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Monday Mailing

Year 22 • Issue 35 23 May 2016

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1. Anti-Nestle Ballot Measure: Bid to Block Cascade Locks Water Plant Succeeds (Election Results) 2. Droughtlandia 3. Business Park Proposal Offers Winston Residents a Chance to Invest 4. The Atlantic Says Portland’s Gentrification Is Your Fault 5. County Approves Rural Enterprise Zone For Parts of Sunriver 6. Oregon's Owyhee Deserves Greater Protection (OPINION) 7. Eco Activists Protest BLM’s Plans to Cut down Forests in Oregon, Cry Climate Change Risks 8. Are You Prepared For Disaster? Marion, Polk Counties Pool Resources, Ideas to Get Ready 9. WhyHunger Network for Change 10. Selling Smart Growth 11. Creative Placemaking: Lead, Follow AND Get Out of the Way 1. Anti-Nestle Ballot Measure: Bid to Block Cascade Locks Water Plant Succeeds (Election Results) Hood River County voters have said yes to a measure that would effectively block Nestlé Waters' plan to bottle water in Cascade Locks by banning large water bottling operations in the county.

Partial returns Tuesday showed the measure winning with 68 percent of the vote.

The measure's backers celebrated with cheering and speeches in Hood River, while a Nestle spokesman expressed regret while noting "we respect the democratic process."

To access the full story, click here.

Quote of the Week: “This activist loves Oregon more than he loves life.”

-Tom McCall Oregon Fast Fact: Oregon grows 98 percent of the hazelnuts in the United States. There are more than 3,755,000 hazelnut trees in Oregon, worth $49.5 million, grown on 30,000 acres, mostly in western Oregon.

2. Droughtlandia In a rumpled suit jacket and faded jeans, Giles Slade stands atop an earthen levee and looks out over a vast expanse of water. It’s mid-November, and the Fraser River runs gray and glasslike into the Salish Sea. Overhead, airplanes flash through low clouds, descending into Vancouver International Airport. To our backs is the city of Richmond, British Columbia, splayed out on the table-flat delta, the majority of its homes and buildings set just a few feet above sea level. “You can begin to see the scale of our problems from right here,” he says, waving a hand across the gray swath of water and sky.

Slade, 62, resembles a svelter John Goodman. He wears hip glasses, and his sentences are delivered in a calm, professorial baritone. But his mellow demeanor belies a deep anxiety, rooted in the threats posed by climate change to the Pacific Northwest, and to his flood-prone town of 190,000.

He’s channeled that angst into a gripping work of non-fiction titled American Exodus (the title is an homage to An American Exodus, a book about the Dust Bowl published in 1939 by economist Paul Taylor, with photographs by Dorothea Lange). Slade’s book offers a disaster-movie Page 1 of 5

account of the days ahead for North America — a future defined by epic drought, megafires, colossal hurricanes, rising seas, and the massive human migrations that such events are likely to spawn.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Business Park Proposal Offers Winston Residents a Chance to Invest WINSTON — Winston’s downtown, that currently includes a motor home park and an old, dilapidated building, could soon receive a crowd-funded makeover if all goes according to plan for a newly formed coalition of residents.

The Winston Core Project, a proposal backed by a handful of city residents, is looking to buy four contiguous properties at the intersection of Southeast Main Street and Highway 42, then transform them into a bustling business center and park called “The Elephant’s Walk.” The entire project as envisioned is estimated to cost $2.85 million, of which $750,000 is targeted to be raised by residents who would buy stock to become part-owners.

The project could also lead to the end of Junction Mobile Park, the home of about 50 people, though it has been derided as a hotbed for crime and drug activity. In its place, the project would establish a “greenspace dotted with pedestrian paths, outdoor seating, sculptures and retail and commercial shops of various sizes,” according to the organizers.

To access the full story, click here.

4. The Atlantic Says Portland’s Gentrification Is Your Fault The Atlantic has weighed in on the reasons Portland is suffering double-digit rent increases and found what we already know: Newcomers are arriving in droves.

But the magazine also concludes we're all to blame in some respects—that the city that "prides itself on progressivism" hasn't had in place the "traditional tools" to create affordable housing: “Until March, the state banned inclusionary zoning, which mandates that new buildings include a certain number of affordable units. There’s no rent control in Oregon, and efforts to pass just-cause eviction laws have, thus far, been futile. The city has embarked on big urban-renewal projects in the past few decades without putting measures in place to ensure that tenants in those neighborhoods won’t be displaced.”

The article also notes how residents have blanched at the idea of increasing the number of new apartments and duplexes in their residential neighborhoods.

To access the full story, click here.

5. County Approves Rural Enterprise Zone For Parts of Sunriver Deschutes County commissioners adopted a resolution Monday that expands a rural enterprise zone to include Sunriver locations in an attempt to lure businesses through tax incentives.

The expanded zone would include the Sunriver Business Park and the Spring River Plaza. Both the county and the city of La Pine have to approve the zone expansion. The La Pine City Council will consider a similar resolution Wednesday to expand the zone.

County commissioners approved the resolution at a business meeting Monday. The zone expansion was proposed by Economic Development for Central Oregon. It was met with some concern by Page 2 of 5

community members and taxing districts who worried the expansion would increase traffic and create a heavy industrial hub.

Janet Burton, the La Pine area development manager for EDCO, told commissioners Monday she and others met with community members and tax district representatives in the last several weeks to convey the reasoning behind a rural enterprise zone.

To access the full story, click here.

6. Oregon's Owyhee Deserves Greater Protection (OPINION) I am a third-generation Malheur County resident, raised with a view of the Owyhee Canyonlands from my bedroom window. I'm hoping to explain what it would mean to protect the Owyhee, a place that is undeniably an Oregon treasure.

The Owyhee is world class, with clean, fish-filled rivers, premier intact wildlife habitat and spectacular canyons. It's considered the largest undeveloped area without permanent protection in the American West, even as it is home to two dozen plants found nowhere else in the world — not to mention pronghorn, elk, mule deer, raptors and the imperiled greater sage-grouse. The hunting, fishing and hiking are astounding, the night skies don't have a lick of light pollution, and only three paved roads cross it in Oregon.

People from across the state have urged lawmakers to permanently protect 2.5 million acres of the Owyhee. This isn't a new conversation. Former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt talked about it in the 1990s, and Idahoans protected their side of the Owyhee in 2009 To access the full story, click here.

7. Eco Activists Protest BLM’s Plans to Cut down Forests in Oregon, Cry Climate Change Risks Eco activists have gone to court to challenge the US Bureau of Land Management’s plans to increase wood harvesting in Oregon by 37 percent, saying it will lead to a build-up in carbon emissions and exacerbate climate change.

Twenty-two conservation and fishing groups are protesting a draft of a federal proposal from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that would see it take over management of 2.5 million acres of land in Western Oregon. Titled a Proposed Resource Management Plan (PRMP), it would allow logging to increase by more than a third and permit the harvesting of trees closer to streams.

“The PRMP would significantly increase destructive logging, road construction, and off-road vehicle use in forests administered by BLM in western Oregon,” the groups said in a complaint filed on their behalf by San Francisco-based Earthjustice and the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene on Monday.

The 173-page lawsuit objects to all portions of the 2,010-page proposal, which, among other measures, would increase the volume of timber harvested by about 75 million board feet, up to 278 million in total.

To access the full story, click here.

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8. Are You Prepared For Disaster? Marion, Polk Counties Pool Resources, Ideas to Get Ready POLK COUNTY — How long could you exist in an emergency without electricity, water and food with what you have on hand at home or work? A few days? A week?

With the Cascadia subduction zone and its potential for a 9.0 magnitude earthquake lurking off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, local leaders would like to see that answer be at least two weeks.

A copy of the 2013 Annual Report is now available for download.

A group of government agencies, businesses advocates and media outlets in Polk and Marion counties are working together to help residents achieve that objective.

The group, called the Mid-Valley Emergency Communications Collaborative, wants the two-county region to be the best prepared in the state for the impending Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, or any emergency.

To access the full story, click here.

9. WhyHunger Network for Change This is the story of WhyHunger’s four-year initiative to support three regional networks for change in a project called Building Community Power for Food Justice. From the Mississippi Delta, to southeastern Arizona, to the central coast of California, these are the stories, tools, inspirations and impacts of the networks’ partnership with WhyHunger to build a future of food justice for communities across the nation.

Using the collaborative network approach, grassroots leaders in these regions are organizing their communities and creating vibrant and resilient plans and projects for a local food system that benefits and reflects the priorities and values of the entire community . Their innovations and successes have attracted new resources to their communities, increased community engagement in health issues, raised regional and national awareness of local innovations for food justice, and brought real value and expansion to their local economies. By creating links between existing resources, and developing a collective and collaborative approach to addressing food system issues, the networks in all three regions catalyzed long-term change in the struggle to realize a future of food justice for everyone. We hope you will be as inspired as we are by their spirit, practical accomplishments and transformative visions!

We invite you to discover these stories and tools here.

10. Selling Smart Growth When choosing where to live, households often make trade-offs between housing and transportation costs: urban fringe areas have cheaper housing but more expensive transport, and urban neighborhoods have cheaper transport and more expansive housing. Do experts provide comprehensive information on these trade-offs? Apparently not. Although there is growing discussion of the relative merits of urban and suburban home locations, they often overlook significant benefits and perpetuate myths about the disadvantages of city living.

My newest report, Selling Smart Growth [pdf], explores these issues. It identifies various direct benefits to residents, businesses and local governments if households, by choosing to live in a Smart Growth neighborhood, can reduce their transportation expenses and spend more on housing.

This is a timely issue. Surveys indicate that a growing portion of consumers value urban features such as accessibility and multi-modalism, but face various obstacles that discourage them from choosing Smart Growth locations, including myths about the dangers of urban living, and policies that favor sprawl over urban housing. Providing more information about Smart Growth benefits can help

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some, possibly many, households to choose home locations that best serve their long-term needs, and leverages additional indirect benefits to businesses, local communities and the environment.

To access the full story, click here.

11. Creative Placemaking: Lead, Follow AND Get Out of the Way It seems everywhere I turn lately I stumble my way into a conversation on creative placemaking — people looking at the activation of public space as a way to further their personal and collective passions and pursuits.

It’s heartening. I’m a firm believer that our taking of emotional ownership over the spaces in between the stuff we build and buy pays critical dividends towards a lot of the things we purport to care about: community, our children, the environment, even various spiritual and religious callings many hold dear.

In short, public space is the world we share. And it’s better when it reflects the whole of who and what we are.

To access the full story, click here.

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