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O Little Town in Oregon
By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 01 January 2008
A recent edition of the local paper in my little Oregon town contained some
real shockers. First came the news that our former mayor had been murdered by
a young man he had once sheltered. The 19-year-old, likely a schizophrenic,
had allegedly thrown the 70-year-old man to the ground and repeatedly pounded
his head on the pavement. Friends say the mayor, fearful of the young man's
violence, had phoned the police earlier, but got the usual response people get
in this impoverished rural county: "Sorry, we don't have the manpower to
answer your call."
The next disturbing news came, in of all things, the five-page spread of children's
letters to Santa. Many of these letters were intensely heartwarming, funny or
even irritating in the way that children have. I had to roll my eyes at the
long lists of brand name toys desired by children, including one child ready
with the helpful hint, "Santa, you can get this at Wal Mart."
On the disturbing end was a five-year-old's letter: "I wish I really had
so much Army stuff and I wish I was in the real Army. I wish I had so much guns
too."
But the letters that really startled me were the ones from children who wanted
help with big problems in their lives. They asked Santa to stop their parents
from fighting and to heal the sick people in their families. They asked Santa
to repair the city pool that never has enough funding to stay open, because
"it is no fun without it." They asked Santa to reopen our county library
system which had shut its doors last year: "Please Santa, I want a library
book."
One child asked for a new house, saying, "There are leaks in the roof,
because there are hols in it." And then there were the children who asked
for food:
"Dear Santa - I want something that will make my family better because
they keep getting sick so can you give me something that will help them to be
better? I want more fruit so people can live a healthy life. Can you bring us
more fruit? I have been very good this year."
"Dear Santa - I want more food for my family because we are almost out
of food."
These letters could not have surprised our elementary school teachers. Every
day, before school starts, teachers must provide some children with breakfast
and a shower because they don't get these things at home. Josephine County is
one of the poorest counties in the state, but there are still plenty of middle
class and even wealthy people here. The erosion of public services in the county
has less to do with poverty and more to do with the fact that this area is also
a haven for strong anti-tax ideologues.
Even though our property taxes are some of the lowest in the state, every time
a levy is proposed to fund the police, or the library, or the pool, it is defeated
by a wide margin.
Part of the problem is the legacy of timber money that goes back to the Teddy
Roosevelt era. Because so much of the land ended up in public ownership (In
Oregon, it had to be rescued from a huge railroad company scam), the federal
government ultimately promised that a portion of the timber receipts could go
to fund county governments. On Forest Service lands, it was 25 percent, and
on the O&C (Oregon and Californian Railroad Company) lands it was 50 percent.
People got used to low property taxes, and even today, some county commissioners
are lobbying the federal government to start up old growth logging again to
pay for county services. What they fail to realize is that there is no way such
a scheme can be sustained.
After World War II, logging on public lands accelerated, and by 1990 the timber
industry had liquidated about 80 percent of the old growth forests. Public outrage
finally stopped most, though not all, of the old growth logging in the early
1990s as a series of protests and lawsuits led to the Clinton administration's
Northwest Forest Plan.
As logging declined, Congress enacted the Secure Rural Schools program to compensate
counties for lost timber receipts. Meant to be a temporary bridge while counties
came up with new funding sources, it will finally expire in 2008. Lawmakers
from Oregon and other states with forest-dependent communities have tried all
year to pass an extension, with no success. In Oregon, some desperate county
officials now see increased logging as their only hope, and are casting their
lot with the Bush administration by supporting what locals call "the Whopper."
The Whopper goes back to 2003, when the Bush administration decided not to
fight a timber industry case against the Northwest Forest Plan. Even though
the timber industry's case was seen as weak and headed for defeat in court,
the federal government settled it by agreeing to a new forest plan for the Bureau
of Land Management (BLM) lands in Oregon. The new plan is called the Western
Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR), aka, "the Whopper".
The Whopper truly lives up to its name. The BLM's preferred alternative would
nearly triple logging levels, remove protections for old growth forests and
streams and clear-cut over 14,000 acres per year.
Because the preferred alternative increases clear-cutting and regrowth in even-aged
plantations, it would also convert thousands of acres into a "low fire
resiliency" category. Unlike old, wet forests with thick-barked trees,
young plantations have zero resistance to fire. Because much of the BLM land
here is interspersed with private land in a checkerboard pattern, many homes
will be directly threatened.
Local officials are not thinking about the cost to defend homes surrounded
by highly flammable tree plantations. All they can think about is the money
that cutting those old growth trees will bring in.
There is still some hope that the $1.8 billion Secure Rural Schools program
could be renewed before it expires. For the sake of the forests, the streams,
our homes and our children, let's hope Congress passes this safety net for rural
counties.
For the sake of our common future, let's hope that the radical, anti-tax ideologues
wake up and realize that liquidating precious natural resources to fund recurring
annual expenditures is nothing but a dead end.
The final deadline for public comments on the BLM's WOPR plan is January 11.
To make a comment, go to: http://www.daylightdecisions.com/wopro/.
Kelpie Wilson is Truthout's environment editor. Trained as a mechanical engineer, she embarked on a career as a forest protection activist, then returned to engineering as a technical writer for the solar power industry. She is the author of "Primal Tears," an eco-thriller about a hybrid human-bonobo girl. Greg Bear, author of "Darwin's Radio," says: "'Primal Tears' is primal storytelling, thoughtful and passionate. Kelpie Wilson wonderfully expands our definitions of human and family. Read Leslie Thatcher's review of Kelpie Wilson's novel "Primal Tears."
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