Molalla River Wild and Scenic Passes House!

On November 19, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill (292-133) to protect 21 miles of the Molalla River in northern Oregon’s Cascade foothills as Wild and Scenic. The bill now heads to the Senate for action, likely early next year.

Home to threatened steelhead and chinook salmon, miles of non-motorized trails, and rapids popular with kayakers and rafters the Molalla River is a largely undiscovered jewel just an hour southeast of Portland.

The passage of the bill through the House was spearheaded by Congressman Kurt Schrader, who recognized the dual positive economic and environmental values for rural Clackamas County in protecting such a prime recreational river. The designation of the Molalla as Wild and Scenic is supported by diverse constituencies ranging from the City of Molalla and Clackamas County, to local, state and national environmental groups.

Please take a moment to thank Congressman Schrader for his hard work in passing this bill through the House and listening to the people of Oregon to move this bill forward!

Help us Meet this Challenge! Give a Year End Gift Today!

		Help us stop a 47 mile-long clearcut through the Mt. Hood National Forest! Please give an end of the year gift to the Oregon Chapter today! You can help us protect Oregon’s most special places. Please give a year end gift today!   Dear Sierra Club Supporter, This past year, contributions from people like you have helped us save tens of thousands of acres of old-growth and mature forest, stall plans to locate liquefied natural gas terminals and pipelines in Oregon, play a critical role in passing a pro-environment agenda at the Oregon legislature, and much more.  You can read more about our recent successes by clicking here. Thank you for making our work possible! Looking forward, we face a number of challenges and opportunities: • At the end of the year, we will lose funding for an organizer who is coordinating our efforts to stop the Palomar Pipeline, which would create a 150 foot wide, 47 mile long clearcut through the Mt. Hood National Forest.  With the help of people like you, we will continue to retain this position and stop this reckless proposal. • We have begun an aggressive campaign to hold the Governor and the Oregon Board of Forestry accountable for protecting salmon strongholds in the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests, and we need your help to fund this important program. • We are launching a new effort to permanently protect the Owyhee Canyonlands – an amazing, two-million acre tract of public land in southeast Oregon that is threatened by overgrazing and all-terrain vehicle abuse. We can only do this with your generous support. To take advantage of these opportunities and to meet these challenges, I am writing to ask you for a contribution of $50 or more today. I appreciate that this is a big commitment, but your gift will make a tremendous difference in our efforts to protect Oregon’s environment and our most special places.  Your contribution to the Oregon Chapter is especially meaningful because 100% of your donation will be spent protecting our environment and natural resources right here in Oregon.  I hope you will consider this important gift to support the Sierra Club’s conservation work in Oregon. Warm regards, Brian Pasko Oregon Chapter Director P.S.   Times are tough for many of us, and that means your gift has never been more important. If you have any questions about the work we do or how you can become more involved in our work, please call me directly.  I can be reached at (503) 238-0442 x301. Please make your contribution to the Sierra Club’s Oregon Chapter today!

Open Letter to Governor Kulongoski – Time to Push for a Coal-Free Oregon

Last week, the Sierra Club, the Northwest Energy Coalition, and numerous other Oregon conservation and ratepayer organizations sent an open letter to Governor Ted Kulongoski, asking him to work with other Northwest Governors to push the Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NWPCC) to set a plan to phase out coal as part of the regional energy mix over the next decade.

Every five years, the NWPCC sets a plan in motion that helps guide energy decisions at the Oregon Public Utility Commission, which oversees the resource plans for major utilities such as PGE, Pacificorp, and NW Natural. During the development of the draft ‘6th Plan’ of the NWPCC, the Sierra Club mobilized hundreds of Oregonians to turn out to hearings to call for an end to burning coal, which amazingly still provides 40% of Oregon’s electricity. PGE’s Boardman coal-burning power plant is Oregon’s largest stationary source of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

The NWPCC’s draft 6th Plan contained laudable goals to get 85% of new energy over the next 20 years from energy efficiency and conservation, but didn’t address the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from existing energy sources in order to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals on the books in Oregon and other states.

Governor Kulongoski has been a leader in developing renewable energy policies and green jobs for Oregon, spearheading the effort in 2007 to adopt some of the nation’s strongest greenhouse gas reduction goals. Now its time for the Governor to push for the phaseout of outdated and dirty coal-fired power plants, like PGE’s Boardman plant, while working with other regional Governors and the NWPCC to create a coal-free Northwest.

Sierra Club Stops Third Controversial Logging Project in Umatilla National Forest

(Pendleton, Oregon).  For the third time in recent months, the Forest Service has withdrawn a scientifically-controversial large-scale timber sale sparing beautiful forests, wildlife, and spring fed salmon waterways from damaging logging. The Umatilla National Forest Supervisor withdrew the Wildcat timber sale before the Forest Service had even defended the action in Federal District Court. The Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project and the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club had challenged the project in which the Forest Service had proposed logging steep slopes, roadless areas and its claims in its analysis ran against available science. The withdrawal is the third Umatilla Forest Service timber sale recently rescinded in the face of challenges from top scientists.

The Wildcat logging project was located in remote forest within the Heppner Ranger District. The Forest Service proposed thousands of acres of logging, thinning, road building and pile burning. “The project would have degraded essential habitat for a diverse array of wildlife species, many of which are already imperiled due to widespread habitat loss and population declines as a result of past logging” said Karen Coulter director of Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project. The logging was proposed for steep slopes that are the headwaters of a number of important salmonid waterways that are tributaries to the North Fork John Day River.

In late October, in response to an appeal raising similar issues the Umatilla Forest Service withdrew the Farley logging project in the North Fork John Day District. In August, the agency withdrew its decision on the Walla Walla District’s Cobbler timber sale in the Grande Ronde watershed.  In all three projects, the agency was targeting remote interior forests that provide habitat for elk, bear, cougar, wolverine, goshawk, lynx, pileated woodpeckers and numerous other birds and wildlife species. The Farley and Cobbler logging projects were located where returning wolves are establishing new territory. Waterways in all three areas provide clear cool waters needed by imperiled redband trout, steelhead, and salmon.

While the science tells us there are benefits to light on the land thinning in low elevation dry ponderosa pine forests, the previous administration confounded the need and pushed through these projects to try to triple timber quotas.  Under the Bush administration, the agency claimed that the logging was planned to restore forest health – even though there is no scientific support for these claims. Over half of the Wildcat project, and most all of Farley and Cobbler, would have logged naturally complex moist mixed conifer and ecologically important roadless forests located at moderate to higher elevations.

Two renowned scientists conducted field and research reviews, and provided expert declarations on the project impacts and ecological harms. Dr. Richard Waring declared that the Forest Service’s claims are not in accord with natural cycles essential to forest well-being, noting that the planned logging would incur far more harm than benefit. The Forest Service also failed to consider climate change and the importance of forest carbon sequestration. Dr. Waring’s declaration cited research by Dr. Mark Harmon and others which demonstrate that logging results in a far larger carbon release than periodic wildfires. (Declaration of Dr. Waring attached)

Jonathan Rhodes, Planeto Azul Hydrological Consultants, noted the harmful effects of sediment from “temporary” and “rebuilt” roads and logging on the survival and recovery of wild fish in already stressed watersystems. Rhodes refuted erroneous agency claims that logging would help “reduce the risk of fire,” noting well documented logging harms for no measurable benefit.

The Sierra Club Oregon Chapter’s Asante Riverwind stated that: “Scientific research recognizes that natural disturbance is healthy, not a reason to log. To build resilience in an era of climate change, we need to protect the last remaining roadless areas, reduce the damaging network of roads, and halt scientifically misguided logging of the few old growth trees, living and snags, which remain on the land.”

Hey Northwest Natural!

The Northwest Natural gas company has proposed developing the controversial Palomar Pipeline, which would carry imported fossil fuel from a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal near the mouth of the Columbia River, across Mt. Hood, to a California-bound gas pipeline in central Oregon.

The Palomar pipeline would stretch over 200 miles from the mouth of the Columbia River to Central Oregon, forever damaging family-owned farms and forestlands, threatening hundreds of rivers and streams including the Wild and Scenic Clackamas River, and creating a 120 foot-wide, 47 mile-long clearcut across the Mt. Hood National Forest.

Click here to  can learn more about the Palomar Pipeline and the Sierra Club’s efforts to stop LNG in Oregon.

This past week, the Sierra Club and our conservation partners released a video and launched a corporate accountability campaign to say “Hey Northwest Natural – Stop the Palomar Pipeline!”:

In the mood for a good book?

Oregon Sierra Club volunteer Dan Cobb is so passionate about protecting our most special places, he wrote a book about it!

Set in Portland, the Wallowa Mountains, and Washington State’s San Juan Islands, THE MINE is a chilling thriller that captures the live and death struggle of a young Portland couple as they work to close down a massive illegal gold mine in eastern Oregon. The story is loosely based on the Summitville Mine disaster, where in 1990 a massive flood of cyanide, sulfuric acid, arsenic, and heavy metals decimated 17 miles of the Alamosa River and contaminated downstream farmland.

And Dan has graciously agreed to donate a portion of the proceeds from THE MINE to the Oregon Chapter!  Montana has banned cyanide heap leach mines. What is the future for such mines in Oregon? With gold over $1,000 per ounce, it’s anyone’s guess.

Click here to purchase “The Mine” and support the Sierra Club’s work in Oregon!

Ryan Evans doesn’t know it yet, but he’s in serious trouble. High in Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains, an open-pit cyanide leach mine is churning out gold by the ton, plus arsenic, cyanide, and a list of heavy metals. A biologist working for Oregon’s DEQ, Ryan is shocked when DEQ approves the mine’s expansion from 1,800 acres to over 10 square miles. Against his wife’s advice, Ryan investigates. His digging reveals deep corruption, fraud, and the likely murder of a DEQ investigator. But his tenacity catches the attention of a whistle-blower, along with the company, which will do anything to silence them both. Sometimes youthful idealism can bring a deadly penalty.

Background

In 1990, the Summitville Gold Mine in Colorado released a flood of cyanide and heavy metals into the Alamosa River, decimating 17 miles of the river. The company, Galactic Resources, quickly filed for bankruptcy and abandoned the site.  The mine soon became an EPA Superfund Site and to date, the EPA has spent over $200,000,000 for ongoing cleanup and recovery—arguably the most expensive EPA cleanup on record.

Also in 1990, the Brewer Gold Mine, near Jefferson, South Carolina, spilled over ten million gallons of solution containing cyanide and a long list of heavy metals. The spill killed over 11,000 fish and decimated 50 miles of the Lynches River. The Brewer Company later abandoned the site and the mine is now a Federal Superfund Site. Taxpayers will be paying many millions of dollars for cleanup into perpetuity.

While fiction, THE MINE is based on Colorado’s Summitville Mine disaster, Europe’s mammoth Aurul Mine catastrophe (labeled “the worst disaster since Chernobyl”) and the coming debacle: Alaska’s 20-square mile Pebble Mine.

Click here to read more!