www.EWEB.wtf - EWEB completed their clearcut in August, cutting the largest Doug firs (including the 15 foot circumference champion tree) and Ponderosa pines. The largest Black Oaks were cut on August 2 when EWEB clearcut most of this public forest, rushing to destroy just as the state Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) issued a temporary stay of execution based on a challenge brought by former EWEB commissioner Sandra Bishop. LUBA lifted the stay on August 17, cutting resumed on the 18th and the champion big doug fir was cut down on the 19th.
Eugene environmental groups stayed silent. They did not dare challenge EWEB's mismanagement that let existing tanks degrade to the point they are unrepairable and are silent about real estate overdevelopment, including future expansions of Eugene to Veneta and Junction City which will need lots of water. They also ignore plans for massive widening of Beltline highway (12 - 14 lanes).
In a democracy the public comment period never ends. Silence is consent.
"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them."
- Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand
feller buncher, forest muncher
the bigger trees are too large for this machine
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On 7/6/21 11:02 AM, Ralph McDonald wrote: Hi All – The board of SHiNA (Southwest Hills Neighborhood Association) has today voted to oppose the current plan to cut EWEB Forest. (Not all board members have weighed in on this issue, but all members voting so far have unanimously approved the resolution, and the level of a quorum has been reached.) Below is text of our adopted resolution 7/6/21: “WHEREAS many citizens in the impacted Eugene south hills area are just now learning of an EWEB proposal involving the significant destruction and/or clear-cutting of forested tract south of 40th and Patterson St.; “AND WHEREAS large trees such as these proposed for removal have been in very recent scientific study shown to be critical for the dampening of urban heat, the retention of moisture, and the retarding of wildfire, as well as significant other civic value including aesthetic value and wildlife habitat; “THEREFORE the Eugene Southwest Hills Neighborhood Association Board (SHINA) hereby requests that EWEB withdraw plans for this said project, and that also the City of Eugene deny any necessary permitting for this project unless a more robust study of both the need for water storage at this or nearly location and the environmental impact of this or similar proposal be accessed.” PASSED BY ONLINE VOTE OF THE EUGENE SOUTHWEST HILLS NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION (SHiNA) 7/6/21 Don’t hesitate to contact me for any questions regarding this resolution. Best Regards, SHiNA was the only formal group in Eugene to call for preservation of this forest. 
EWEB Board of Commissioners refused to hold a public hearing. They shut out neighbors and the broader community. The City Council, Mayor, County Commissioners, other neighborhood associations, and environmental groups chose to stay silent or sided with EWEB's mismanagement. Media coverage was biased toward EWEB, framing concerns as immediate neighbors versus the needs of the whole city. Some concerned citizens live near the site but many others do not. There should be a city wide discussion of EWEB's decades of neglect of existing reservoirs that led the Oregon Health Authority to order closure of Hawkins Hill and College Hill reservoirs, a reason why EWEB tripled planned storage for the East 40th Street site. In 2020, EWEB only planned 5 million gallons of storage. In April 2021, without any public notice, the General Manager and staff increased the plan to 15 million. Our record temperature in June suggests climate chaos is already here (not a theoretical possibility in the distant future). Forest canopy cools cities, moderates temperatures, holds in moisture.
If you are a subscriber to EWEB's (exaggerated) Green Power program, you could consider withdrawing from this extra payment on your bill. Wind turbines and solar panels are great but they cannot "offset" EWEB's destruction of native ecosystems. Money given to EWEB would be better spent on real resilience - tools to prepare for the Cascadia earthquake, solar powered lanterns, water filters for home use, insulating your home, tuning up a bicycle, garden tools, to to cite a few examples. One contributor to this website signed off from EWEB's program after learning about their proposed clearcut and blasting, and got a high level call from EWEB management immediately afterwards. EWEB also exaggerates how "fossil fuel free" electricity supposedly is, that is a topic for a pending post. Eugene's environmental groups did not encourage their members to speak up before the trees were cut down.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." |
15 foot circumference Douglas fir killed by EWEB
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big Doug Fir is now exposed to wind and sun, big pine in the background on the right. Both escaped execution on August 2.
big pine on left, biggest fir slightly to right of center
"The presence of ponderosa pine in this forest is somewhat notable as this native pine is becoming less common in the Willamette Valley and is recognized by ecologists as a species that should be promoted and managed for when possible."
- "Draft Ecological Inventory Report," prepared by DOWL consultant, February 11, 2021, p. 11
part of the EWEB Board of Commissioners packet for project approval, April 6, 2021
big Pine at the left in the photo below, if is survives EWEB and the judicial system, it is a species that might tolerate the increase in temperature that will be caused by the clearcut
"Because without the rain forests, we're going to have deserts. The food supply will dwindle. As a matter of fact, there's even the possibility that we're going to lose all kinds of valuable substances we know nothing about. Those rain forests have an incredible number of species of plants and animals that we know very little about. Some of them may produce chemicals of great pharmacological and medical importance. If properly cultivated, some of the plants might be new food sources. In addition to that, nothing produces the oxygen of the atmosphere with the same intensity that a forest does. Anything that substitutes for it will be producing less oxygen. We're going to be destroying our atmosphere, too."
- Isaac Asimov
"We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven't become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe. Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself ... Now I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.
-- Rachel Carson, April 1963
www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Course%20Index/Lessons/27/27.html
Lesson Twenty-seven: Extinction in Ecotopia: Environment and Identity in the Late-20th-Century Pacific Northwest
Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington
History of Washington State and the Pacific Northwest
The environmental writer Barry Lopez, writing in Old Oregon (Autumn 1991), summarized the situation with words those spoke well to the Pacific Northwest: "One of our deepest frustrations as a culture, I think, must be that we have made so extreme an investment in mining the continent, created such an infrastructure of nearly endless jobs predicated on the removal and distribution of trees, water, minerals, plants, and oil, that we cannot imagine stopping."
www.EWEB.wtf - Mark Robinowitz - ForestClimate.org - SustainEugene.org
