Monday Mailing 011320

Monday Mailing

Year 26 • Issue 18 13 January 2020 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Water Crisis Puts Oregon Community At A Crossroads (William Sullivan) Board Development Without a Strategic Planning Retreat California Cities Turn To Hired Hooves To Help Prevent Massive Wildfires (Katie McFall) Getting Solar Power to the Rural Communities That Need It Most When Wildlife Safety Turns Into Fierce Political Debate Hard Choices: How Moving On and Off Reservations Can Increase the Risk of Homelessness for American Indians 'Like Sending Bees To War': The Deadly Truth Behind Your Almond-Milk Obsession Proposal To Demolish Crumbling Scotts Mills Dam Gaining Momentum Can New Bus Lines Chart A Course To Better Travel Options In The West?

WEBINAR – The State of Green Business 2020

1. Water Crisis Puts Oregon Community At A Crossroads

Quote of the Week:

"Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home."

- Edith Sitwell

Oregon Fast Fact #44

In 1905 the largest long cabin in the world was built in Portland to honor the Lewis and Clark expedition.

In a desert far from any city, farmers use groundwater to grow lush green hay. The hay fattens livestock all over the world. But there's a big problem: The water is drying up. Now scientists warn it will take thousands of years for an aquifer in southeastern Oregon to recover, while residents there are already hurting.

At Marjorie and John Thelen's house, the well ran dry in 2015.

"We're not ranchers. We're not growing hay. We're just retired in the country," said 72-year-old Marjorie Thelen, who moved to Oregon with her husband, John, 12 years ago.

Impressed by the mountain views and the rambling sagebrush, they bought a modest house to spend the rest of their days in Harney County, Ore. Then, hay farming boomed around them.

"It was like a gold rush," said 78-year-old John Thelen, describing how more giant steel sprinklers arrived after a state agency warned of water scarcity in 2016. He dreads the growing season: "It's like having your arteries cut open and watching the blood run out, when your water is being sprayed to the wind and it's evaporating away at humongous quantities."

Like most people in this high, dry valley, the couple gets drinking water out of the ground. When their first well failed, they paid thousands of dollars to drill deeper, only to find high levels of arsenic in the groundwater there. Now, their kitchen is cluttered

Page 1 of 6

with plastic bottles. A cup of tea starts with a towering filtration system.

The Thelens say enough is enough: that it's time for large-scale agriculture in the desert to end.

Meanwhile, Harney County commissioner and hay farmer Mark Owens says gradual and voluntary conservation is critical for the region's overall economic health. He argues that farms aren't the final destination for the water.

To access the full story, click here.

2. Board Development Without a Strategic Planning Retreat

Inspired by this past spring’s Oregon Heritage Summit, Klamath Falls Downtown Association wanted to find a way to take our organization’s board engagement to the next level. One of the many takeaways from the summit – which perfectly delivered on its theme of “The Culture of Board Engagement” – was the concept of having more regular discussions about high level organizational topics. Certainly, those discussions could take place in a multi-day, offsite strategic planning retreat, but we wanted to get to work now. We identified a set of individual activities that could be completed in a relatively short amount of time, and decided to use our board meetings! I know what you’re thinking … board meetings can already be long and tedious.

That is true, and it was true for us as well. But we solved that too!

Here’s how we adapted our regular board meeting agenda to accommodate: • • •

We eliminated ex-officio directors’ round robin reports from the agenda. Ex-officios now request agenda time if they have topical and timely updates to deliver; We removed committee reports from the agenda. Our committee chairs are now responsible for written monthly reports to be included in the agenda packet; and We added 15 minutes at the end of each meeting for “board development time”

To access the full story, click here.

3. California Cities Turn To Hired Hooves To Help Prevent Massive Wildfires

California has gone through several difficult fire seasons in recent years. Now, some cities are investing in unconventional fire prevention methods, including goats.

Anaheim, a city southeast of Los Angeles, has recently re-upped its contract with the company Environmental Land Management to keep goats grazing on city hillsides nearly year-round.

The goats are stationed in places like Deer Canyon Park, a nature preserve with more than a hundred acres of steep hills. Beginning in July, roughly 400 goats worked through the park, eating invasive grasses and dried brush.

The company's operations manager Johnny Gonzales says that Deer Canyon, with its peaks and valleys, is just the right kind of place to use goats for fire prevention.

Page 2 of 6

"This is the topography that poses challenges during these wildfire events," Gonzales says. "And we can go ahead and reduce the fuel loads and take out the invasive plants, and establish the native plants on these banks; you're reestablishing the ecology."

Gonzales says that demand for wildfire prevention goats has soared in recent years.

"It's not an underestimation to say that we got over 100 calls a month from private individuals with smaller parcels, little lots or things from an acre, 2 acres requesting the goats," Gonzales says. "And unfortunately, as a commercial herd, I can't take on all these private lots."

To access the full story, click here.

4. Getting Solar Power to the Rural Communities That Need It Most

Families that could benefit the most from lower energy bills are also the least able to afford the up-front cost of installing solar-power systems that could reduce their monthly electricity bill.

Policy changes could allow innovative rural organizations to help low- and moderate-income communities participate in the expanding market for solar energy, a new report says.

“I never would have heard of Backus, Minnesota (population approximately 300), if there wasn’t this really cool organization here working on renewable energy for rural people,” said Erica Bjelland, program development specialist for the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance (RREAL).

“That’s one of the best parts of the organization. We keep people here, and we bring people here, all focused around solar energy.”

Bjelland came to Backus and RREAL from rural Iowa through AmeriCorps. “We advocate for making solar assistance more of a part of the functioning energy assistance programs, not taking dollars away from anyone being served by energy assistance programs, but installing solar arrays so that more funds can go to serve more families in need,” Bjelland said. “Every year, there’s people that need the energy assistance program but there isn’t enough funding to cover everyone.”

To access the full story, click here.

5. When Wildlife Safety Turns Into Fierce Political Debate

The longest main street in America begins at the southern limits of Island Park, Idaho, and ends an eyelash west of the Montana border. On a map of Fremont County, Island Park has the profile of an immense shoelace — 36.8 miles long and, in many places, just 500 feet wide. The town’s main street is its spine, the thoroughfare that connects everything with everything else: It’s how Island Park’s 270 year-round residents, along with its thousands of seasonals, get to Harriman State Park and the TroutHunter fly shop and 500 miles of snowmobile trails. It’s also a segment of America’s longest road, U.S. 20, a federal highway that meanders from Newport, Oregon, to Boston, Massachusetts. More than a million vehicles speed past Island Park each year, many conveying tourists to Yellowstone, which lies beyond the Continental Divide.

Eastbound trucks tote lettuce from California; westbounders slosh with Bakken crude. To Island Park, U.S. 20 is a lifeline. To most of America, it’s a conduit.

Page 3 of 6

For Idaho’s wildest inhabitants, it can also be a death trap. Elk traverse the highway as they descend from mountain redoubts to winter range on the Snake River Plain, then return on the crest of spring’s green wave. Moose cross U.S. 20 on their way to browse near the quartz folds of the St. Anthony Sand Dunes. Mule deer, grizzlies and pronghorn all ford the asphalt river, and some perish in the attempt. Between 2010 and 2014, animals caused 94 vehicle crashes along a 56-mile stretch of U.S. 20. Because most collisions go unreported, the real body count is even higher: According to state surveys, 138 ungulates died on U.S. 20 and a connected 9-mile stretch of State Highway 87 in 2018 alone.

To access the full story, click here.

6. Hard Choices: How Moving On and Off Reservations Can Increase the Risk of Homelessness for American Indians

American Indian households move more often than American households do overall, and an increasing share of American Indians live in metropolitan areas, including in nontribal areas.

Although many people find stable housing in urban areas, not all do. With few resources and supports to help ease the transition, multiple moves can increase the likelihood of homelessness for American Indians who already are overrepresented in the national homeless population (PDF).

What motivates these moves, why are they leading to an increased risk of homelessness, and what efforts are being made to prevent native housing instability?

Housing conditions and opportunities on and off reservations affect mobility decisions

The reasons many American Indians move from reservations or other tribal lands to towns and cities have remained consistent over time. Some people move seeking education and employment opportunities beyond what’s available on a reservation or to access more comprehensive health care or other needed services. Family members who moved in the past can serve as a draw for those considering relocating to an urban area. American Indians also may choose to move away from circumstances they face on the reservation, such as poor or crowded housing conditions, or for personal and family reasons. Moves are not always final— some people return to Indian Country and some move back and forth. People may return because of strong ties to a reservation or because anticipated opportunities didn’t pan out.

To access the full story, click here.

7. 'Like Sending Bees To War': The Deadly Truth Behind Your Almond-Milk Obsession Dennis Arp was feeling optimistic last summer, which is unusual for a beekeeper these days.

Thanks to a record wet spring, his hundreds of hives, scattered across the central Arizona desert, produced a bounty of honey. Arp would have plenty to sell in stores, but more importantly, the bumper harvest would strengthen his bees for their biggest task of the coming year.

Like most commercial beekeepers in the US, at least half of Arp’s revenue now comes from pollinating almonds. Selling honey is far less lucrative than renting out his colonies to megafarms in California’s fertile Central Valley, home to 80% of the world’s almond supply.

Page 4 of 6

But as winter approached, with Arp just months away from taking his hives to California, his bees started getting sick. By October, 150 of Arp’s hives had been wiped out by mites, 12% of his inventory in just a few months. “My yard is currently filled with stacks of empty bee boxes that used to contain healthy hives,” he says.

This shouldn’t be happening to someone like Arp, a beekeeper with decades of experience. But his story is not unique. Commercial beekeepers who send their hives to the almond farms are seeing their bees die in record numbers, and nothing they do seems to stop the decline.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Proposal To Demolish Crumbling Scotts Mills Dam Gaining Momentum

The first time Anna Rankin went to the Scotts Mills Dam, she noticed crosses and flowers on the banks below the dam.

When Rankin, the executive director of the Pudding River Watershed Council, asked about the markers, she learned there had been a number of deaths from people jumping off the dam or rocks on a nearby bank into the pool below the dam.

Like many older dams in Oregon, Scotts Mills Dam has been poorly maintained. The decaying structure is slowly crumbling, and that debris has fallen into the pool below and become a hazard.

The Pudding River Watershed Council, with assistance from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, is proposing to demolish the dam to eliminate the safety hazard and give the environmentally threatened native salmon some of their native habitat for spawning.

“The thing is there’s not much left of the dam,” Scotts Mills Mayor Paul Brakeman said. “It’s been broken. There’s a large piece missing. If it had been maintained, I would say there is a historical value in it. I don’t have anybody looking to keep it.”

Tearing down the dam is estimated to cost $98,000. It could start in September 2020.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Can New Bus Lines Chart A Course To Better Travel Options In The West?

A misbooked flight left Anthony Gill needing a quick ticket to Seattle from Spokane, Washington, last November. Gill, a 25-year-old graduate student in public policy at the University of Southern California, had heard of a new bus service called FlixBus, so he found the company’s app on his phone. The first run connecting Washington’s two largest cities, traversing the state from the rolling sagebrush of the east to the winding mountain passes and Puget Sound in the west, was departing the next day. So, Gill said, “I booked the trip that night for like $10.”

The purchase was a spur of the moment decision, but not an accident. Gill has an interest in transportation in the Northwest and was previously a board member of Cascadia Rail — a nonprofit pushing for a high speed train connecting major population centers in the region. He’s also part of a generation whose members are less likely to have a driver’s license and more Page 5 of 6

willing to ditch their cars than older generations. “Why would I drive when I can sit back, surf the internet, continue my Twitter addiction or watch a movie?” Gill said.

Younger generations also worry more about the impact climate change will have on their lives.

New bus options around the West are targeting these environment- and budget-conscious travelers. And rail proponents like Gill think demand for regional bus travel will demonstrate that there’s a thirst for other alternatives, too — in particular, rail systems. With expanding avenues for long distance travel, getting around the West in the future could require less hassle and spew less carbon.

To access the full story, click here.

10. WEBINAR – The State of Green Business 2020

(TODAY - Monday, January 13th 10 AM PST)

What are the key trends and metrics you should know for the year ahead? Join us for the release of the 13th annual edition of State of Green Business, GreenBiz Group’s award-winning annual report.

Each year, the report looks at key trends and metrics assessing how, and how much, companies are moving the needle on the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. The report is produced in partnership with Trucost, part of S&P Global, and covers the performance on the biggest publicly traded U.S. companies (S&P 500) and global players (S&P Global 1200).

In this one-hour webcast, coinciding with the report’s release, GreenBiz Group Chairman and Executive Editor Joel Makower, Trucost CEO Richard Mattison, and Lauren Smart, Trucost Managing Director and Global Head of Financial Institutions Business, will provide insights into key trends and metrics in sustainable business, including new metrics introduced in this year’s report revealing companies’ exposure to carbon price risk, and the growing climate risk faced by companies to their facilities and physical infrastructure.

Among the topics: • • • • •

How companies are using the supplier engagement data Number of companies disclosing each of the 15 GHG Scope 3 categories Why companies are looking to support nature-based solutions Why commercial buildings are going all-electric The growing role of ‘bots and AI in corporate sustainability reporting

Speakers: • Richard Mattison, Chief Executive Officer, Trucost, part of S&P Global • Lauren Smart, Managing Director and Global Head of Financial Institutions Business, Trucost, part of S&P Global • Joel Makower, Chairman and Executive Editor, GreenBiz Group To register for the webinar, click here.

Page 6 of 6