Whalen has until Oct. 1 to pay the fine or appeal it to the Environmental Quality Commission.  The DEQ did not consider Whalen’s role as a city councilor when the decision was made to fine him.  Source: 9/18/99 Register Guard.

The (California) state Legislature has approved a bill that would halt the construction of stores larger than 100,000 square feet, the  size of 2½ downtown Portland blocks, if more than 15,000 square feet are to be used to sell food and drugs. That would ban most new stores built by Costco Wholesale Corp., Kmart and Wal-Mart, companies that together operate hundreds of California outlets. Costco is based in Issaquah, Wash.  Unless California Gov. Gray Davis vetoes the "Big Box Bill" by Oct. 10, it will become law. The governor's office said Davis hasn't decided what he will do. 

The bill is one of the most aggressive counterattacks yet by traditional retailers who fear the
nationwide expansion of  superstores. Giant retailers, who say they've only been aware of the bill for about a week, are scrambling to try to kill it so that one of their hottest markets is not closed.  Allies including California county and municipal groups they're lobbying Davis to veto the bill as anti-competitive and bad for consumers. They say the bill usurps control over land use and may place an arbitrary, unconstitutional ban on certain kinds of businesses. 

"This bill is unprecedented, and it raises a number of unprecedented issues" legally, said Cynthia Lin, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which is based  Bentonville, Ark., and has 134 California stores. "The bill  clearly has a serious impact on the way we do business in California."  The big retailers worry that business in other states may be hurt, too, if the law passes. "That's the scare: As goes California, so goes the country, said Jonathan Ziegler, a Salomon Smith Barney supermarket analyst in San Francisco. "A lot of things start out here in the West."

The big-box retailers are accustomed to opposition. Local, independent stores often fight against the construction of Wal-Marts and other giant stores. For example, Tucson Ariz., and Clark County, Nev., in which Las Vegas sits,  debating whether to ban giant stores, said Dale Apley, a spokesman for Kmart Corp. But this is the first statewide effort, he said.  About 160 of the 174 Kmarts in California are larger  100,000 square feet, Apley added. The company, based  Troy, Mich., plans more large stores in large markets such as Los Angeles and the Bay Area. 

Backers of the California effort say giant stores end up killing competition and hurting consumers. The big stores also tend to be less labor-friendly than native  grocery companies such as Safeway Inc., said Sharon Cornu, spokeswoman for the AFL-CIO in California, which backs the bill.  "In California, the supermarket employees have chosen union representation by a pretty large margin," Cornu said. 

California-based supermarket chains, including Safeway and Stater Bros. Markets, which have stores smaller than 100,000 square feet, back the bill.  Fred Meyer Stores, now owned by Kroger Co., wouldn't be affected because it plans no new superstores in California spokesman Rob Boley said. The Portland chain pulled out of California in 1995. 

"If (the bill) did pass, it's a positive for the people operating conventional supermarkets . . . because it's less new competition from warehouse clubs and supercenters," said Laura Richardson, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities in Portland. 

Traditional supermarkets have faced increasing from giant stores such as Wal-Mart, which offer
one-stop shopping with food, hardware and other household goods.  Big-box retailers say that is what motivates the bill, which they noticed after the state assembly approved it  Wednesday.  "Some select business interests decided to concoct their sweetheart deal in the middle of the night," said Kmart's Apley. "I see it as some of the larger, existing grocery chains in California that are instigating the legislation." 

Although some claim big-boxes kill competition, Wal-Mart's Lin pointed out that consolidation
among supermarket chains is also limiting competition.  "This bill chills competition in the grocery
arena," she said "We think it takes choice away from the California  consumer."  Source: 9/15/99 The Oregonian, by Andy Dworkin.

Several council members said they want to consider putting the treated effluent back into Ashland Creek instead of spraying the 840-acre site east of Interstate 5.  With Councilwoman Susan Reid and Councilman Cameron Hanson objecting, a council majority also directed the city attorney to pursue an appeal of a Land Use Board of Appeals decision on the issue. Reid and Hanson said they thought the money was better spent finding alternatives to spraying. 

Neighbors of the property, calling themselves Friends of the Creek, had appealed a county ruling allowing the spraying without a public hearing or permit.  LUBA ruled on the case last week, saying that Jackson County should have required a permit for the project, but also saying that the spraying was permitted on the land. 

  At Thursday's study session, the council directed public works director Paula Brown to explore what options would be best for the fish in the creek and to get cost estimates on putting the water directly back into the creek instead of spraying it. At the very least, it would cost an additional $1.85 million to treat the water so it is pure enough to go directly into the creek, she said. 

City staff were taken aback by the retrenchment.  "If you are saying you don't want off-site application, that has significant rate impacts," City Administrator Mike Freeman said. He said sewage treatment rates could rise 30 percent to 50 percent. 

The city began considering changes in its wastewater treatment in 1990 when the Department of Environmental Quality set a tighter limit on the amount of phosphorus in treated effluent that could be put into Bear Creek. After considering many options -- including discharging into the creek -- and regional solutions, the council decided in 1995 to irrigate city property with the treated effluent. 

The city has spent about $10 million upgrading the waste-water treatment plant and about $850,000 designing the spray irrigation system. Source: The Oregonian, from The Associated Press.

The five-acre site around Florence's 40-plus-year-old sewage treatment plant is crowded with a maze of rumbling equipment, workers wearing hard hats, piles of dirt, unfinished concrete walls laced with rebar, and the start of foundations for buildings yet to take shape. The new construction adjoins aging buildings and churning brown ponds that are still treating the sewage being generated by Florence's 6,715 residents.

Come back in three months and you'll see a bunch of new buildings, says city Public Works Director Ken Lanfear, stepping aside to make way for a clanking power shovel moving on tanklike tracks. Return in a little more than a year when the work is done, he promises, and you'll see a dream come true for sewer plant operators who've had to make do with equipment that lacks the capacity to meet the needs of a growing community. "We're going to have a plant that operators will look forward to coming to work in," Lanfear says.

The new plant will have the ability to handle sewage produced by twice the present population, he says, and put effluent into the Siuslaw River probably cleaner than the water that's already in the river. The new equipment will function well in periods of heavy winter rainfall, such as that which has caused the present plant to spill raw or partially treated sewage into the river in recent years, he says. "There's not an operator anywhere who wants to put bad effluent out of his plant," he says.

Even this coming winter, which is predicted to be rainier than usual, the chances of the plant being overwhelmed by storm water flowing into the sewage collection system will be reduced because of the $12.5 million project, which is being financed with a low-interest federal loan, Lanfear says. The 125-foot-long concrete structure that is nearest to completion - an aerator basin that mixes oxygen into the liquid sewage for the micro-organisms that feed on the waste material - is scheduled to come on line in November. The basin will enable the plant to handle an additional 100,000 to 200,000 gallons of storm water "surge," Lanfear says.

That doesn't mean the new system will be spill-proof, he says, but the operators will have an increased comfort level. Perhaps the biggest challenge of the project, which began in May, has been continuing to treat sewage while the construction work goes on. When the new aerator basin is finished, the old one can be shut down and excavated for the new clarifiers, Lanfear says. And when the new clarifiers are done, the old ones will make way for a new digester. "It's a step-by-step process, carefully orchestrated in advance," says Thayne Loendorf, an engineering inspector for Brown and Caldwell of Eugene, who monitors the work for the city.

Lanfear estimates that eventually 90 percent of the plant will be new, providing a state-of-the-art system that has not only increased capacity but also has new features the present plant lacks. Instead of being treated with chlorine, which is toxic to marine life, the effluent will be disinfected with ultraviolet rays that Lanfear says are just as effective as chlorine. Also, new equipment gives the city the capability of converting sewage sludge into compost to be sold for fertilizer, he says. The control center for the new plant will keep a computerized record of everything that happens, Lanfear says, and the new equipment will give operators many more choices for dealing with critical situations, adding, "Now the only real choice is to pray." 

Next month, divers will install a new outfall line into the Siuslaw River - a 36-inch buried pipe that will extend into deep water. Effluent will be released by 16 outlets reaching up from the buried pipe and designed to diffuse the treated sewage release. The present outfall is much smaller and shorter. And all the effluent comes out the end of just one pipe. "One really low tides, and it's exposed," Lanfear says. "The top is out of the water." Source: 9/7/99 - The Register Guard, by Larry Bacon.

The pollution ratio is so bad that riding a water scooter for seven hours creates more smog-forming emissions than driving a 1998 car 100,000 miles, according to the California Air Resources Board. Oregon may soon get on board in imposing additional rules aimed at curbing two-cycle marine engine pollution. Following the lead of the federal government and California, the state Environmental Quality Commission will hear a report on the issue at its next meeting and consider several policy options, such as an education program or additional registration fees.

It's a discussion that's long overdue, said Dan Pence, a Portland resident who gave up water-skiing and gas-powered boating when he discovered how it was damaging the environment. 

"Here in Oregon, most people don't make the connection between pollution and boating," said Pence, who now owns a sailboat, a canoe and an electric-powered cruiser. "Boating is this clean, fun exercise, right? . . . It seems really healthy, but there's lots of poisoning going on at the same time." 

Whether Oregon adopts new rules or not, the debate is sure to leave a huge wake in a state famed for sparkling rivers, lush lakes and rugged ocean beaches. Potential restrictions are hottest with the water scooter set. "I'm on the receiving end all the time with a lot of untruths and rumors," said Tom Podrybau, owner of Northwest Watercraft in Salem. "There's a lot more cars than Jet Skis." 

Just by sheer numbers, there's nothing more polluting than the motor vehicle. Indeed, most air pollution comes from cars, and only 3.8 percent of Portland/Vancouver's air pollution came from two-cycle engines, according to a 1992 Department of Environmental Quality study. 

But two-cycle engines represent a relatively unrestricted source that regulators would like to reduce. Small two-cycle engines, such as those in water scooters -- also found on lawn mowers and on the back of motor boats -- are a significant pollution problem, DEQ Director Langdon Marsh said. They show up on inventories of pollution sources far out of proportion to their numbers. 

Unlike cars, whose emissions are highly regulated, marine engines have gotten little oversight until recently. Now new federal clean-air regulations are being phased in that would force marine engine manufacturers to make their products 75 percent cleaner by 2025. 

Most of the pollution affects the air, but some of it lingers in the water for days, possibly harming fish and drinking water sources. Water scooters are the worst offenders because riders tend to ride harder and longer, increasing the pollution rate, said Sean Smith, conservation director of the Bluewater Network in San Francisco. Pence and two friends formed Skippers for Clean Oregon Waters with the aim of cutting down pollution from pleasure boats and water scooters. 

The group appealed to the Environmental Quality Commission in February, sparking the current study but getting no immediate results. Then they tried, unsuccessfully, to get legislative hearings on a bill that would have increased registration fees for two-stroke engines, using the proceeds to finance a buy-back program. 

By Pence's rough estimate, two-cycle marine engines in Oregon discharge 4.7 million gallons of uncombusted fuel each year. Source: 9/5/99 - The Oregonian, from The Associated Press.

The green light to begin working on the 129,000-square-foot building near Highway 101 and Munsel Lake Road came after a review of proposed construction bids, Coffel said. A contract has been awarded to Kerr Construction Co. of Portland. "A September start means we can look for an early summer opening," Coffel said. 

She said she expects the store will provide jobs for about 225 employees. The company will likely bring in a store manager and department heads from outside the community, but hire the rest of the work force locally through the state Department of Employment, she said.

The planned store had been opposed by the local Citizens For Florence group, which objected to the design and claimed the store would further strain an already overloaded city sewage treatment plant.

The group appealed city approval of the development to the state Land Use Board of Appeals, but withdrew the appeal after Fred Meyer officials agreed to some changes. One stipulation of the settlement was that the store would not open before June 14, 2000. Source: 9/4/99 Register Guard.

About 20 residents attended a third public meeting Monday night with the Division of State Lands and Department of Land Conservation and Development for an update on the city's wetland inventory progress. Lakeside, one of several cities in Oregon to participate in the state's Healthy Streams Partnership program, received a #32,000 grant to pay for a consultant to do the inventory, the first step in Oregon's protection plan. While the consultant, Fishman Enterprises from Portland, has finished that study, the city requested a local inventory committee to review the findings. That review is about two-thirds complete, committee members said.

Deadlines to complete the inventory and draft protection ordinances expired June 30, but Jeffrey Weber, coastal environmental planner for the DLCD, said prime inventory periods begin in April and many cities didn't have the time to finish those studies. The deadline was extended to Sept. 30 and has again been set back, this time, at least until the end of October.

"There's quite a heavy workload at this point just trying to play catch up," said Susan Chauncey, Lakeside recorder. "From my perspective December looks a lot better than September, and we're hoping that the state will agree to that extension." Weber said his department's deadline is in November and will require the grant to be fulfilled by October. In addition to identifying the significant wetlands, fulfilling the grant requirements also means the cities need to identify zonings that may conflict with the future health of the wetlands and to regulate developments there.

"Accepting the grant, fulfilling the grant, requires us to implement or pass an ordinance to restrict this kind of activity," said Mike Mader, Lakeside watershed coordinator. That may seem far off now, but Lakeside is not alone in pushing the deadlines. Through an intergovernmental agreement with the Governor's Watershed Enhancement Board, DLCD granted more than $300,000 to 14 Oregon cities to complete the inventory studies. Nine of those already have requested extensions.

Seaside, Rockaway Beach and Clatskanie are among some of the sites that also received grants from DLCD and require more time. "We know how thin local governments are stretched," Weber said, "We don't know what the solution is."

Even once all the inventory is signed off on, cities operating on short budgets feel powerless in enforcing ordinances stopping people from developing on their property. According to John Lilly, assistant director of policy and planning at DSL, enforcement actions would take on a dual role between the cities and the division. Lilly told Lakeside officials they do have leverage in that the city can withhold building permits to lawbreakers.

Still, at least one Lakeside councilor feels the city doesn't have enough facts to begin writing laws. "As far as enforcing anything right now, I wouldn't say that we're ready," said Bert Guin. Ready or not, the city is mandated to establish criteria for the protection of its watershed. "One point to remember is that the city does have some responsibility o adopt a comprehensive plant o protect wetland and riparian areas," Weber said.

About 50 cities have completed local wetland inventories and are in various stages of implementing ordinances to protect them. The Lakeside Wetlands Committee, along with representatives from DSL will be surveying property to inspect areas that have been identified as questionable wetlands.

Some of the key issues Lakeside faces include the large number of wetlands identified on small properties and drainage channels that have become wetlands through neglect over the past decade or more. Wetlands are defined by federal standards through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as having standing water at least through April or May. They also are recognized through types of vegetation and soil profiles. Source: 8/19/99 - The World, by Andrew Sirocchi.