Monday Mailing
Year 26 • Issue 9 4 November 2019 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Wildfires And Blackouts Mean Californians Need Solar Panels And Microgrids (Michael Hoch) Portland Voters To Decide On New Rules For Bull Run Watershed, Spending Ratepayer Money To Help Other Cities (Katie McFall) Game Time: Active Learning Puts A Spin On Urban Planning Education Should We Outlaw SUVs? Can Rural Broadband Help Save Farm Country? In Mid-Density Zones, Portland Has a Choice: Garages or Low Prices? Greg Walden, Oregon's Only Congressional Republican, Won't Run For Reelection (Michael Hoch) Kayaking, Canvassing, And Cooking Classes: Cities Experiment With Climate Outreach The Roots Of An Oregon Farm Bankruptcy WEBINAR – Kids Win and Farms Win: What Do We Know About the Impacts of Farm to School
1. Wildfires And Blackouts Mean Californians Need Solar Panels And Microgrids California’s electricity system is failing.
Quote of the Week:
The wind that makes music in November corn is in a hurry. The stalks hum, the loose husks whisk skyward in halfplaying swirls, and the wind hurries on... A tree tries to argue, bare limbs waving, but there is no detaining the wind. - Aldo Leopold
Oregon Fast Fact #15
The Chinook salmon is Oregon's official state fish.
Earlier this month, in order to prevent wildfires, some 2 million people had their power cut by the state’s biggest utility provider, PG&E. It was the biggest deliberate blackout in history. That record is likely to be broken this week, as the utility contemplates blackouts that could affect up to 3 million people. Meanwhile, it turns out the Kincade Fire, which currently has 180,000 people evacuating Sonoma County and is only 5 percent contained, may have been started by one of PG&E’s transmission lines. That’s one of the lines it didn’t preemptively shut down, in part thanks to intense pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom to minimize blackouts. This, it seems, is what many California electricity customers can expect from now on: blackouts or fires. That is failure. The first post in this series dug into the causes of that failure, which have been gathering for years now: climate change has made the forests hotter and dryer; forest mismanagement has left them tightly packed and flammable; land-use mismanagement has put more Californians in high-risk areas; decades of delayed and underfunded maintenance has left PG&E’s 100,000 miles of
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overhead power lines in a sorry state; and to top things off, PG&E is a felon, burdened with almost $30 billion in debt, thanks to the fires it previously started, and in bankruptcy. To access the full story, click here.
2. Portland Voters To Decide On New Rules For Bull Run Watershed, Spending Ratepayer Money To Help Other Cities
Two proposed Portland charter amendments related to the city’s water system are on the Nov. 5 ballot. Portland voters are being asked to decide whether to increase protections for the Bull Run Watershed and whether to allow the Water Bureau to spend ratepayer funds to help other cities, tribes and utilities during emergencies.
Both measures are sponsored by Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who oversees the Portland Water Bureau. Neither has any organized opposition. Thursday is the last day to mail ballots. Voters can deposit their ballots at a drop-off site until 8 p.m. on Election Day. The Bull Run proposal, Measure 26-204, would add a new section to the Portland charter to restrict public access and limit land uses and activities such as tree cutting on city-owned lands near the watershed, the city’s main drinking water source. It would also require any drinking water or hydroelectric projects to avoid and mitigate impacts to the natural environment. To access the full story, click here.
3. Game Time: Active Learning Puts A Spin On Urban Planning Education
Carlos Morales-Schechinger knew he was doomed. An official in Mexico’s ministry for urban development, he was slated to speak at a conference in San Luis Potosi immediately following a fully programmed morning and large lunch. With the students in front of him doing little to fight an onslaught of yawns, Morales had to get creative. On a whim, he decided to forgo his formal lecture on Mexico’s national urban land policy. Instead, he asked a student in the front of the room if he could buy the chair the student was sitting on, offering a bill from his pocket as payment. After some initial confusion, the student accepted. Morales then started auctioning off the seat. He spoke in a low voice to illustrate its locational advantage, increasing demand. Soon he had the students invested in both his presentation and that suddenly invaluable piece of furniture. By the end of the session, equipped only with standard classroom objects, he had brought to life the processes of land price determination, densification, and other phenomena related to the notoriously complex and often misrepresented topic of urban land markets. That was 30 years ago. Over the decades since, Morales’s spontaneous attempt to engage sleepy students has evolved into and informed a variety of educational games, including a Page 2 of 6
multiday organized game called GIROS. Taking its name from the Spanish for both “transaction” and “turning around,” which captures the notion of the interdependencies of land markets, GIROS was designed by Martim Smolka, director of the program on Latin America and the Caribbean at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and enhanced in collaboration with Morales, now a member of the Lincoln Institute’s teaching faculty. GIROS has been played well over 150 times and inspired spinoffs in most of Latin America, and in the Netherlands, Taiwan, Ghana, Kenya, the Philippines, and other countries. Participants have ranged from urban planning students to high-level public officials. To access the full story, click here.
4. Should We Outlaw SUVs?
Over the last decade, global SUV ownership has doubled. In that time, the vehicles contributed more to the increase in global CO2 emissions than airlines, trucks, or heavy industry, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency. Even if we add nearly 150 million electric cars to the road by 2040, if SUV ownership grows at its current rate, they’ll offset that entire emissions reduction. And while they’re spewing emissions, they also have a more tangible cost: They’re more likely than smaller cars to kill pedestrians, contributing to a steep rise in pedestrian deaths. Now some environmental nonprofits argue that automakers shouldn’t be making the vehicles at all, and some politicians are beginning to argue that they should be banned—if not from everywhere, then at least from city streets. In September, when a 3-year-old, his grandmother, and two men in their twenties were killed by an SUV in Berlin (coincidentally, on the same day that the German newspaper Handelsblatt ran a feature article about the growth in SUVs with the headline “SUV insanity“), hundreds of people protested the next day. The next weekend, thousands of people protested at the Frankfurt Auto Show to denounce the climate damage from the SUVs that automakers were promoting at the show. To access the full story, click here.
5. Can Rural Broadband Help Save Farm Country?
When Robert Blair first got an aerial glimpse of his 1,300-acre dryland operation, he knew images of his fields would be a game-changer. Like many in the rolling Palouse Hills, the Kendrick, Idaho-based farmer grows wheat, barley, lentils, chickpeas, and alfalfa, as well as cows. Unlike many, Blair prefers to be at the bleeding edge of technology. But it’s not easy. Thirteen years after he first started using drones, he still struggles to get good enough internet connectivity to take full advantage of the technology. Right now, it typically takes four days, on average, to send data files and receive the highresolution drone images on a thumb drive via FedEx. “That is not good enough,” Blair laments. Ideally, he could get the data in real-time as he flies the drone.
“Farmers are essentially plant doctors,” says Blair, pictured above. “We have to understand what’s happening to those plants.” On a four-wheeler, he says, can see only about 5 percent of a 60-acre field—roughly 10 feet in any direction down individual rows—compared to 100 percent via drones. “With imagery I make better management decisions”—those that keep his
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crops producing enough and help him reduce inputs like fertilizers and pesticides, says Blair. “I just want the information in a timely fashion.” To access the full story, click here.
6. In Mid-Density Zones, Portland Has a Choice: Garages or Low Prices?
For three years, Portland’s proposal to re-legalize fourplexes citywide has been overshadowing another, related reform.
That other reform applies not to low-density lots but to mid-density areas: The ones currently zoned for townhomes and small to medium-size apartment buildings. It’s finally coming before Portland’s city council in a public hearing Wednesday. (The city is also accepting online testimony right now.) This proposed mid-density reform, dubbed “Better Housing by Design,” includes various good ideas, like helping East Portland’s big blocks include shared interior courtyards; regulating buildings by size rather than unit count; and giving nonprofit developers of below-market housing a leg up with size bonuses. But one detail in this proposal is almost shocking in its clarity. It turns out that there is one simple factor that determines whether these lots are likely to eventually redevelop as: 1. high-cost townhomes, or as 2. mixed-income condo buildings for the middle and working class. The difference between these options is whether they need to provide storage for cars—i.e. parking. To access the full story, click here.
7. Greg Walden, Oregon's Only Congressional Republican, Won't Run For Reelection Oregon’s only congressional Republican is calling it quits.
U.S. Rep. Greg Walden announced Monday morning that he won’t run for reelection in 2020, putting a close to more than two decades in the U.S. Capitol. “At the end of this term, I will have devoted 30 years to the important calling of public service; of helping bring people together to solve problems and leave our communities, our beautiful state and our great nation better off for the next generation,” Walden said in a statement, making clear he had no plans to run for another office. “For me, the time has come to pursue new challenges and opportunities.” Walden’s decision had been rumored in recent days, but it is likely to surprise many in Oregon’s Republican establishment, some of whom expressed doubts last week when asked about Walden’s 2020 plans and the chance he might retire. The decision also marks a turnaround for a successful politician who earlier this year said he was focused on winning reelection and helping Republicans reclaim a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Page 4 of 6
Walden’s office did not respond to inquiries about his reelection plans last week. The departure is almost certain to set off a dogfight among Republicans over who might replace Walden in the state’s only reliably Republican district, and it will likely have Democrats viewing the seat with fresh interest. To access the full story, click here.
8. Kayaking, Canvassing, And Cooking Classes: Cities Experiment With Climate Outreach
In Miami, Florida, global warming has become an increasingly common topic of conversation over the past few years. As concern over rising waters grows, residents are demanding to know how local government will protect their communities. “We constantly, constantly, constantly, constantly are getting emails and calls and things saying, ‘What is the city doing about climate change?'” said Alissa Farina, who works in the city’s Office of Resilience and Sustainability. In response, her team has developed a number of initiatives aimed at informing and engaging the public on climate. Variations of that experience can be found across the nation. With the federal retreat on environmental leadership during the Trump era, American cities are taking a lead role in addressing climate change. Public outreach generally is a big part of the effort. City governments, with their limited manpower and resources, can’t tackle the problem alone; in addition to keeping their constituents informed about their climate actions, they need to motivate them to be part of the solution. As communications director of the nonprofit Urban Sustainability Directors Network, Julia Trezona Peek helps city officials throughout the U.S. and Canada develop outreach strategies. She said that while all the municipalities she works with understand the importance of connecting with their citizens, these efforts play out very differently from place to place. To access the full story, click here.
9. The Roots Of An Oregon Farm Bankruptcy
The federal bankruptcy court in Portland was almost empty when apple farmer Richard Blaine walked in. It was mid-October and harvest was in full swing on his orchards in Oregon and Washington. As workers plucked Granny Smiths and Golden Delicious from his trees, Blaine shifted in his seat and absorbed the bankruptcy hearing playing out around him.
Richard Blaine — friends call him “Rick” — and his wife, Sydney Blaine, have run Avalon Orchards since 1974, growing apples, pears and cherries. He said the last five years have been a “perfect storm.” It’s partly thanks to President Donald Trump that the Blaines have access to a kind of streamlined bankruptcy protection that’s meant to help family farmers reorganize and keep farming. But it’s partly thanks to the president’s trade wars that they need it.
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The farmers The Blaines have been married for 52 years. He was a schoolteacher when they bought her grandfather’s farm in the Upper Hood River Valley. They learned by doing and over the years they expanded Avalon Orchards to five farms in Oregon and Washington. Rick Blaine said now, at age 72, he can drive by an orchard at 50 mph and tell if it’s well tended. He and his wife are hands-on farmers. “Mother Nature does almost all of it. But once in a while, if you bend a limb here or bend a limb there, and you do it often enough, the tree will produce lovely fruit,” he said. “I love the harvest,” Sydney Blaine said. “I’m outdoors all day long and especially when the weather is gorgeous, it’s just a beautiful outdoor life.” Their daughter Heather Blaine is Avalon Orchards’ general manager. She said watching her parents go through this perfect storm, culminating in Avalon’s bankruptcy, has made this the hardest year of her life. To access the full story, click here. 10. WEBINAR – Kids Win and Farms Win: What Do We Know About the Impacts of Farm
to School (Thursday, November 7, 2019 10:00am PT)
Advocates claim that 'kids win, farmers win, and communities win' from policies, programming and initiatives that promote farm to school. However, what do we know about the extent to which this is true? Recent research funded by the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture provides interesting insights into the kids win and farms win impacts of farm to school efforts. This webinar, featuring researchers from Colorado State University and University of Illinois, will highlight recent and ongoing research and important areas for future farm to school work. To register for the webinar, click here.
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