The independent., June 05, 2003, Page 2, Image 2

Page 2
The INDEPENDENT, June 5, 2003
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Ed. Note: The following, from Roger Grimsrud of Vernonia, about Colum­
bia County's land use and Goal 5 process is so well expressed that we
felt it should be placed in this opinion column. It has been minimally edit­
ed for brevity, but is too long for this small space and is continued on page
4. The opinions expressed are those of Mr. Grimsrud.
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Enough is Enough!
The Columbia County Land Use Board had a special hearing at
St. Helens High School auditorium, May 19, at which it heard tes­
timony from landowners from unincorporated areas of Columbia
County. This hearing concerned proposed changes to the Coun­
ty’s land use zoning regulations by the Board in its efforts to com­
ply with Goal 5 of the State of O regon’s sensitive land use plan­
ning requirements. The auditorium was half-filled by landowners
from all areas of Columbia County who, in short, wanted to tell the
Board that current land use regulations were already excessive as
well as expensive, and that the proposed additional regulations
and requirements were not in the best interests of the County’s
taxpayers. The message the Board received from attending
landowners, without exception, was "Enough is Enough!”
The Land Use Board is considering changes to land use regu­
lations in keeping with a State of Oregon mandated study per­
formed every 10 years. The “Report, Sensitive Lands Update, Co­
lumbia County” was prepared for Columbia County Department of
Land Development Services by Beak Consultants Incorporated in
June, 1995. This eight year-oid study is the newest data used by
the Department of Land Development for its’ recommendations.
Notice of the proposed changes and the Board’s request for pub­
lic input due to potential impact on property values in unincorpo­
rated areas of the County, were sent out in March, and a question-
and-answer meeting was held at the regular planning meeting
April 6. It started at 6:30 p.m. and discussions continued for one
hour then, due to the response from County landowners, the sec­
ond meeting was scheduled for May 19, and the location was
changed to the St. Helens High School Auditorium.
May 19 testimony regarding big-game regulations was re­
ceived from some of the more elderly landowners. They stated the
proposed changes were nonsense since, during the 1880s
through the 1930s, elk and deer were rare in the County due to
large stands of old growth timber, and that it made no sense to
protect an animal that was not natural to the area in large num­
bers. They further stated that it was only after Crown Zellerbach
and other large timber companies had massive clearcuts in the
County that the deer and elk populations began to increase.
Proposed changes would also affect setbacks from fish bearing
waterways. Currently, if a fish-bearing waterway has a flow of less
than 1000 cubic feet per minute, then activities surrounding use of
land on either side are restricted up to 25 feet away from the high
water mark. The proposed regulated use would change that to 75
feet away from the high water mark. No time frame was specified
for when the high water mark or flow measurement was deter­
mined (i.e.: summer flow from July through September vs. winter
flow November-December through April). In my family's case, we
own over 23 acres straddling the Nehalem approximately 1 mile
southeast of Pittsburg. There, the Nehalem forms a lazy-S in a
East-to-Northwest pattern. During summer months, a person can
easily wade across the water to the abandoned railroad bed op­
posite the highway side. During w inter months, from from 2-to-4
Please see page 4
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By Date Webb, Member
Nehalem Valley Chapter, Izaak Walton League
(In the May 1 INDEPENDENT,
Dale Webb told of an 1884
boat trip down the Nehalem
River, and how it inspired
Webb, Troy Horton, Dennis
Nelson and Stan Horton to
emulate that journey by
kayaking 100 river miles, from
Clear Creek to Nehalem Bay.
In this column, Webb tells
about the rest of the journey.)
Day two of our Great Nehalem Challenge
dawned bright, with blue skies and the warmth of
a yellow orb in the sky. After washing the sleep
off, I went to check on the kayaks, which we had
left on the stream bank, and noticed Dennis Nel­
son standing next to the kayaks, looking down­
stream. I hollered a greeting down to him, and he
motioned there were visitors. I eased on down to
Dennis and saw his fixation. A herd of elk was
grazing along the riverbank only a hundred
yards from us. Of course my commotion had
spooked them and they were soon splashing
into and across the river. We returned to camp
and soon enjoyed a filling meal of hash browns,
eggs, bacon and lamb sausage. The last chore
before taking off on our day of paddling was to
break camp.
I queried our group about how they felt as we
climbed back into our boats, amazingly, we all
felt pretty good. We slipped gradually back on
the swirling waters of the Nehalem and started to
stretch our muscles as we waited for the last
boater to get ready. It was a beautiful morning to
be on the water, with blue skies overhead and
morning songs from all the birds to lift our spirits.
Our goal this day was to make it (from our Natal
campground) to a point just upstream from Jew­
ell, a 26-mile paddle. This segment of water con­
sisted of a lot of slow water, which makes for a
lot more work. We continued to see abundant
wildlife, including ducks, herons, beavers, deer,
muskrats and, to our surprise, two bald eagles.
The sunshine remained with us while we ate
lunch just downstream from the Vesper Bridge,
but soon disappeared behind a screen of clouds
as we continued our journey. The river makes a
large bend in the Northrup Creek area and it •
seemed as though it took forever to make much
headway toward our campsite. We stopped
again for a short break just upstream from the v
Northrup Bridge. We had found that short
breaks, even just floating down the river in our
boats, had a rejuvenating effect upon our bodies.
The clouds started getting thicker and one could
sense that rain was not far behind. Dad (Don
Webb, who was driving a support vehicle.) had
gone ahead and had to do some bushwhacking
down to the river from our campsite. His mission
was to find a good takeout and to mark it with
some ribbon. As soon as we found the ribbon,
we followed his trail through a reprod patch to
our camp on State Forestry land.
Dinner tonight was salad, garlic bread, wine
and fresh spring Chinook Salmon. We were hop­
ing that the spirit of the salmon would provide us
with guidance down the river the next day. Day
three would provide a change in scenery and riv­
er flow, would we be up to it? We could hear
thunder off in the distance and soon we had a
steady rainfall; it was time for bed and the patter
of raindrops soon gave way to steady snores.
Please see page 22