In another stinging review of the state Department Environmental Quality, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency audit has concluded that the DEQ's air pollution fines are too low to deter polluters.

The state agency also allows some companies to violate or skirt air emissions permits without penalties, the audit says. And the EPA also faults the state agency for poor record-keeping and sketchy inspection reports. The audit, still in its draft stage, is the third EPA review this year criticizing how Oregon enforces federal air, water and hazardous-waste laws. Together, they raise about whether the agency can stand up to polluters at a time when the Oregon Legislature is considering cutting the agency's budget.

"Do they have the resources to be able to deliver the programs, or are there some things that EPA should be doing in the state of Oregon?" said Chuck Clarke, EPA's regional administrator. "If their budget gets reduced, it probably means a stronger role from EPA in the enforcement arena in Oregon."

DEQ Director Langdon Marsh, who met with Clark on Wednesday to discuss the audits, conceded that the agency needed to improve the way it tracks pollution levels and enforcement actions. But Marsh disagreed with the EPA about how to enforce federal laws. The DEQ often tries to educate or coach polluters into compliance before resorting to heavy-handed fines, he said. "We think we understand the situations of the different businesses better, and can craft or tailor compliance programs for different agencies," Marsh said."

EPA prefers to let states enforce most environmental regulations. But on occasion, it does intervene In the past three years, it has taken over programs for hazardous waste, underground storage tanks and water quality after steep cuts by the state's Legislature. Federal officials also stepped in last year when they found problems in Idaho's air enforcement program.

In its audit of Oregon's air quality program, EPA found it "disturbing" that problems it identified in an audit 10 years ago still existed. Among the concerns detailed in the audit:

• DEQ's penalties were too low to deter polluters, and fines for multi day violations and repeat offenders were applied "too conservatively." Clark said that in cases, DEQ's fines were "five, 10, 15 times less than what we would charge in similar cases."
• The number of civil penalties DEQ issued between 1995 and 1997 dropped by half. DEQ officials are unsure why, but speculate that a new, more rigorous permit system 1995 resulted in a rise in violations.
• Businesses that exceed emissions limits in their "often just request a permit modification . . . and they usually receive it," without penalties. "EPA views emission violations much more seriously than DEQ appears to," the audit states. DEQ officials, who are drafting a response to the air-program audit, said they would contest some of its findings.

Recent EPA reviews of Oregon's water program found that the agency took too long to tackle violations and lacked a computer system to adequately monitor pollution cases. The two agencies are discussing the federal agency's review of the state's hazardous-waste program. Source: 6/24/99 The Oregonian, by Brent Hunsberger.

Also see: 6/21/99 - Audit faults Oregon's pollution monitoring.

6/21/99 - Audit faults Oregon's pollution monitoring -- A draft of a federal review says the state Department of Environmental Quality has not enforced the law. Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality, already grappling with potential budget cuts, has failed to adequately monitor and enforce water pollution laws, according to a draft audit by federal officials.

The findings are the most serious to date in a continuing federal review of how Oregon administers its air, water and hazardous waste programs. On Wednesday, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials are scheduled to brief state officials on the initial findings of their review of the state's air-quality enforcement program. The audits come as the Oregon agency braces for budget cuts that officials say could force them to reduce staff in air and water quality programs by as much as 7 percent.

The agency's inconsistent enforcement against polluters along Oregon's lakes, rivers and streams raises questions about its ability to improve water quality and restore salmon runs. Federal officials overseeing salmon restoration are considering making any violation of federal wastewater permits subject to enforcement action under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, said Mike Llewelyn, manager of the state agency's water quality program. "What it takes to protect water quality has gotten more complex," said Randall Smith, director of EPA's Office of Water in Seattle, which conducted the audit. "Every individual issue is harder. It takes more time to figure out. If you're trying to keep up with your workload and each individual issue to see how it affects salmon . . . you fall further and further behind."

EPA's heightened scrutiny of Oregon's enforcement programs stems from its own internal review last year. That audit found that the EPA had failed to adequately monitor how Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Alaska enforced federal environmental laws. Last year, EPA officials in Washington, D.C., alarmed by data showing declining enforcement actions in Oregon's air and water programs, directed its Region 10 office in Seattle to "make evaluation of Oregon's compliance and enforcement programs a priority."

Region 10 subsequently reviewed Oregon's water-quality enforcement program. Among its findings:

• Oregon's program lacked a computer system sophisticated enough to track pollution cases, delaying enforcement actions and allowing some violations to go unnoticed.

• The state tackled violations slowly and inconsistently, often without following its own guidelines. None of the violations reviewed in the audit had been addressed within the 45 days required by state rules. Fewer than a third were addressed within three months, as required by federal guidelines.

The audit, given to the DEQ in May, blamed the agency's problems on delays in issuing permits to industries and municipalities discharging sewage and wastewater into rivers and streams. The agency will have a chance to respond to the audit before it is made public. "At times, the workload from the permits overwhelms the staff," the report said, delaying enforcement actions. The state agency enforces 2,600 water quality permits mostly held by industries and municipal wastewater treatment plants.

Problems with the permit process are nothing new, nor are they unique to Oregon. This year, Congress pressured EPA Administrator Carol Browner to reduce the nationwide backlog. EPA officials have since pledged to cut it to 10 percent by 2001. Oregon's backlog -- 65 percent -- is among the worst in the nation. Delays in processing permits become more significant because of the region's effort to restore declining salmon runs.

"If you're not getting to it for several years . . . you're not protecting water quality for salmon," said the EPA's Smith. Llewelyn said he's not sure how to handle the EPA's concerns in light of potential budget cuts for the 1999-2001 biennium. A less-than-rosy revenue forecast for the state, coupled with the failure of a bill to raise permit fees, has left DEQ officials considering staff cuts in air and water quality programs. Officials said the cuts could curtail their ability to monitor pollution, respond to public complaints and help small companies applying for permits. Llewelyn said he might have to cut seven positions in his wastewater management section. "Losing seven (positions) from 56, I think, puts us in pretty dire straits," he said. Source: The Oregonian, by Brent Hunsberger.

The proposal may have set off an organized battle to spare Central Oregon's natural treasures from a building boom that has spanned a decade. In a two-week span, 2,500 people signed petitions objecting to the development of 69.5 acres adjacent to Shevlin Park, and four of the five members of the park district's board of directors recently voted to oppose the project.

"If the park district and the community of Bend can't protect Shevlin Park, then, really, what role does the public play?"

It has been a sharp, negative response from a community that has experienced one of the sharpest growth rates in the nation for much of the 1990s. Census figures pegged Bend's population at 20,447 in 1990. In less than a decade, development and annexations pushed that to 35,635 in 1998 -- a 74 percent increase. If the current growth rate continues, the population could nearly double again in another decade.

Developer Jim Clabaugh said he was surprised by the opposition. "I've never had this type of thing happen. It's very surprising," he said. Clabaugh has done residential projects in Florida and Colorado, and he has a contract to buy the property if it is rezoned for denser development. Clabaugh said he has offered to work with opponents to modify his plans to lessen any effect on the park. Originally, he intended to build about 160 housing units. Instead, he has offered to build about 100 homes and to provide a 100-foot setback from the park. He also said his proposal complies with Bend's recently adopted general plan and has been endorsed by the city planning staff.

The area, as well as a small portion of the park itself, is located within Bend's urban growth boundary, a 20-year-old designation meant to identify land for future development. Carrie Whitaker, executive director of the Bend Metro Park and Recreation District, said the issue isn't development per se, but high-density housing adjacent to and overlooking a park that residents relish for its unspoiled feel.

Opponents say any significant development would turn this roughly 600-acre enclave of giant ponderosa pines and aspen groves into just another urban green space. John Maniscalco, chairman of the Bend Metro Park and Recreation District board and a captain on the Bend Police Department, said dense development would destroy the park's sense of solitude and nature. The noise of lawn mowers and other urban sounds, he said, would erode the feel of wilderness Shevlin Park now offers. "That would have a permanent impact on the type of park that is there," he said. "It takes away the whole value of the park."

"What we do right now is going to have a lot of impact on future generations."

Maniscalco attributed the public reaction in part to growing concerns about the pace of growth and the threats on open spaces. "What we do right now is going to have a lot of impact on future generations," he said. Ausland, who organized the Coalition to Save Shevlin Park, said Clabaugh's development plan helped sound the alarm about the pace of development in the area. He said people who haven't given growth much thought became active over the Shevlin Park proposal. If opponents find a way to limit development adjacent to the park, he said many will think they can effect positive change elsewhere.

The park board's decision to oppose the rezoning, he said, reinforced the feeling that people can be heard. "People felt empowered by what happened," he said. Ausland said that a workable compromise exists if people are willing to give up a little. His group and the park district are looking at options that would allow for some development of the land while compensating the landowners if they cannot sell the remaining land for as much money as Clabaugh has agreed to pay.

But if the city endorses the rezoning -- a hearing on the subject has yet to be set -- many people might be disillusioned and give up, Ausland said. "If the park district and the community of Bend can't protect Shevlin Park, then, really, what role does the public play?" he said. Source: 6/16/99 The Oregonian, by Gordon Gregory, Correspondent.

Their solution? A bill, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., would give special status to federal land surrounding Lake Tahoe, provide $300 million to buy environmentally sensitive private properties and make other improvements in water quality and forest protection.

"Lake Tahoe is the crown jewel of the Sierra Nevada," the bill's co-author Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Friday. Designating federal land in the Lake Tahoe Basis as a National Scenic Forest and Recreation Area will "recognize Lake Tahoe as a priceless scenic and recreation resource," she said. Source: June 5, 1999 Register Guard.

Officials from coastal towns on Wednesday hailed BPA's move as a boon to an area that has been hit by declines in the lumber and fishing industries. The telecommunications infrastructure on the coast is generally poor, those officials said, in part because commercial companies that lay fiber optic cable have focused on high-profit urban centers, and overlooked small rural towns.

The $12 million BPA project will string 108 miles of cable along BPA's existing power lines, from the Lane substation, west of Eugene, to the coast, and then along the coast as far south as Coos Bay. The work is scheduled to be completed in September.

The BPA is installing the cable to upgrade its own communications systems. It will lease excess capacity to telecommunications providers such as MCI or Sprint, said Chuck Meyer, a BPA marketing official. The cable has 144 fibers, and BPA needs only 12 right now, Meyer said. The BPA is dedicating about 12 of the extra fibers to public use. The fibers will be used in part by CoastNet, a consortium of government and nonprofit partners trying to bring digital services, such as high-speed Internet access, to coastal communities from Depoe Bay in Lincoln County to Reedsport in Douglas County.

"This is a great way to get fiber optics and the digital age to communities that private companies may be ignoring," Meyer said. At a press conference Wednesday, officials from Newport and Reedsport applauded BPA's plan. Linking to BPA's cable could increase the coast's telecommunications capacity 2,000-fold, said Ben Doty, telecommunications manager for Central Lincoln People's Utility District and technical adviser to CoastNet.

That boost will help existing businesses as well as attract new ones, economic development officials said. Companies in Newport and Toledo currently can't even get voicemail from their local telephone company, US West, so who knows how many calls they're missing when their lines are busy, said Chris Chandler Di Torrice, executive director of the Economic Development Alliance of Lincoln County.

Telecommunications-dependent companies, such as call centers, don't even bother with coastal towns, she said. "I think we're not even being considered because our phone service is so poor," Di Torrice said. The additional capacity also could help link coastal schools and hospitals to urban centers through such applications as distance learning and video teleconferencing.

Installing fiber optic cable along the Oregon Coast is part of BPA's broader plan to upgrade communications among 400 substations in the Northwest. The BPA uses its communications system to control the power flow into each substation, and to redirect the flow to areas that need it most. Fiber optics will replace BPA's outmoded communications system of microwave radios. The BPA has strung about 2,000 miles of fiber over the past three years and it plans to install another 2,000 miles in the next few years, Meyer said.

That creates the possibility for public access groups to link up with BPA's line in other rural communities. The BPA is negotiating with at least two other such groups in Washington state, Meyer said.In addition to stringing fiber optic cable down the coast, BPA is installing it on another route: from Eugene, down Interstate 5 and turning west at a point north of Roseburg to the coast, all the way to Coos Bay.Rural communities along that line could also benefit from increased bandwidth if a partner like CoastNet stepped forward, Meyer said. Source: 6/10/99 Register Guard, by Sherri Buri McDonald.

The problem today is that property rights arguments have been carried to an extreme that fails
to recognize that the way we use our property affects other people's property. And what better example of that than the continuing controversy over hog farming operations? The way one  property owner uses his or her land can have a big impact on the use and enjoyment of other people's land.

Consider the same issue from the perspective of farmers. The value of their property, used for
farming, is diminished when urban neighbors make it unwise for them to use chemicals or object to the noise of midnight harvesting. It was a lot easier, and a lot more practical, to be a property rights purist when the next neighbor was five miles away than when they are 500 feet or 50 feet away. A philosophy from the time of covered wagons and buffalo migrations is no longer suited to a nation whose population will pass one-third of a billion early in the next century.

   We also need to recognize that land values can also be increased by regulations that restrict
   development. What do you think would happen to the property values in a neighborhood if a
   regulation prohibiting fast food restaurants or factories was repealed? Planning helps to
   reconcile competing property rights in ways that can protect everyoneís land values while
   balancing individual and community interests. A community requires some sacrifice. A good
   community makes that sacrifice worthwhile.Link to: full text of speech  Source:  1,000 Friends of Oregon, Robert Liberty

Once considered worthless real estate, wetlands are valued as habitat for birds, rare plants, amphibians and other animals. They also act like living sponges, soaking up floodwater, filtering out impurities and providing lush green spaces. To halt their destruction, state and federal policies require that anyone draining or filling wetlands - to build a house or a shopping center - must replace them elsewhere, a process called mitigation. Sometimes a developer builds a pond no the site, or might flood farmland to bring back waterfowl, willows and rushes.

But the new studies show that the human-made marshes area poor replacement for the 6,877 acres of wetlands lost in the Willamette Valley alone between 1982 and 1994. Too often, the constructed wetlands resemble simple ponds rather than the rich, dense mix of soil, plants and animals found in natural wetlands. A typical mitigation wetland might have a mechanical fountain, nicely groomed grass and landscaped plants - pleasing to the eye, perhaps, but not so friendly to the environment.

On paper, Oregon isn't losing wetlands. Developers must apply to the Division of State Lands and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a joint permit to fill wetlands. The agencies issue the permit only after approving a mitigation plan. The two cancel out – in theory. For that reason, the Oregon Progress Board gives the state an "A" in maintaining wetlands in its annual report.

But regulators at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Corvallis research lab suspected that losses occur anyway and undertook a study to learn the true picture. Using aerial photos of 114 square mile sample plots in the Willamette Valley, researchers mapped changes in vegetation between 1982 And 1994. The results: The Willamette Valley lost an average of 546 acres of wetlands per year from 1982 to 1994. Conversion to farming accounted for most of the changes, followed by development and forestry.

Janet Morlan, wetlands program leader for the Division of State Lands, noted that the rate of wetland loss may have slowed in recent years because of regulation, but not enough to reverse the trend. "We know there's a number of things we do not regulate," Morlan said. "There are violations we never find out about."

Instead of relying on human made models to replace wetlands, developers should avoid destroying them in the first place, said Julie Sibbing, assistant director for wetlands and wildlife refuge policy for the National Audubon Society in Washington, D.C. "Mitigation's supposed to be a last option," she said. Source: 5/18/99, Register Guard, by The Associated Press.

A federal district court found that the brook was a tributary of the creek, a navigable water of the United States. The court held that the company violated the Clean Water Act by knowingly discharging a pollutant, from a point source and without a permit, to a navigable water of the United States. The court ordered the company to pay a $50,000 fine and to be on probation for five years.

The company appealed on the ground that the brook is not a navigable water but instead is a municipal separate storm sewer that is part of a municipal waste treatment system. It relied on the exclusion in the Clean Water Act that waste treatment systems are not waters of the United States. 40 C.F.R. § 122.2.

The Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with the company. United States v. TGR Corporation, 1999 U.S. App. LEXIS 5312 (2nd Cir. 1999). The court noted that "waters of the United States" has an expansive meaning according to the Clean Water Act. It cited the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, Inc., 474 U.S. 121 (1985) which stated: "The Act's definition of 'navigable waters' as 'the waters of the United States' makes it clear that the term 'navigable' as used in the Act is of limited import." It also cited several Circuit Court decisions holding various non-navigable tributaries of navigable waterways are "waters of the United States."

The court quoted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA's) definition of "waters of the United States," 40 C.F.R. § 122.2, which includes "intrastate lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, 'wet lands,' sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, or natural ponds, the use, degradation, or destruction of which would affect or could affect interstate or foreign commerce."

The court rejected the company's assertion that the brook is part of a municipal storm sewer or waste treatment system. It was not a municipal separate storm sewer because it is not owned or operated by a public body. It could not be a waste treatment system excluded from "waters of the United States" because it is a natural waterway, not man-made, the court stated.

Thus, the court concluded, the brook is a natural tributary of a navigable water which qualifies as "waters of the United States." The court observed: "Although over time the brook has been channeled in some places (mostly by developers) into underground pipes to make room for development, in many places it still flows above ground through wooded areas and near residential homes."

The court's decision evidences the wisdom in exercising caution before discharging anything into a drain. Source: 6/10/99, Water On Line Newsletter, by Daniel J Kucera.

“The wastewater strength of the city is over two times stronger than the plant was designed to handle,” he said. The wastewater strength is at .37 BODs (biological oxygen demand) in the dry season, compared to .02 in comparable communities. The increase, said Richwine, is due to the growing number of motels, restaurants, recreational vehicle parks and garbage disposals.

“The plant can only treat so much waste,” said Richwine. “The plant is now at capacity, and, in fact, in some areas it’s over capacity.” The Lincoln City wastewater treatment plant, located at the south end of town near Schooner Creek, is also 18 years old and reaching the end of its mechanical life. “Something needs to be done to deal with the mechanical state of the plant,” Richwine said. “I commented to the council it’s a miracle the plant staff has been able to get by the last two winters.”

Though infiltration and inflow are problems in the city’s wastewater system, the bigger issues are the strength of the waste and the capacity of the aging system to treat it. Grease and oils from restaurants add to the system’s problems, along with septage accepted from other communities. Richwine said Lincoln City’s wastewater treatment plant is one of the few on the coast to accept septage, though it was not designed to do so.

The wastewater system includes 32 pump stations and sewer lines that move waste from the north end of Lincoln City to the treatment plant at the south. Meanwhile, the majority of the city’s growth has been and continues to be in the north. “That means the whole system has to be upgraded along the way,” Richwine said.

A second wastewater treatment plant could be considered on the north end of town, but such a move would raise a host of new problems: Where would it be located? Where would the effluent be placed? What kind of environmental issues would need to be addressed? Another political issue that needs to be explored, said Richwine, is Devils Lake and its surrounding homes: Will that sewage eventually find its way into the city’s wastewater treatment plant as well? “There’s a lot of planning issues that need to be dealt with,” Richwine said. He has been asked to do three studies for the city:

“The treatment plant is seeing the growth in tourism trade. If the city wants to continue to grow in that area, its wastewater treatment plant has to grow,” said Richwine. “The council is very interested in seeing the results of the next phase of the study; they want to move and see a plan,” he continued. “The council very much wants to make sure the city economy is not hindered by the wastewater plant.” Source: June 9, 1999, Newport News-Times, by Gail Kimberling.

Soaring demand for the products has paid for two major expansions since the company opened its 72,000-square-foot plant in 1981. Based on sales projections, Lorance is ready to commit his home-grown business to yet another expansion that would add 102,000 square feet of manufacturing space covering 10 acres. But these days, Lorance is scouting locations in Tualatin and Woodburn rather than Wilsonville.

Why? Water. In a region flush with rain and snowfall, Wilsonville is fast running out. The aquifer beneath the city, once thought to hold limitless supplies for Wilsonville's eight wells, is declining in both quantity ... economic development and probably means big increases in the cost of water.

But while Wilsonville may be the most visible example of what happens to a fast-growing suburban city brought to a halt by water shortages, Mayor Charlotte Lehan and others say similar problems are just around the corner for a number of other Oregon cities. Decisions facing Wilsonville eventually will confront citizens and officials elsewhere, she says, whether in the form of dramatically higher rates or new and controversial water sources.

"It's only a matter of time before the next city gets there and the next city after that," she says. "No matter how you cut it, this problem is regionwide."

State officials agree. "The communities that aren't addressing this should be," says Tom Paul, Northwest region manager for the state Water Resources Department. "It's not a long-term problem. It's here."

Development moratorium The most dramatic result of the water shortage in Wilsonville, a city of 12,000 that only a few years ago rang up more than $80 million worth of residential and commercial building activity, has been a moratorium on new development. Now 17 months old, the only water-related moratorium in Oregon has a number of local business owners, developers and home builders laboring to stay afloat. Applications approved before the moratorium took effect in January 1998 can proceed. Indeed, nearly $24 million in new building has sprung up in the first four months of this year.

But without a long-term source of water, entrepreneurs such as Lorance say they will be forced to take their businesses elsewhere. "There is property here that is zoned for family residences and located so close to existing companies that employees could just walk to work," Lorance says. "But more and more, it looks like none of that is going to happen. It's just a crying shame."

City Council members will hear testimony tonight on a staff recommendation to set the stage for lifting the moratorium. The plan calls for Wilsonville to join Tigard and perhaps one or two other suburban cities in building a water-treatment plant on the Willamette River.

The council is expected to adopt the recommendation at its June 21 meeting. Residents will vote in September on whether to approve the $25 million to $30 million in bonds needed to pay for the project. Repaying the bonds would require doubling water rates. The city's other option, buying water from the city of Portland, would quadruple local rates by requiring $93 million in bonds to build the expensive transmission lines needed to tap Bull Run reservoir water at Powell Butte near Gresham.

For a typical Wilsonville homeowner, the Willamette option means that rates -- already the second-highest in the region -- would jump from a bimonthly bill of $31.50 to a projected $63.86 within six years. The rate would leap to $84.27 if Wilsonville pursues the option without partners such as Tigard and Sherwood. And it would climb to an estimated $165.69 a decade from now under the Portland option.

Tim Gilbertsen, president of the Wilsonville Chamber of Commerce, says he is confident that voters will decide to lift the moratorium by going to the Willamette. Any qualms about the quality of the river's water will be calmed by proof that modern filtration processes can remove harmful pollutants, he says.

But the chamber's decision last week to endorse a Willamette treatment plant, he added, was based as much on economic considerations as it was on water-quality issues. "No one is going to end up deformed because of the water we drink," he says. But when asked whether he would allow his own family to sip river water, Gilbertsen revealed just how tough a sell the city may have ahead of it. "Personally, I'm still on a well," he says, laughing. "But I have every bit of faith that a treatment plant can take care of any problems."

"A lifetime for a business" Wilsonville's location just south of the confluence of Interstates 5 and 205 transformed a once-sleepy burg into the hub of Oregon's trucking and warehousing industries. Corporate giants such as Mentor Graphics, Hollywood Video and Tektronix moved their headquarters to Wilsonville to be at the heart of this critical junction.

Of immediate concern to business owners is the prospect that, even with the lifting of the moratorium, no new water will irrigate growth in Wilsonville for at least two years. That's how long it will take to build the treatment plant and transmission lines linking it to existing pipes. "Two years seems like a long time to average citizens," says Arlene Loble, Wilsonville's city manager. "But it's a lifetime for a business."

Creativity in dealing with individual allotments of water abounds. In Focus Systems Inc., a manufacturer of high-tech projectors for office and home use, won approval to increase water use elsewhere in its operations by installing waterless urinals. Employees, skeptical at first, now praise the innovative technology.

Hollywood Video gained room to expand by changing all fixtures in a store it took over. Mentor Graphics did the same thing by installing low-flush toilets in its new child-development center. For others, the water crisis has meant getting involved politically in efforts to build a women's prison at Day Road, just north of Wilsonville's city limits south of Tualatin. Business owners and developers say they are motivated to help with the prison because of an agreement with the state Corrections Department.

The deal would provide Wilsonville with surplus water not used by the prison. That would translate to a badly needed addition of 1.3 million gallons of water daily. Bruce Burns of trucking giant Burns Bros. Inc. has met with legislative leaders in recent weeks to support the prison site and resuscitate the company's plans for an ambitious redevelopment of its north Wilsonville property.

"We're doing this because we're stymied right now," says Grant Marsh, Burns Brothers' vice president, referring to efforts to replace the company's 30-year-old truck stop with commercial and retail shops. "Without this moratorium, we would absolutely be moving ahead. And I mean tomorrow." Source: 6/7/99, The Oregonian, by Dana Tims.

As we approach this much-vaunted millennium, we first have to realize that, as a new report from the Population Reference Bureau puts it, "In the history of the world, no century can match the population growth of the one now coming to an end. We entered the 20th century with less than 2 billion people, and we leave it with more than 6 billion." Great efforts at family planning through female education (the term "population control" is now considered too strong) supposedly began at the U.N. summit meeting in Cairo five years ago. But they have largely failed because they were simply too little. Meanwhile, U.S. funding for contraception was cut way back because of anti-abortion opposition.

But now the whole population problem, across the board, is becoming the pivotal center to the question of whether societies can develop and provide decent lives for their peoples, or whether they will doom themselves to the internal conflict and chaos that overpopulation inevitably brings.

From the recently published Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge, issued by Worldwatch Institute and its president, Lester R. Brown: "Tragically, the world is dividing into two parts: one where population growth is slowing as fertility falls, and one where population growth is slowing as mortality rises."

That means that, without intelligent strategies to slow population growth in overpopulated countries, "one-third of humanity could slide into a demographic black hole," without sufficient water or cropland. We know which countries these are. For instance: Nigeria's population is projected to rise from 111 million today to 244 million in 2050. Pakistan's projected growth will be from 146 million today to 345 million by 2050. All such countries will outrun the capacity of the world to feed them, much less feed themselves.

Yet while those voices who complacently repeat that we need not fear a population explosion continue to lull people, another recent publication, God's Last Offer, Negotiating for a Sustainable Future, shows how intricately, and dangerously, the world's environment and population are interconnected: The unsustainable consumption of resources is so drastic that the net forested area of the world is shrinking by the size of two football fields every second. (And all while population growth in the neediest countries -- the poorest one-third of humanity -- is going through the roof.)

Some leading thinkers on population and the movement of peoples even think mankind could overpopulate itself into extinction through overcrowding. The respected and iconoclastic scholar Garrett Hardin provocatively argues in his just-published The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia that, since mankind refuses seriously to engage in "volunteer population control," it will have to turn to a far less desirable "democratic coercion" or "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" to limit growth. A limitless world, he argues, is the stuff of daydreams that soon turn into nightmares.

The fact is that we know now what works in developing peoples and countries to limit population growth: a reasonably non-corrupt representative government, appropriate forms of economic freedom, a just legal system, a wise diversification of economic resources and income, a high investment in education, women's rights and family planning.

A prime example: Arab Tunisia on the northern coast of Africa had 4 million people in 1957 when it gained independence from France; with a strong family planning program, it now has 9 million people and is one of the fastest-developing countries in the world. Its neighbor Algeria also had about 4 million in 1957; today it has 30 million people and is ensnared in seemingly endless civil war and chaos. There are many such examples. Indeed, what more and more serious environmentalists and thinkers are seeing is that, once countries are caught in the explosive levels of population growth of a Nigeria, Pakistan or Algeria, they can't develop beyond the stage of hopeless conflict.

It's time for those people who are pushing for more and more population growth -- and who refuse to see the clear warning signals -- to simply admit that they don't really care if others stay in poverty, ignorance and chaos. Because, in fact, that is what they are really saying. Source: 6/2/99 Salt Lake Tribune, by Georgie Ann Geyer.