rudimentary
analysis: They looked at the
scenery, river mile by river
mile.
The views they found
were undeniably pleasing.
Along the Nehalem, mossy
alders sigh over glassy
pools. Kingfi shers rattle as
they alight. Endless fl ows
whisper their never-ending
story, an emerald susurrus of
water over boulders.
Their launch spot met the
legal defi nition. “Generally
pleasing,” they noted in a
report.
On they fl oated, past a
state campground called
Beaver Eddy. It met the
legal test, too: “A pleasing
river view with steep for-
ested slopes.”
Downstream,
they
passed another campground
called Morrison Eddy. The
view? “Of very high scenic
quality.”
And in an area heav-
ily logged for genera-
tions, where all the old
growth vanished by the
end of World War II, the
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