Roosevelt
Blvd.is a better connector between Beltline and 99, it
serves northwest Eugene neighborhoods better than WEP could. Some
local traffic would use Roosevelt, regional through traffic would bypass
on Belt Line.
transfer WEP money to finish Beltline,
fix Roosevelt / 99 intersection two options for completing Beltline: (1) if Peak Oil is here,
(2) if Peak Oil is not yet here. The larger option could convert
Beltline to an interstate highway - perhaps I-605?
transfer ODOT / City lands for WEP to BLM's
West Eugene Wetlands Project
new roads:
First - 99 - Second Connector, Barger Road Extended & Trainsong
Connector (to NW Expressway)
fix West
11th intersections (would cost about $2 million, the cost
to complete WEP study), other road repairs
bicycle paths and lanes, pedestrian safety enhanced by road test for
drivers license renewals
land use shifts to coordinate transit and development, mixed use centers,
co-housing neighborhoods
"Saving Oil in a Hurry" - practical steps
toward coping with sudden energy shortages, road safety, speed limits
upgrade Amtrak to enable high speed trains to Seattle
Second and Garfield: ideal location for Eugene's
new hospital (central
& accessible)
Peak Oil and climate change are "new circumstances" that requires reopening
the NEPA process
City of Eugene Adopted Growth Management Policies
violated by WEP
Endangered
Species Act: a "license to kill" - Road Kill: Fender's
Blue Butterfly and Car Fenders
controlled burning for wet prairie restoration incompatible with WEP
environmental
justice: WEP traffic dumped onto 6th and 7th would severely impact
Whiteaker neighborhood
plants of the West Eugene Wetlands - photos by Linda Swisher
Endangered
Species Act: a "license to kill" - Road Kill: Fender's
Blue Butterfly and Car Fenders
controlled burning for wet prairie restoration incompatible with WEP
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglass
- a letter that protected a
park from a parkway
sand
and gravel - impacts of an elevated WEP in the wetlands
Mary O'Brien: promoted a worse West Eugene Parkway option than ODOT that would have nullified the proposed Federal lawsuit to stop the WEP set up West Eugene Collaborator committee which welcomed new version of WEP but excluded neighborhood groups compromise on a pesticide lawsuit
My hardest fight as a performer has been with myself, to be as clear
a conduit as possible for what needs to be said. That's the ongoing struggle.
Get my ego and my brain out of the way and let this stuff happen.
-- from "mouth that roared: Bruce Cockburn says he's not
an activist but a concerned voice", Edmonton Sun, 27 March 2002, by Fish
Griwkowsky.
Before he left California to take over the Wilderness Society, photographer
and lifelong environmental activist Ansel Adams, who knew most of the players
well, had warned him: 'You're about to go work with the biggest egos on the
planet. They don't get paid much so the drive is ego, and the righteousness
is self-righteousness,' Adams added, 'the worst kind.' Turnage says Adams foreboding
proved accurate. 'I've never seen so much territoriality and rivalry. Some rivalry
is healthy, but this was counterproductive." There were, however, some
good meetings, 'although the organizations' staffs disliked each other so immensely
it was hard to get them to collaborate on anything we decided to do together.'
-- Mark Dowie, Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the
Twentieth Century, p. 69-70
I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed
with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that
the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White
Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more
devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which
is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice;
who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't
agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels
he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of
time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient
season." Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating
than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance
is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from the Birmingham Jail", 1963
Short summary by Mark Robinowitz
The article below is about two federal lawsuits on the environment that were
joined together into a single case. In that case, more than a decade ago, Mary O'Brien
signed on to a lifting of an injunction that stopped herbicide spraying on some
federal lands -- an injuction that Barbara Kelley with Save Our ecoSystems (SOS) had achieved through difficult
litigation.
In the case below, Barbara Kelley had won an injunction
that stopped herbicide spraying on some Federal lands. Mary O'Brien signed onto the
lifting of that injunction, which infuriated Barbara. To be fair, I've heard Barbara's
point of view and not Mary O'Brien's (she declined to respond when asked about the situation) -- but it is hard to imagine a rationale for an environmentalist to endorse lifting
an injunction against spraying chemical weapons on public lands that hold
some of the last, best biodiversity of Cascadia.
Perhaps part of the problem is the competition for attention in the environmental movement, and how some people find it hard to support others work if they are not getting the credit for it.
Barbara writes in the margins of the article - "SOS not admitted to the
table" and notes that Barbara Kelley / SOS excluded from the deliberations. Similarly, those who opposed all of the WEP were excluded from Mary O'Brien's discussions with the Crandall / Arambula designers of a worse WEP, were excluded from Mary's legal committee with Friends of Eugene to consider a truncated lawsuit against the WEP (which would be difficult to be successful if the type of behavior that led to Crandall Arambula was tolerated) and from the "collaboration" efforts set up as the WEP was canceled. While it is understandable that Mary O'Brien would not want anyone who opposed her Crandall Arambula worse WEP to take part in the post-WEP discussions about west Eugene, it is harder to understand why she and Mayor Piercy also sought to exclude the neighborhood groups of west Eugene from their alleged collaboration.
Accord Reached on Herbicide Spraying
By Mary O'Brien
The Southern Willamette Alliance
July 1989, p. 5
Some opponents in a long and bitter Northwest controversy experienced a
moment of warmth and accord on May 24, 1989. Some longtime plaintiffs agreed
not to sue and some stalwart defendents met them at least halfway.
The occasion was the signing of a joint motion to federal Judge James Burns
by the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP), Coast range
resident Paul Merrell, the Forest Service and the pro-pesticide organization
Oregonians for Food and Shelter (OFS). The motion notified the judge that
his five-year-old injunction against any use of herbicides by the Forest Service
in Oregon and Washington could be lifted without opposition from those who
had fought hard to win the injunction.
After five sprayless growing seasons, the Forest Service can once again spray
herbicides ... This is what the Forest Service wanted to do in the first place,
right? Where is the half way in this accord?
The half way is that after these five years, a whole lot of Forest Service
decision makers in Oregon and Washington don't want to spray herbicides much,
or at all, and have designed publicly retrievable hoops through which those
who want to spray will have to jumb ...
[comment from Mark: this reminds me of similar rhetoric regarding Crandall
Arambula, and if a compromise WEP was pushed as a settlement - the "half
WEP" scenario - we might reminded that a lot of ODOT, BLM, etc. officials
are opposed to the WEP.]
... the Forest Service took [a 1984] injunction as an opportunity. Deciding
in 1986 to address the spirit as well as the letter of NEPA, the agency approached
its former nemesis, NCAP, asking for suggestions, ideas, information and names
of more folks to involve in what was to become a two and a half year process
...
[note from Barbara: SOS was excluded from that process because she took a
no-compromise approach]
"A Personal Story: A Public Issue"
By Barbara Kelley
(in the same publication, March 1989)
... The crowning climax of our work was the victorious outcome of SOS versus
Clarke ...
[Barbara's suit against the BLM for their spraying - she lived near some BLM
checkerboards in the Cascade foothills]
.... "The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted us both a resounding
victory, upholding the injunction of herbicide spraying in public forests
and expanding its boundaries. [NCAP] entered the legal arena at this point
and, without the necessity of further legal arguments, successfully pressed
for the extension of the injunction to all of the Northwest (NCAP v. Block).
Several other suits followed and Region V USFS in California halted its own
use of herbicides.
Ultimately, the Chief of the USFS placed a ban on herbicide spraying on all
USFS forests and BLM "followed suit". We rejoiced. ...
The ban that has protected our public forests since 1983 is now being threatened.
The USFS is about to make a motion to dissolve the injunction. ... Judge Burns,
pressed on one side by the timber interests as represented by the USFS, and
on the other by preservationists, has opted for mediation prior to dissolving
the injuction. We are not optimistic about this turn of events.
