A8 The BulleTin • Thursday, July 29, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Hotel shelter is
not the solution
— but will help
T
he city of Bend’s purchase of the Bend Value Inn for a
homeless shelter may be needed now more than ever. But
it is also a reminder of how much more need there is.
“I don’t know that our speed …
will match the need,” said Molly
Heiss, director of housing stabiliza-
tion for NeighborImpact, the city’s
contractor who will run the hotel
shelter.
On Tuesday evening Heiss and
representatives from the city met
with people who live near the site on
NE Division Street to explain how it
will operate and answer questions.
The shelter may be up and running
by the end of the year.
28 rooms. That’s what the hotel
has. That could make a difference
in the lives of those who get selected
to live there. It could put them on
a path to more permanent hous-
ing and a more stable life. There
are hundreds more who live in and
around Bend that there will not be
room for in this shelter or the oth-
ers in town. Nobody is pretending
otherwise.
“This is one part of the solution,”
said Carolyn Eagan, Bend’s recovery
strategy and impact officer.
Families and individuals will be
chosen for the shelter based on the
hope that they seem likely to suc-
ceed in transitioning away from
homelessness. It won’t be the people
who are most difficult to house or
the people who are most difficult to
treat. Where do those people go? We
don’t know.
A few rooms at the hotel shel-
ter may be set aside specifically for
houseless patients who are sched-
uled to be discharged from treat-
ment at the hospital and lack mo-
bility and a place to stay. It’s one of
the yawning gaps in the system now.
There’s often no good place for those
people to go. Now there may be.
Maybe a dozen people who live
near the hotel shelter came out
for the meeting Tuesday evening.
They had many, many questions.
Security? Camping next to the ho-
tel? Needles on the ground? People
tromping through their yards? Who
can we call if we see something?
Neighbors also pointed out a dispar-
ity. If they want to do something on
their property, they have to march
through the city’s bureaucratic steps.
The city, because of changes in state
law, could skip the steps and site the
hotel shelter.
Another question that came up:
Why has Bend concentrated three
homeless shelters in one part of
town? Shepherd’s House is just south
on NE Division Street. And if you
go the other way, not too far north
is the Bethlehem Inn. Well, that was
not a calculated plan. The city only
picked the hotel it purchased. It is a
good point, though. Why are they all
in that general area? Why nothing
on Bend’s west side?
Heiss didn’t make sweeping
promises to the neighbors. She was,
though, reassuring and honest. She
pledged she or her successor will be
available to respond to concerns and
will strive to be a good neighbor. She
said there might be people who use
drugs who stay at the shelter, but no
drug use will be permitted on site.
She added that the services offered at
the shelter — medical care, perhaps
some meals — will only be avail-
able for people who live there. That
should help minimize the impact on
the local neighborhood.
You can gripe and prickle at how
little the city and other govern-
mental agencies have done to care
for and help the houseless in Bend
and Central Oregon. These 28 new
rooms will be abundantly inade-
quate. But every little bit helps.
GUEST COLUMN
The Endangered Species Act is not
the problem in area’s water shortage
BY YANCY LIND
T
he Bulletin recently ran a
guest column from a Central
Oregon farmer asserting that
the Endangered Species Act is partly
to blame for current water shortages.
Many local farmers need more wa-
ter, but the column is written from a
perspective that does not hold up to
objective analysis.
Science is a cornerstone of our
lives. Our understanding of the
world and the material things we
use every day come from scientific
inquiry. Without science we would
still live in the Dark Ages where
lives were nasty, brutish and short.
True, science is an ongoing process,
but the scientific method continues
to refine our understanding of the
world and deliver the benefits of that
inquiry.
Today, the best available science
overwhelming tells us that our burn-
ing of fossil fuels is causing global
warming. People in the United States
and around the world are starting
to experience the personal impact
from it, but scientists have been
sounding the alarm about warming
for decades. As predicted, a heating
planet is causing extreme weather
events like excessive heat, drought,
wildfires, as well as heavy rains and
localized, temporary extreme cold
events as the jet stream is disrupted.
The scientific consensus is that
we are now living in the sixth great
extinction event that has occurred
on Earth, an event that is accelerat-
ing. Most of us are
familiar with the
idea that an aster-
oid killed the dino-
saurs, but the fossil
and geologic record
shows that other
mass extinctions
Lind
occurred when car-
bon dioxide levels dramatically in-
creased, most likely from increased
volcanic activity. The same thing is
happening now, at an unprecedented
rate, and volcanoes are not the cause.
As an angler and fish advocate, I
am quite aware of the science that
says anadromous fish like salmon
and steelhead will likely be extir-
pated in much of the Columbia Ba-
sin in our lifetimes. In many places,
low flows and higher temperatures
are creating lethal conditions for
anadromous fish as well as resident
fish like trout and whitefish. A great
example of this can easily be seen
this summer on the Crooked River
below Prineville.
The Oregon Water Resources De-
partment has a web site that graphs
flows in many rivers including the
Crooked near Smith Rocks State
Park. At times this July flows have
been so low as to not be measur-
able. At other times flows have been
around 10 cubic feet per second. At
10 cfs you can literally cross the river
without getting your feet wet by
stepping on the exposed rocks. Ac-
cording to Oregon Water Resources
Department, the water temperature
during this period has reached 90
degrees. These are conditions that
will kill all aquatic life, at least stress
nearby plants, and negatively impact
animals that are part of the ecosys-
tem.
Readers of The Bulletin are likely
aware of the ongoing effort to rein-
troduce steelhead and spring chi-
nook salmon into the upper De-
schutes River Basin above Lake Billy
Chinook. As of July 22, 72 return-
ing adult spring chinook have been
moved from the Lower Deschutes
into the lake, and over half of them
have moved up into the lowermost
reaches of the Crooked River. They
will not make it far, however, cer-
tainly not to their historical spawn-
ing beds.
We have had decades to prepare
for the impacts of global warm-
ing, but little has been done. It is a
global issue, but local action can be
taken. Eighty-eight percent of the
water rights in Central Oregon are
held by irrigators, and over half of
that is wasted from canal seepage
and widespread inefficient irrigation
practices. If anything, the current
state of our local rivers illustrates
that environmental protections are
far too weak. Should we drain even
more water from our environment
or share and more efficiently use the
diminishing resources that we have?
Environmental protections are not
the problem. We are.
e
Yancy Lind lives in Tumalo and writes about fish
and water at coinformedangler.org.
Ryan Brennecke/The Bulletin
The Bend Value Inn is at 2346 NE Division St. in Bend. This photo was taken in May.
Don’t give COVID-19
another chance
A
fter a year of masking up and
keeping socially distant, it’s
been such a relief to see peo-
ple’s faces again, to get together more
freely again.
And now the federal government
has made an about-face on its rec-
ommendations for indoor mask
wearing. That’s even for the vacci-
nated, in areas of high-risk.
We have already given up so much
and lost so much thanks to the pan-
demic. But if we can follow the rec-
ommendations again and more peo-
ple get vaccinated, we can arrest the
surge in new cases. We can again give
the virus less chance to take lives and
wreak havoc. Sounds like a plan.
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
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High Desert Museum is a national
treasure and deserves our support
BY JOSH NEWTON
D
r. James Bradburne, the direc-
tor of Pinacoteca di Brera in
Milan, has stated that the value
of a museum should be measured
by what it does, rather than what it
possesses; he has also stated that mu-
seums are best understood as “every-
one’s big house,” providing a place for
people to contextualize the human
experience through civic dialogue and
conviviality.
The High Desert Museum is our
big house. Earlier this year, the Insti-
tute of Museum and Library Services
named the High Desert Museum
as one of six winners of its national
medal—the nation’s highest honor
for libraries and museums that have
made significant contributions to
their communities. This is a proud
achievement and richly deserved.
The museum’s late founder, Don
Kerr, was known for his unbounded
enthusiasm for all that is the High
Desert of the American West. The
museum still reflects Kerr’s wonder-
ment and carries his original vision
to wildly excite and responsibly teach
others about this unique and trans-
formative landscape. The museum
has an enduring commitment to the
exploration of the historical and con-
temporary issues of the High Desert,
endeavoring to provide insight and
understanding for visitors of all ages.
GUEST COLUMN
The museum fo-
cuses on being ac-
cessible to all and
on strengthening its
relationships with
the Indigenous peo-
ples of the High
Newton
Desert. It has forged
a collaborative rela-
tionship with the Museum At Warm
Springs, which has allowed the two
institutions to cooperate in areas of
mutual interest.
Another example of the Museum’s
importance to our community can
be found in its pandemic response of
creating a place-based virtual learning
opportunities for students, teachers
and families. The museum has hosted
the Doc and Connie Hatfield Sus-
tainable Resource Lecture since 2012,
which is a well-recognized forum for
discourse about holistic ranching in
the High Desert.
The museum is now the largest
cultural institution east of the Cas-
cades in Oregon. It annually re-
ceives 200,000 visitors, including
over 31,000 children. The museum
has an estimated annual economic
impact of $21 million. Its sound fi-
nancial management has led to in-
dependent recognition by industry
rating entities, balanced budgets for
more than a decade and a growing
endowment.
The museum has spent nearly four
decades serving its community. When
it opened, Bend had a population of
fewer than 20,000. Bend’s population
now exceeds 100,000, and, of course,
the rest of Central Oregon has experi-
enced similar growth.
The museum is currently develop-
ing plans to meet the needs of our in-
creasing population. It is planning to
renovate some of its flagship exhibits
and to create new spaces in order to
continue to fulfill its mission and bet-
ter serve the community. In short, the
museum is working to make its “big
house” even bigger so that it can con-
tinue to be a “crucible and producer
of culture,” in the words of Dr. Brad-
burne.
The museum has always been for-
tunate to receive broad community
support. It has worked hard to re-
turn that support by building and
maintaining an institution that pro-
vides enduring value, which is now
nationally recognized. I believe that
Kerr would be very proud not just of
the museum but of the special com-
munity that allowed the museum to
flourish through its continued sup-
port.
e
Josh Newton lives in Bend and is a member of the
board of trustees of the High Desert Museum.