Most owners of industrial timberlands don’t give a damn about their impacts on drinking water, salmon and local communities. They practice legalized poisoning of our air, land and water, spraying clear-cuts with toxic chemical cocktails that wash into streams with the rain — while repeatedly claiming, “It’s legal. It’s safe.” 

It may be legal, but no, it is not safe. Just ask the residents of Gold Beach.

A 2009 report in The New York Times found that the Clean Water Act had been violated more than 500,000 times by more than 23,000 companies and entities over a five-year period.

In 2022, more than 18,000 community water systems had at least one Safe Drinking Water Act violation. 

Weyerhaeuser and Manulife (formerly Hancock Forest Management), two of the largest timberland owners in Oregon, have corporate offices in Seattle and Toronto. Why should corporate boards 3,000 miles away have more say in what goes into our drinking water than we, the people who drink that water?

They don’t care about their impacts on others. Never have, never will. They kill trees, pollute rivers for profit, spray poisons into our air, onto our land and into our water, public health be damned.

A yes vote on Measure 20-373, the Watersheds Bill of Rights, is a vote for letting local people have a say over Wall Street’s impact on our drinking water and our children’s health.

Barbara Davis
Waldport