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About The Siuslaw news. (Florence, Lane County, Or.) 1960-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 4, 2019)
SN THESIUSLAWNEWS.COM TH Fall 2019 Class Schedule Florence Center 3149 Oak Street Enhance Your Skills, Prepare for a New Career, Pursue Your Inspiration Registration opens Sept. 3 Classes start Sept. 30 Register at lanecc.edu/ce Siuslaw News WEDNESDAY EDITION | SEPTEMBER 4, 2019 | $1.00 INSIDE Today’s Issue School starts this week for Mapleton and Siuslaw School Districts. Here’s to a great 2019-20 School Year! Sheriffs, family seek man missing since Sunday VOL. 129, NO. 71 NEWS & VIEWS THAT DEFINE OUR COMMUNITY F LORENCE , O REGON WEATHER Partly cloudy with wind. A high of 74 and a low of 56. Full forecast on A3 COMMUNITY MARK BRENNAN/SIUSLAW NEWS A group from the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group and the local communi- ty gathered at the South Jetty of the Siuslaw River on Aug. 31 to clear the area of plastics, both large and small. More than 10 garbage bags were filled with plastic in two hours. Students pick up plastic at South Jetty Wildlife Over Waste River Cleanup targets foam, microplastics By Mark Brennan Siuslaw News Roots of Empathy builds connection INSIDE — A3 SPORTS Siuslaw holds first jamboree INSIDE — SPORTS RECORDS Obituaries & emergency response logs Inside — A2 KID SCOOP Activities and comics every Wednesday Inside — B5 CLASSIFIEDS Listings and public notices Inside — B6 FOLLOW US FOR THE LATEST NEWS : /S IUSLAW N EWS @S IUSLAW N EWS T HE S IUSLAW N EWS . COM Postal Customer Florence, Ore. 97439 T he Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG) sent a contingent of students to the South Jetty of the Siuslaw River on Satur- day with a two-fold purpose. The first was to help interest- ed locals clean the beaches by the jetty and dune trails at the popular hiking location. The second was to raise aware- ness on a topic that Florence consumers and businesses are very familiar with: Styrofoam, or Poly-Styrene Foam (PSF). Darcy O’Brien is the OS- PIRG Campus Organizer at Southern Oregon University who helped coordinate the Wildlife Over Waste River Cleanup. While the turnout for the clean-up was light, the enthu- siasm of those who did partic- ipate was high. “We spent about two hours walking along the beach pick- ing up trash, and each collect- ed about a medium-sized bag full,” O’Brien said. “Although the beach seemed clean, there were plenty of bottles and larger pieces of trash. Nearly every patch of sand had some form of small plastic piec- es, including a toy army man who’d lost his limbs and had been sanded down over time.” Currently, OSPIRG is en- couraging municipalities to follow in the path set by Flor- ence to completely ban PSF in all of its many forms across the state. Some progress has been made in this effort, but a statewide ban on the food related materials has proven difficult. The primary reason for the focus on PSF is the tendency of the material to break down into small pieces, known as micro-particles. These parti- cles of plastic are extremely difficult to collect once they have deteriorated and become mixed with sand, dirt and other organic materials found in nature. The PSF particles cannot be easily picked up by hand and sea creatures and birds will of- ten ingest them with the food they eat. The toxins used to create and bind PSF contain- ers can then progress up the food chain, eventually making their way into humans, where these chemicals have been shown to cause cancer. See PLASTICS page 7A DeFazio bill’s provision would fund U.S. Coast Guard during future shutdowns By Mark Brennan Siuslaw News S IUSLAW N EWS 2 S ECTIONS | 24 P AGES C OPYRIGHT 2019 According to U.S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Commit- tee Chairman Peter DeFazio, a representative from Oregon, the federal government should pay all of its employees, espe- cially those that provide for the security of the nation and its citizens. DeFazio believes these employees should be paid even when the government is shut down for political reasons tied into the budget, as happened earlier in 2019. “I am a huge fan of the U.S. Coast Guard,” DeFazio said during the Oregon Coastal Caucus Economic Summit (OCCES) in Florence in Au- gust. “We recently passed a good Coast Guard bill out of my committee that actually in- creases funding for the Coast Guard, which has been chron- ically underfunded. … This bill will address some of the needs for their shore-side fa- cilities and will assure that we are moving forward with new ice breakers and new offshore ships.” The belief that the Coast Guard should always be paid, regardless of the budgetary constraints in place at any giv- en time, is the basic premise, and the motivation, for leg- islation recently introduced into their respective legislative bodies by DeFazio and U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden. The legislation was passed by the House earlier this year and was mentioned by both men during last month’s OC- CES. Now, the Senate will take up its own version of the act when senators return to work in Washington D.C. later this month. In DeFazio’s opinion, one echoed through other Ore- gon governmental positions, the current manner in which funding for the Coast Guard is appropriated does not recog- nize the inherent importance of those who guard America’s 12,383 miles of coastline. Un- der the existing budget, the partial federal government shutdown in January did not contain any mechanism for paying the Coast Guard, which operates under the auspices of Homeland Security. Oddly, Homeland Security, which oversees more than 20 other organizations dedicated to the security of the coun- try, is also not funded during shutdowns. These include important departments such as United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, See USCG page 8A On Sunday, Sept. 1, at 5:49 p.m., the Lane County Sher- iff ’s Office (LCSO) received a report of a missing subject, last seen near Florence. Jeremy Golden, a 38-year- Jeremy Golden old white male, was last seen on Saturday, Aug. 31, at about 6 p.m. Golden was camping with his family at Honeyman State Park, south of Florence. Siuslaw Valley Fire and Rescue assembled a ground team Monday morning (Sept. 2) and searched several miles of trails where Golden’s family suspected him to have gone. The team did not find any indication that Golden used such trails. Golden is described as standing 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing approximately 250 pounds, with short black hair and blue eyes. See MISSING page 8A SIUSLAW NEWS FILE PHOTO Community Coalition hosts panel on proposed housing codes Those who are curious about the new pro- posed housing codes for the City of Florence are invited to attend a panel discussion at the monthly meeting of the Florence Area Community Coalition, today, Sept. 4, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. in the Bromley Room of the Siuslaw Public Library, 1460 Ninth St. All are invited to attend the panel discussion. There will be refreshments available. The three panel members are Dylan Hu- ber-Heidorn, Aric Sneddon and Brian Jagoe. Huber-Heidorn serves as Planning Tech- nician for the City of Florence and is knowl- edgeable about current and proposed codes. Sneddon is a realtor at Coldwell Banker Coast Real Estate and a member of the Com- munity and Economic Development Com- mittee’s subcommittee reviewing the pro- posed housing codes. Jagoe is a principal broker at TR Hunter Real Estate. He and his wife, Jan, own The River Gallery. Jagoe is active in the Florence Planning Commission and the Merchants of Old Town. To continue to bring monthly programs that serve the community, the public is re- minded to renew membership with or join Florence Area Community Coalition. Dues are $25 for individuals or $50 for organiza- tions and run from July 1 through June 30 each year. For more information, visit www. florenceareacc.org.
