VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Quick takes
Shasta Baney
Maybe I have too much humanity, yes
they are in jail. But should not be on concrete
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need any luxury but basic humane treatment
is a must.
Glenda Jones
If we can send young men to war, we
should take care of old men when they
come back damaged to hell. Not throw them
behind bars and deny them basic needs.
Jairod Collins
Suffer in silence. You broke the law, you
pay the price. Believe me those conditions
listed are WAY better than my current
environment.
Matt Hodge
Targeting young tourists
I could be wrong but I wasn’t aware that
hipsters had an interest in equine activities
or delighted in watching wheat grow on a
ranch outside of town.
Jerry Cronin
If you really want young people from
Seattle to come and visit Pendleton stop
calling them hipsters.
Dave Arkless
One of the great lessons of the Twitter age is
that much can be summed up in just a few words.
Here are some of this week’s takes. Tweet yours
@Tim_Trainor or email editor@eastoregonian.
com, and keep them to 140 characters.
Page 5A
Fire’s nature has dramatically changed
Letter from jail
Bummer....being in jail is to punish you
of your crimes not meant to be like “life on
the outside” maybe since you hate it so very
much you won’t come back.
East Oregonian
By MIKE BENEFIELD
Writers on the Range
I
t’s time to move irrigation pipe. It’s one
of those things you have to do when
you have a certain amount of land and
enough water to irrigate it. My knees hurt as
I walk each piece of pipe
over to the next dry spot.
Here in central Oregon,
it’s always a race with
evaporation. The sun
beats down hot as I
hear that familiar sound
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I didn’t always spend
my summers moving
irrigation pipe. I was a
city kid growing up on
the beaches of Southern
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all our possessions in a Volkswagen bus and
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before us. We had both ended up working
for the Forest Service. We rented an old,
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the Entiat River for $185 a month. It was
surrounded by massive black walnut trees
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could do in the winter to survive until the
next summer. Some winters, I’d work at the
local salmon hatchery. As the years passed,
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engine and fuels crews.
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to work in strange places like Alaska,
Kentucky and Georgia, and at increasingly
high elevations in the Rocky Mountains.
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the Wenatchee National Forest began to
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jigsaw puzzle into which Mother Nature
interlocked one blazing
mosaic into another, year
after year. I fought epic
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deserts of the Great Basin
and the Southwest. I was
even sent to the eucalyptus
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to watch the changing
climate, the encroachment
of invasive species and the movement of
people out into the urban interface. Those
hard years included the terrible loss of
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wrong place at the wrong time.
I can remember the times when I
found myself in those wrong places. Like
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my engine company was nearly overrun
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directions. The loads of retardants dropped
directly on us saved us that time, but not
before we had seared the paint off the doors
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burns to our faces and arms. Then there was
the Tyee Fire on the Wenatchee, where I
found myself stuck on a bad road in thick
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from below. Unable to back down, I crept
Those hard
years included
the terrible
loss of fellow
firefighters who
ended up in the
wrong place at
the wrong time.
forward until I found clear air. I took a
long, smoky, tortuous route out of there,
moving through through a blackened forest
of falling rocks and smoking snags that fell
constantly without warning.
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I relocated often. The small towns that
were once quaint (and affordable) logging
towns when I arrived became trendy tourist
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I lived in many places throughout the
West. From Entiat to Roseburg to Prineville
to Burns — all in Oregon — until I landed
in Moab, Utah, where I served in the
Bureau of Land Management as the district
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on mine. But overall, it was an amazing
ride, in which I saw the best and the worst
of people and situations. Always, the work
was challenging. The landscape in which
I served was as inspirational as it was
beautiful. I have lived the dream and then
some.
The noisy old air tanker rumbles off into
the Western sky, just to the right of Black
Butte.
I watch it as it disappears behind Mount
Washington. My mind wanders back to a
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tanker drop its load right on the mark. Soon
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lock the last piece of pipe into the hand line
and crack open the valve. The water begins
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West, it’s a job that requires determination
— and good knees.
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on the Range, an op-ed service of High
Country News. He lives in Terrebonne,
Oregon.
Planning ahead
saves a city
heartache
down the line
I
Changing climate a major
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Perhaps our best hope lies with
thinning. It can be used to mimic
t now seems as if the entire Northwest
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and air quality at unhealthy levels.
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$OWKRXJKWKHUHDUHPDQ\UHDVRQVIRU¿UHV fuel” — small understory trees that act
warm weather and drought are certainly
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important ones. And recent trends
ground to the tree tops, where it then races
showing reduced rainfall and declining
from one tree to another.
mountain snowpack will be repeated if
After thinning an area, it could then be
Eastern Oregon’s drought continues into
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the future.
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In February and March of this year,
controlled manner, because it recycles
the Eastern Oregon Forum presented
nutrients and removes the small fuels
a series of talks about how the climate
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of northeastern Oregon is changing,
of our forests now contain so much fuel
including possible impacts of climate
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experience, either for the forest or the
human health, water resources and
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What can be done to help forests, and
responding to climate change effects on
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forests.
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Obviously, we can’t control the
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weather. But we can take actions to better
Although many different approaches
prepare our forests for increasing levels of could be used, here are six strategies I
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are related to changing climate conditions.
Resistance. Let’s help our existing
It is important to take these actions soon.
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Fires are predicted to burn up to six times
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more acreage, each year, in the Blue
thick with small trees has little resistance
Mountains by the middle of this century
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than was burned annually between 1950
widely spaced trees can, and will, survive
and 2003.
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Much of the Blue Mountains are meant OHW¶VDSSO\SUHVFULEHG¿UHZKHQLWLVVDIH
to burn, and most of our native plants
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cycle. Prior to settlement by European
Resilience. Thinning helps our existing
emigrants, dry forests at low elevations
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But how should we create resilient forests
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killing few large trees but consuming
increase the distance between trees, let’s
needles, twigs, downed logs, and small
plant species that are better adapted to
seedlings.
future conditions, especially trees with
After settlement, humans began
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current species that invaded after we
But after years of overprotection from
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Let’s plant more Ponderosa pine and
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trees. When these forests burn, as they
Restoration. Forests have changed
inevitably will, they burn hotter, faster,
a lot over the last century, largely in
and more completely than ever before.
response to human uses and demands. If
What can be done to prepare our
we can restore their species composition
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(the mix of species in a forest), their
By DAVID C. POWELL
I
structure (the mix of different tree sizes
in a forest), and their density (the amount
of space between trees in a forest), then
we will have also restored much of their
capacity to adapt to future climate change.
Redundancy. Let’s resist the
temptation to put all our eggs in one
basket. We think we know how the
climate will change in the future, but
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holds many surprises for us and our
wildland ecosystems. If we provide a
diversity of tree species, forest structures,
and stand densities, then future forests
will have the tools to better deal with a
wide array of possible climate outcomes.
Resources. Fires this summer have
clearly shown that we do not have enough
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than now. The highest priority will always
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harm people and their infrastructure, with
lower priority being areas distant enough
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natural role. We also need to allocate more
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Relationships. Restoring forest
resistance and resilience requires active
management treatments such as thinning
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involvement by collaborative groups in
the Blue Mountains, consensus to move
forward with these treatments will not be
reached. For public lands, collaboration
needs to lead to trust, or else active
management projects will continue to
be challenged and litigated. Building
relationships between diverse stakeholders
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land management.
Ŷ
David C. Powell is a member of the
Umatilla County climate change focus
group. He presented a discussion about
climate change and forestry at an EO
Forum on in February, which was held
at Blue Mountain Community College in
Pendleton.
n my last article, I agreed with Larry
O’Rourke that the problem cities have
is systemic. The solution I proffered
was running the city like a Homeowners
Association. I have had many questions about
this.
It was the accounting portion of the HOA
I was alluding to. This accounting method
helps to assess the costs and is
the basis for what is needed to
quantify income to the HOA.
However, an HOA goes
beyond that. It actually has
individual accounts for assets.
For example, let’s say the
arts center has a roof with a
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years old. The cost of the
Al
roof new was $100,000. If
Plute
the HOA is set up to fund 100
Comment
percent yearly,
then $5,000 plus
cost of living is
Once you
set aside annually.
can ascertain
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thousand dollars
what the true
plus cost of living
is in a fund for the
cost of each
replacement of the
of the items is,
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This is important
you can make
because this
money can be used
informed
for preventative
maintenance or
decisions on
emergency repairs
whether or
on the roof, which
may extend the
not you want
life of the roof
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to keep it.
so. When the
roof needs to be
replaced, the money is already available.
Even more important is that the money
cannot be used for anything else. It is not
arbitrary.
HOAs usually have three areas of
accounting. For the city, it would be, for
example, common areas maintenance that
would include streets, sidewalks and parks,
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ambulance, court facilities, permits, water
services and cemeteries, and third amenities
such as the Vert Auditorium, library, art
center, aquatic park, skateboard park and
ice skating rink. Each one of these items
mentioned has a cost attributed to it.
Once you can ascertain what the true
cost of each of the items is, you can make
informed decisions on whether or not you
want to keep it. You will also know how
much revenue has to be collected to support
them, individually and as a consolidated
group. This is the most important piece of
information we need to know and the one our
city cannot tell you at this time.
The next logical step is to determine how
to maintain these assets going forward. Our
current revenue stream is not adequate to
maintain or replace these items. We are at a
crossroads. If we continue on the same course
we have been on for decades, we can expect
further decline in the condition of our city
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well as attractive both to tourists and visitors
looking at the city as their potential new
home, and to those of us who proudly call
Pendleton home today.
Ŷ
Al Plute is a Pendleton city councilor.
Contact him at al.plute@ci.pendleton.or.us