Cottage Grove sentinel., December 23, 2015, Image 1

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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2015
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Timber sale near
recreation area
draws protest
VOLUME 128 • NUMBER 26
C OURT REPORT
Also
inside:
Environmental groups say BLM's 'John's
Last Stand' sale must be stopped
BY JON STINNETT
The Cottage Grove Sentinel
E
nvironmental groups op-
posed to a timber sale
near a popular recreation area
southeast of Cottage Grove say
they plan to continue their ef-
forts to stop the cutting of tim-
ber there, even as the Bureau of
Land Management moves for-
ward with the sale.
On Thursday, the BLM re-
portedly accepted the low bid
of $140,775.50 for the John’s
Last Stand timber sale, a 49-
acre mature stand of trees slated
for regeneration harvest near
the Hardesty Trail and Roadless
Area, a popular recreation desti-
nation for hikers and mountain
bikers about 25 miles southeast
of Eugene.
Josh Loughlin, Executive
Director of Eugene-based Cas-
cadia Wildlands, said his orga-
nization has fi led a formal pro-
test for the sale, which has been
auctioned but not yet contracted
by the BLM.
“We’re hoping that with the
public opposition to the sale and
the support for a unique roadless
area, the BLM will recognize
that it’s not in the public inter-
est to proceed with this reckless
sale,” Loughlin said. “We have
a long, rich history of working
to safeguard this area. This is
the closest roadless area of old-
growth for places like Eugene
and Cottage Grove. It’s a timber
sale planned in the wrong place;
to choose a location that’s never
been logged before in a roadless
area is a slap in the face.”
On Monday, Kristine Struck,
a BLM Planning and Environ-
mental Specialist who analyzed
the implications of the sale with
regard to the National Environ-
mental Policy Act (NEPA) for
the BLM, and Brian Bickford,
BLM Supervisory Forester, said
the sale and subsequent protest
was part of a public process
stretching back to December
of 2014 with the scoping of the
Lost Creek Environmental As-
sessment, which includes the
John’s Last Stand timber sale.
The BLM released the analysis
of the sale in September, which
included options not to harvest,
to thin certain areas or opt for re-
generation harvest. Its decision
was issued in November, and
the BLM received two letters of
protest in early December.
Struck and Bickford said that
some concerns the BLM heard
in response to its plan for the
sale were taken into consider-
ation. The sale is about half the
size of its original plan due to
wildlife concerns including the
existence of red tree voles in
many of the mature trees there.
There will be no roads built to
harvest the timber, they said,
and the area will be logged by
helicopters. Still, they say the
land is designated for sustained
harvest.
“We’re required to manage
the area for a sustained timber
yield,” Struck said.
There are no treatments
planned in riparian areas of the
sale, Struck said, and she point-
ed out that the sale is adjacent
to but not actually located in the
Mt. Hardesty Roadless Area.
The BLM could make chang-
es to its plan in response to the
protests it received, potentially
modifying, re-analyzing or even
scrapping the project. If the pro-
tests are denied, those who pro-
tested have 30 days to appeal the
decision to the Interior Board of
Land Appeals.
Loughlin said that Cascadia
will fi ght the sale for as long as
is necessary.
“We’ll work overtime until
this sale is withdrawn,” he said.
Letters to Santa
photo by Jon Stinnett
Judge Martin Fisher listens to testimony in Cottage Grove Municipal Court on
Thursday morning. Fisher recently delivered his second annual report on the court.
Local children tell the
big man what they
really want
Municipal Court works to
balance justice, effi ciency
BY JON STINNETT
The Cottage Grove Sentinel
defendants in cases where the district attorney
would be unlikely to prosecute the offender.
A
t its most recent meeting, Municipal
Court Judge Martin Fisher told the Cot-
tage Grove City Council that the Court “con-
tinues to make progress toward balancing effi -
ciency with justice,” and Fisher’s annual report
to the Council included both evidence of that
progress and the challenges the court continues
to face in its pursuit.
In the Council chambers at City Hall most
Thursday mornings, the Cottage Grove Mu-
nicipal Court handles cases involving traffi c
violations and misdemeanor crimes — crimes
punishable by not more than a year in jail and
a $6250 fi ne. The Court handled 659 criminal
citations and 1060 violations in 2015 and 705
criminal citations and 954 violations the year
prior.
The Court may also assess up to fi ve years of
probation, and it treats certain crimes that are
essentially Class-C felonies as misdemeanors,
most often drug offenses, for which charges of
attempts to commit the crime are levied against
Not always ‘fi ne’
Fisher told the Council that Court Clerk Mi-
chelle Rounsaville has recently “spent a fair
amount of her non-court time on the job sort-
ing through old fi les, many of which have un-
paid fi nes that have languished for years.”
Fisher told the Council that Rounsaville has
been “fi nding stacks of fi les that had fi nes as-
sessed and no effort made at collection,” add-
ing that “some have sat there for six or seven
years.” He later said that the failure to collect
those outstanding fi nes, amounting to a total
of $195,170.64 this year, could also have been
due to “collection avenues that weren’t being
fully utilized” and a change in collection agen-
cies.
“We had an agency that wasn’t particularly
responsive,” he said.
Thus, while the number of cases seen by the
Court increased in 2015 and the amount of
Off-road
Police believe theft of
truck from one of their
own may have been
'malicious,' page 3A
Please see COURT, Page 11A
New underpass is underwater, and it may be for a while
BY JON STINNETT
The Cottage Grove Sentinel
H
eavy rains have fl ooded an underpass
built last summer to bring users of a
popular trail under a nearby roadway, and it
looks like the underpass may not be usable any
time soon.
Lane County teamed up with the Bureau of
Land Management to pursue funding and con-
struct the underpass at the intersection of Row
River Road and the Row River Trail, which
was built at a cost of $1.2 million and dedi-
cated in July. Last week, heavy rainfall fl ooded
the underpass, and county offi cials say it will
stay that way until the waters recede on their
own.
“The tunnel will be fl ooded until the waters
recede,” said Janet Mayer, Design Engineer
with Lane County Public Works. “It’s in an
area that is historically fl ood-prone, and it’s
just too low to drain.”
Mayer said it “would’ve been incredibly ex-
pensive” to design the underpass in a way that
it could be drained for all fl ood events, so the
County and BLM chose not to.
“We made the judgment call to allow the un-
derpass to fl ood in heavy rains since we already
had a usable at-grade crossing,” she said.
For now, trail users will be utilizing that
at-grade crossing until the nearby river levels
drop, though Mayer pointed out that there is
typically far less trail traffi c this time of year.
She added that the at-grade crossing, which
was in part built to accommodate riders on
horseback, as horses are typically wary of
walking through tunnels, is now much safer
than the crossing that saw two cyclist fatalities
in a four-year span.
“Hopefully the fl ooding won’t occur this way
all that many times,” she said. “The tunnel held
up for a fair amount of time, but the water’s not
going to recede anytime in the near future.”
courtesy photo
Heavy rains have fl ooded the tunnel under Row River Road that was built this summer,
and the waters may not recede anytime soon.
Principal Brokers
Happy Holidays to you!
and a warm home too!
from your loyal friends and neighbors at
Rain Country Realty!
Teresa Abbott ..................221-1735
Frank Brazell....................953-2407
Lane Hillendahl ................942-6838
Brokers
Laurie Phillip....................430-0756
Valerie Nash ....................521-1618
Licensed in the
State of Oregon
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