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The Armory:
The whole truth
The EPA, city council, OSHA
and the city manager respond to
Eugene news report of implied
mismanagement and public
health risks
"How dare they compare us to
something
like that," Richard Meyers
cmay@cgsentinel.com
said of a recent report from a Eugene
media outlet which declared the city
of Cottage Grove was not conducting comprehensive lead surveys
on the armory.
The comparison was made between the city's armory and others
around the state which have been closed by the U.S. military until
lead can be addressed in the facilities.
"Those readings were 38,000 and 31,000," Meyers said. "Our
highest reading was 345," he said of the initial lead testing com-
pleted in 2004.
It is Meyers contention that the city is in no way endangering
residents by inviting them to use the armory without conducting
expensive testing. The city is, however, addressing possible lead
levels with Meyers noting that while it does use over the counter
test strips, every contractor is certifi ed in lead removal and no fur-
ther testing is being done because the city assumes the presence of
lead and acts accordingly.
"Not testing before renovating is fi ne if you’re going to treat ev-
erything as if it has lead in it by default," said city councilor Jake
Boone. "We’re not testing because we’re assuming everything
has lead." He also noted that the areas found to contain lead were
cleaned prior to the building being handed over to the city.
"There might be means to worry if lead was introduced after that.
But it hasn’t, he said.
As The Sentinel reported previously, the most likely source for
lead dust, the gun range, has been fi tted with new concrete.
"The gun range went away in the 60s," Boone said."Unless
there’s some reason to think that between 2004 and now someone
was putting lead in the building, there’s no grounds to believe we
should expect to fi nd more lead than was there."
Mark Peterson of OSHA noted that city employees would be re-
quired to follow strict procedures in handling lead. Penny Woos
McCormic of Oregon OSHA also noted that the regulations are tai-
lored to adults with an eight-hour exposure.
"When it comes to Oregon OSHA, we handle worker safety so
our jurisdiction isn’t the general public but they need to protect their
workers," he said.
OSHA standards note that, "If your employees will be working
on a home that was built before 1978, the best thing to do is hire a
certifi ed lead-based paint inspector or a risk assessor, who can tell
you if lead is present and how much is there. Lead paint test kits are
also available, but they may not be 100 percent reliable."
By Caitlyn May
Cottage Grove Mayor Jeff Gowing helps planning commission Alan Widener and other volunteers clean-up discarded greenhouse material on Saturday,
April 1 during a work day aimed at readying a former inmate camp in Veneta for its new residents: veterans suffering from PTSD.
Council members, veterans, volunteers and a mayor
came together on a Saturday to roll up their sleeves and
transform a detention center into a house of hope.
T
he road to get there is
long. A steady climb up a
cmay@cgsentinel.com
winding, narrow country
highway and just when you think
you’ve gone too far, there’s another handful of miles to go. The
journey is both real and metaphoric for the men and women who
will eventually inhabit the former work camp at 21600 Siuslaw
River Rd. in Veneta. The county shut the inmate program down in
2008 leaving the building to the spiders and mice but a new effort
is being made to transform the walls of confi nement into a spring-
board for newfound freedom.
“I told my wife when I retire, I’m going home to the camp.”
Dan Buckwald served as a law enforcement employee at the camp
when it still housed inmates. He watched the low-risk offenders
build greenhouses, cook meals, tend to the property and blossom.
“The city has distractions. The sirens, the lights, the drugs,” he
said. “Here, you’re watching elk graze.”
Buckwald is part of the team at Veterans Legacy that is working
to rebuild the camp as part of a broader goal: to rebuild veterans
down on their luck and looking for help. The group won the right
to lease the property from the county for fi ve years and is in the
process of ironing out the details of what will become a transitional
space for veterans to gather themselves again either from combat or
the subsequent damage it causes including PTSD and the self-med-
ication that sometimes follows.
“We want to give them a place to be,” said Veteran’s Legacy
board member Mark Oberle. “We want to give them a sense of
camaraderie, vocational skills and a place they can come back to, a
support system.”
The program is hoping to start with fi ve veterans but can house
up to 50. Individuals will be recommended to the new camp by
clinic professionals but, according to Oberle, outside infl uence
stops there.
“What we don’t want is for a judge to say, ‘either you’re going
to jail or going to the camp.’ We want it to be voluntary, we want
people who want to get better,” he said.
Therapists and councilors will be more than welcome, they’ll be
a part of the program. Of the handful of buildings, in various states
By Caitlyn May
of disrepair, there is what used to be a classroom. A large gathering
space with individual one-on-one, closed door areas that the group
hopes to utilize for concealing sessions with several agencies al-
ready on board to help.
“We have Goodwill of Lane County offering to help with voca-
tional skills and job applications,” Oberle said. “We want them to
know what’s a credit score, why is it important, they’ll get their
food handler’s card but the concealing that’s important. They will
continue whatever formal counseling they have been doing.”
Call to Action
“I damn near cried when I came back here,” Buckwald said.
He stands overlooking the back half of the camp that he once saw
thrive with classrooms and meticulously kept gardens. He brushes
the notion away and points off into the distance where the tree line
hides an additional 30 acres.
Please see VETS PG. A11
Paktech readies for opening in CG
According to
Cottage Grove
City
Manager
Richard Meyers,
PakTech is ready for business-almost.
"It looks spectacular. That building has
never looked that good," Meyers said.
The company had divided its renovation
into building improvements and tenent im-
COMMUNITY
provements and as of this week, the fi rst
half of the project is completed.
"They've done the improvements to the
building they would have to do if anyone
were to move in," Meyers said. "Now,
they'll start working on getting the specifi c
equipment in, the equipment the tenent, or
they, will need."
Paktech will be utilizing half of the build-
ing and reserving the other half for possible
future expansions. Currently, improvements
were made to the half the company intends
to use immediately. The roof, however, is
completely new.
"They didn't re-roof just half of the build-
ing," Meyers noted.
The project, according to Meyers, is still
on schedule to open later this year.
GOVERNMENT
"Butt-pickers"
Retiring Jan Wellman
Two residents clean the
streets of cigarette butts.
The city's public work's
director hangs up his hat.
PAGE A3
PAGE B3
INDEX
By Caitlyn May
cmay@cgsentinel.com
Calendar ...................................... B11
Channel Guide ............................... B5
Classifieds ...................................... B7
Obituaries ...................................... A2
Opinion ......................................... A4
Sports ............................................ B1
AD 6x2
Please see ARMORY PG. A6
Planned Parenthood
temporarily closed
By Caitlyn May
cmay@cgsentinel.com
Locals visiting the local Planned
Parenthood location have been
met with locked doors and a full
answering machine leaving more
questions than answers.
While the offi ce has only been operating one day per week, the
organization has seen the Cottage Grove location has closed its
doors--temporarily.
"We have been in the process of updating our staffi ng and li-
censing for the Cottage Grove location and will reopen soon," a
representative from the organization said. "We don't have an exact
date at this time."
The closure of the local offi ce comes just as the federal govern-
ment announced a congressional vote which defunded the program.
Planned Parenthood provides women's health services including
access to mammograms and testing for sexually transmitted diseas-
es. It also performs vasectomies, citing 10 percent of its patients as
male. Despite rhetoric noting that the organization provides abor-
tion at taxpayer costs, the Hyde Amendment prohibits tax dollars
for the use of abortion in all cases other than incest and rape or if
the mother's life is in immediate danger. However, the organization
does use Medicaid dollars for other ailments and 43 percent of its
revenue relies on federal funds.
cgnews@cgsentinel.com
(541) 942-3325 ph • (541) 942-3328 fax
P.O. Box 35, Cottage Grove, OR 97424
Corner of Sixth and Whiteaker, Cottage Grove
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VOLUME 129 • NUMBER 38