Monday Mailing - May 18

Monday Mailing Quote of the Week:

“Natural disasters are revelatory. The manner in which a society interprets a catastrophe and responds to the chaos exposes many accepted truths, prejudices, hopes, and fears of a culture.”

- Steve Olson, author of Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens

(Nearly) Oregon Fast Fact

On this date, May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted, clearing 200 square miles of forest and reducing the mountain’s elevation from 9,677 ft to 8,365 ft.

Year 26 • Issue 36 18 May 2020 1. Under Social Distancing, Rural Regions Push for More Broadband 2. US Plans Reimagine Fighting Wildfires Amid Crews’ Coronavirus Risk (Katie McFall) 3. Racial, Ethnic Minorities Hit Harder by COVID-19 (Katie McFall) 4. In a First, Renewable Energy is Poised to Eclipse Coal in U.S. (Megan Winner) 5. The Farm to Food Bank Movement Aims to Rescue Small-Scale Farming and Feed the Hungry 6. 29 Oregon Counties Approved to Reopen Business as of Friday (Hannah Fuller) 7. Here’s How Oregon’s Reopening Depends on Testing and Tracing Benchmarks (Katie McFall) 8. Can City Life Stay More Al Fresco Post-Pandemic?

9. How Designers Are Remaking Spaces for Our New Socially Distanced Lives 10. 40 Years After Mount St. Helens, Sounds of Past Government Response Echo Today (Katie McFall) 1. Under Stocial Distancing, Rural Regions Push for More

Broadband

In 1936, roughly 90% of America’s urban areas had access to electricity, while roughly the same proportion of rural America was still in the dark.

The Rural Electrification Act, signed that year as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, turned on the lights in isolated rural areas.

As the coronavirus pandemic lays bare America’s digital divide, some advocates argue that now is the time to make a big, bold investment in the country’s broadband infrastructure.

“If there was ever a moment to do the rural electrification of our time, this is it,” said Matt Dunne, executive director of the Center on Rural Innovation in Hartland, Vermont.

To access the full story, click here.

2. US Plans Reimagine Fighting Wildfires Amid Crews’ Coronavirus Risk

In new plans that offer a national reimagining of how to fight wildfires amid the risk of the coronavirus spreading through crews, it’s not clear how officials will get the testing and equipment needed to keep firefighters safe in what’s expected to be a difficult fire season.

A U.S. group instead put together broad guidelines to consider when sending crews to blazes, with agencies and firefighting groups in Page 1 of 5

different parts of the country able to tailor them to fit their needs. The wildfire season has largely begun, and states in the American West that have suffered catastrophic blazes in recent years could see higher-than-normal levels of wildfire because of drought.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Racial, Ethnic Minorities Hit Harder by COVID-19

Oregonians who are black, Latino or members of Native American communities are more likely to get sick from COVID-19 than their white neighbors. And when they’re infected, they’re more likely to die.

That’s according to Oregon Health Authority data – and it matches what’s happening in the rest of the country.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, about 33% of people hospitalized with COVID19 are black, yet only 13% of the country’s population is black. In New York, about 45 out of every 100,000 white people there died of the coronavirus, compared to 74 out of every 100,000 Latino people, and 92 out of every 100,000 African Americans. Tribal communities have also been especially hard hit across the country.

At the Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center in northwestern Oregon, doctors found that Latino patients screened were 20 times more likely to have the virus as other patients. The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs in Oregon has reported 15 positive COVID-19 tests and four recoveries.

To access the full story, click here.

4. In a First, Renewable Energy is Poised to Eclipse Coal in U.S.

The United States is on track to produce more electricity this year from renewable power than from coal for the first time on record, new government projections show, a transformation partly driven by the coronavirus pandemic, with profound implications in the fight against climate change.

It is a milestone that seemed all but unthinkable a decade ago, when coal was so dominant that it provided nearly half the nation’s electricity. And it comes despite the Trump administration’s three-year push to try to revive the ailing industry by weakening pollution rules on coal-burning power plants.

Those efforts, however, failed to halt the powerful economic forces that have led electric utilities to retire hundreds of aging coal plants since 2010 and run their remaining plants less frequently. The cost of building large wind farms has declined more than 40 percent in that time, while solar costs have dropped more than 80 percent. And the price of natural gas, a cleaner-burning alternative to coal, has fallen to historic lows as a result of the fracking boom.

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Now the coronavirus outbreak is pushing coal producers into their deepest crisis yet.

To access the full story, click here.

5. The Farm to Food Bank Movement Aims to Rescue Small-Scale Farming and Feed the Hungry

In spring, eastern Oregon farmer Patrick Theil delivers thousands of pounds of organic potatoes to more than 50 farm-to-table restaurants in Portland every week. But Theil hasn’t made the 350-mile trek over the Blue Mountains since restaurants in the state closed in March.

Like thousands of small-scale farmers, Theil faced a total loss of sales. Then, out of the blue, he got an order for 500 pounds of potatoes, to be delivered to the regional food bank—paid in full.

It was the result of a spontaneous community initiative called the Great Potato Drive. Since late March, Theil has delivered over a ton of potatoes to 19 food pantries in four rural counties. And he has a standing weekly order, thanks to ongoing private fundraising.

As reports of food waste circulate—as well as troubling images of piles of excess potatoes— organizations and community groups are stepping up to bridge the gap between on-farm surpluses and soaring food bank demand. Civil Eats identified an array of programs throughout the United States, some of them long-standing but most of them newly emerged, to help address the 2020 food distribution crisis.

To access the full story, click here.

6. 29 Oregon Counties Approved to Reopen Business as of Friday

Nearly the entirety of Oregon, including some of its largest cities, will begin the slow process of reigniting their economies as early as Friday.

Gov. Kate Brown announced Thursday the state has given permission to 28 of the state’s 36 counties to reopen bars, restaurants, personal services businesses and malls as of May 15. The list encapsulates five of the state’s 10 most populous cities — including Eugene, Bend and Medford — which will begin the halting process toward resuming more typical operations.

An additional county, Jefferson, received permission to reopen after Brown’s announcement, an administrator with the county said in an email.

At the same time, state officials refused applications by Marion and Polk counties to begin reopening, amid concerns over increased hospitalizations in the Salem area. Applications by two other counties — Morrow and Umatilla — were still being reviewed as of Thursday morning.

Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties, the three central counties in the Portland metro area, have not applied to reopen.

To access the full story, click here.

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7. Here’s How Oregon’s Reopening Depends on Testing and Tracing Benchmarks

Oregon is preparing to turn a corner Friday in its efforts to manage the spread of COVID-19. The state is expected to begin what will be a tiered reopening of restaurants, businesses and other public and private institutions around the state. Gov. Kate Brown introduced guidelines for the first phase of reopening last week.

Brown and her advisers may be feeling the pressure to reopen from customer-deprived businesses, tourist-hungry recreation communities and cooped-up residents, but the governor maintains the decision hinges on public-health-based, science-informed benchmarks.

“We have consulted extensively with doctors, nurses and public health experts. They tell us that under the right restrictions, we can take this step safely,” Brown said in a press conference.

The state has established a list of requirements that counties must meet to be cleared to enter the first phase of reopening.

“These thresholds will help counties keep people as safe as possible while we rebuild,” Brown said.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Can City Life Stay More Al Fresco Post-Pandemic?

To meet new COVID-19 safety protocols for reopening, many commercial places are going to have to turn themselves inside-out. Store items may migrate to sidewalk displays. Restaurants without outdoor seating may have to create some. Bars may have to turn parking lots into beer gardens. In other words, our cities need to become more Parisian. But because of short-sighted zoning laws, Parisian is illegal in most American cities.

Local zoning laws control nearly everything that is built in this country. They dictate how buildings can be used, how tall they can be, and where they can be located. If local businesses are to reopen in a way that provides for more safe distancing between patrons, most zoning laws will need quick, radical reform. If these changes become permanent, U.S. cities will become more vibrant for the long-term.

To access the full story, click here.

9. How Designers Are Remaking Spaces for Our New Socially Distanced Lives

COVID-19 has reclassified many workers as first responders. Doctors, nurses and medical professionals, transit workers, garbage collectors, and grocery clerks all come to mind.

Architects do not.

“People don’t typically think of architects as first responders,” said Amal Mahrouki, director of legislative affairs with AIA Pennsylvania. “But they can be…if they’ve gone through the right training.”

Slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus requires immediate adjustments to how we use and inhabit buildings and space.

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From redesigning schools and offices to allow for socially distanced use to repurposing buildings for medical use and retrofitting existing hospitals to serve the urgent demands of a pandemic, architects and designers are finding themselves facing a new kind of demand.

To access the full story, click here.

10. 40 Years After Mount St. Helens, Sounds of Past Government Response Echo Today

In the days leading up to the May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens eruption 40 years ago, Cowlitz County sheriff’s deputies tried to prevent people from getting too close to the growling, shaking mountain.

Not everyone listened, and public pressure grew great enough for law enforcement to relent.

The day before the volcano blew and killed 57 people — making it the most fatal natural disaster in modern Washington state history — deputies let people go to their cabins around Spirit Lake.

Most left by an evening deadline. But in the eruption’s aftermath, people pointed fingers, especially at Gov. Dixy Lee Ray. To access the full story, click here.

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