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In the United States, we have strong legal protection for rights relating to speech, property and use of firearms. But our rights to a clean, safe and healthy environment are woefully inadequate. Ballot Measure 20-373, also called the Watersheds Bill of Rights, aims to give power to local people to uphold these fundamental rights by strengthening environmental protections for all five watersheds in Lane County.
This measure is based on Rights of Nature and the Precautionary Principle, increasingly used around the world to enact protection for the environment before industrial harm becomes irreversible. In a place and time where our environment is already badly degraded by decades of aggressive industrial extraction, we cannot afford to wait any longer.
Who would oppose this long-needed, commonsense protective legislation, and why? Protect Our County is registered as an opposition political action committee with the Oregon Secretary of State’s office. Protect Our County masquerades as a defender of economic fairness for all, but in reality, it is just a front for the timber industry.
Gone are the days when timber was a major player in Oregon’s economy, when every small town had a locally owned sawmill, staffed by workers who earned a family wage. Overly aggressive logging and automation resulted in a steep decline of the timber industry’s share of Oregon’s economy decades ago.
At present, 80% of privately owned timberlands in western Oregon belong to just 10 companies. And about half of these are not locally owned operations. They are Wall Street investment firms. The timber industry is the largest producer of greenhouse gases in the state of Oregon. In addition to damaging ecosystems and human health by spraying poisons from helicopters, clear-cut logging degrades waterways, warming the water, harming native fish, and reducing stream flow by an average of 50% below a clearcut.
Timber companies have no interest in protecting quality of life, water, land or climate here in Lane County. What they are out to protect is their bottom line. Do not be misled by Protect Our County’s false arguments against Measure 20-373. What is at stake here is whether we the people agree to be exposed to toxic chemicals via aerial spraying — a method that has been heavily restricted or banned outright on national forest lands since the mid-1980s. This change in practice on national forest lands points out that aerial spraying is clearly not necessary. There are other effective methods of brush control in forestry. Private timber companies benefit by keeping the status quo on aerial spraying because it is cheaper for them. It’s past time for them to pay their fair share by updating their practices.
Oregon law (ORS 537.110) states: “All water within the state from all sources of water supply belongs to the public.” Water is life. Toxic chemicals don’t belong. The real danger is pollution, not protection. A yes vote for Measure 20-373 is a vote to protect our water, now and for the generations yet to come. Continued protection of timber interests makes no sense in the context of a changing climate and an economy that is increasingly based on tourism and outdoor recreation.
We do not have to choose between a healthy economy and a vibrant ecosystem: we can have both, by voting to protect our watersheds. I urge all my neighbors to vote yes on Measure 20-373.
