Salem Political Snark

Oregon's snow and cold fits with global warming

This morning my wife and I woke up to a winter wonderland.

Our ten acres in rural south Salem looked beautiful, as did most of the rest of western Oregon after arctic air flowing southward collided with a low pressure disturbance rolling into the northwest from the Gulf of Alaska.

But with that beauty came a lot of problems. Many accidents on roads and freeways. Clogged traffic as people traveled the day after Christmas. And for us, five and a half inches of snow on our steep, long driveway.

After lunch I got out our ergonomic snow shovel (with a curved handle). It took me a bit more than two hours to clear our driveway, aided some by my wife. It's simple labor, pushing the snow from the middle of our driveway off to one side, then pushing more snow from the middle to the other side.

I've done this quite a few times during the 31 years we've lived at our house. Shoveling snow is good exercise. It relieves my snowstorm anxiety -- will the power go out? can our cars get up the driveway? -- when I stop worrying and start shoveling.

This time, though, my thoughts weren't as relaxed as they usually are. As I wrote about yesterday on my churchless blog, one reason was a form of PTSD following a nasty ice storm last February that left us without power for twelve days and lots of tree damage.

Sure, snow is different from ice. I knew that this storm would be much less serious than the one earlier in the year. Still...

As I cleared the snow from our driveway I found myself thinking about global warming, which really should be called global climate change, because the effects of rising greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere can include much more than warming.

Like, unusual cold spells. And unusual snow amounts.

It's rare for us to get over five inches of snow in a single day, with several inches more falling after sunset, and the snow is still coming down.

While I was shoveling away this afternoon, occasionally the sun would come out and I'd feel better. But then the snow would return. I'd think, "What if it ever snows heavily for an entire week, or even longer, with bitter cold preventing it from melting?"

This isn't an idle worry.

It's the sort of thing that will become more common as global climate change is increasingly serious. Drought. Flooding. Tornadoes. Blizzards. Hurricanes. Extreme weather already is becoming commonplace, and it will increase in frequency as greenhouse gas emissions continue to mount up.

I'm not saying that Oregon's current cold and snow was caused by climate change.

It's difficult to attribute most individual weather events to global climate change. However, it's well known that polar vortexes, where the jet stream bends markedly southward, allowing arctic air to flow into the United States, will be more common with climate change/global warming.

After I finished shoveling the snow off our driveway, I took our dog for her usual late afternoon walk. As we got to the end of a trail and reached the street that leads back to our house, I was thankful that I didn't have my iPhone with me.

Because if I did, I would have been tempted to get it out and take a photo of the buck with an impressive set of antlers standing in the snow on the other side of the road, nestled  between two oak trees. Instead, I was able to savor the moment without technology intruding.

He was looking right at us. That moment was like a painting brought to life. "Buck standing in snow." As the dog and I walked onto the road, the buck ran off, with a doe following him. It was a special moment. I was grateful to see this gorgeous creature.

Who was a part of nature, not of our human world. Moments like this remind me that we humans are unique among all other animal species in our capacity to massively screw up the natural environment that we, like the deer, depend on to sustain our life.

The buck is fortunate not to have his mind filled with thoughts of catastrophe caused by reckless disregard of our place in nature. My mind is different. I just hope enough other human minds wake up to the need to deal with global climate change before it is too late to make a difference.

Thirty-acre Meyer Farm property in south Salem may be developed

If you drive past Trader Joe's on Hilfiker Lane SE, on your left you'll see a surprising urban sight: thirty acres of beautiful undeveloped land. 

Unfortunately, there's a decent chance that before too long this property will become thirty acres of much less beautiful developed land.

But not if a group of people devoted to seeing the land remain as natural as possible succeed in their effort to stop the planned subdivision. Consider joining the Friends of The Meyer Farm Facebook group if you share their goal.

The Statesman Journal has done some good reporting on plans for the Meyer Farm. Family intrigue is involved. Here's some excerpts from "Subdivision, tree removal proposed for historic 30-acre  Meyer Farm in southeast Salem."

A proposal to turn nearly 30 acres of pastoral land in southeast Salem into a 138-lot, single-family residential subdivision has been filed with the city, and the public comment period ends at 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 1.

The property in question, 4540 Pringle Road SE, is known as the Meyer Farm. A five-minute walk from one of the busiest thoroughfares in town, it features mostly open space with a large oak grove, a creek and views of the Cascades.

...Geoffrey James, land use chair for Morningside, posted its concerns on the "Friends of The Meyer Farm" Facebook Group page.

The group, created in April 2021, wants to save what it identifies as a historically significant urban farm, which includes an 1854 barn and a 1915 farmhouse. It is the last remaining parcel from Joseph Waldo's Donation Land Claim of 1852.

Complicating the proposal is the fact that the Henry A. Meyer Revocable Living Trust, which owns the property, has been mired in a trust dispute in Marion County Circuit Court for more than two years. The next scheduled proceeding is a status check hearing on Monday, Oct. 4, in Judge Thomas Hart's courtroom.

Henry Meyers' descendants, including five living children, have been split on selling the property, and complaints of trust mismanagement have surfaced.

The trustees were removed and the court appointed a successor trustee, attorney Michelle M. Morrow, around October 2020. Morrow's attorney, David L. Carlson, signed to authorize the filing of the subdivision application.

It's decidedly weird that what sounds like a caretaker trustee, Michelle Morrow, decided to take the side of the Meyer family that wants to develop the property, entering into an agreement with a Portland real estate developer, Martin Kehoe of Kehoe Northwest Properties.

This seems to almost guarantee a legal battle between Morrow, Kehoe, and the Meyer family members who favor the 30 acres becoming a subdivision, and the Meyer family members who want the land to remain much as it is -- perhaps becoming a city park.

I've recently started watching the streaming series Succession, which is about the intense family struggle to determine who gets to carry on the legacy of Logan Roy, a man in his 80's who founded the huge business that may or may not be wrested out of his control.

It'll be interesting to see whether the Meyer Farm saga reaches anywhere near that level of family conflict. 

Another Statesman Journal story, "Future of historic SE Salem Meyer Farm hinges on trust dispute, subdivision approval," describes the twists and turns of family control of the property. Excerpts:

Descendants of Henry Meyer have been fighting over the future of the farm for more than two years, split on whether to sell the land or maintain their father and grandfather's legacy for future generations.

...The trust was supposed to be dissolved 20 years after his death — Henry died May 30, 2000, at the age of 84 — but began to unravel before then.

At the time, it was managed primarily by Tim Meyer, one of the sons, an international banker and co-owner of Salem-based Kettle Chips. He was a co-trustee helping plan for the dissolution in 2018, outlining options that included transferring the farm and trust assets to a family-owned LLC, according to one sibling.

Most of the siblings served as a co-trustee at one time or another.

Tim died in April of that year before he could implement any plan, and successor trustees allegedly made plans to sell the farm without consulting all siblings.

Peter Meyer, another son of Henry's who lives in New York, filed a petition in August 2019 in Marion County Circuit Court alleging the successor trustees abused their discretionary authority and engaged in "reckless misconduct" and "willful wrongdoing" in violation of the trust. The petition asked that they be removed and cease and desist all activities to sell the property.

Exhibits filed with the court include a redacted July 2019 letter of intent for the purchase and sale of the farm for a projected 240-unit single-family development for $5.75 million.

Multiple objections, counterclaims and cross petitions have been made in court since.

The court removed the trustees, with no finding of fault or liability, and named a new successor trustee in late 2020, an attorney not related to the family. Up until that point, the trust had been managed by descendants of Henry.

Even though the family drama adds some special spice to the Meyer Farm issue, the backdrop against which it will play out is familiar.

The 30 acres is within Salem's urban growth boundary. Oregon's pioneering land use system uses that boundary to protect farm and forest land near cities that otherwise would be overtaken by unfettered development.

(Witness Phoenix, Houston, and many other cities with a checkerboard style of sprawl caused by developers seeking cheaper land outside the city limits.)

So progressives like me are faced with a quandary about proposed subdivisions such as this one. We support dense urbanization because this is the most efficient use of scarce land inside an urban growth boundary.

But we also have a fondness for nature, and compassion for neighbors of the Meyer Farm who enjoy  having all that nearby open space.

I speak as someone who has lived on ten acres in rural south Salem, about six miles from the city limits, for the past 31 years.

Nature is tremendously healing. My wife and I can walk out of our back yard onto trails that lead through our natural property, across a small creek, past a stand of large trees, to a nine-acre community lake.

It's wonderful to have all this close at hand. It helps keep me as (questionably) sane as I am.

I want city dwellers to also have easy access to semi-wild spaces like the Meyer Farm. There has to be a balance between dense urban development and making sure enough natural open space remains for people living in a city to enjoy.

The Meyer Farm property is special, maybe totally unique in Salem, given its size, beauty, and history. It shouldn't become a subdivision unless strong efforts to preserve it as a natural area end up failing.

Here's a screenshot I made of a satellite image of the Meyer Farm property using Google Maps on my iPhone. The 30 acres is the undeveloped square in the center of the image. 

Comparing the image above with the proposed subdivision map below, you can see that most of the trees on the property would be cut down.

Open space is shown in the upper left of the subdivision map, so much of that dense stand of trees apparently would remain. Of course, Friends of the Meyer Farm are arguing that all of the trees should be saved by leaving the property natural. Or as natural as possible, if it were to become a park.

City Council needs to strengthen Climate Action Plan

I admire how the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blogger told it like it is in a recent post about the Salem Climate Action Plan that's up for discussion by the City Council on Monday.

This is a devastating criticism from someone who knows what he's talking about. The Breakfast on Bikes blogger has followed progress on the Climate Action Plan much more closely than I have, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions has been a longtime crusade for him.

So when he says it's a dud, the City Council needs to wake up and pay attention. There's still time to alter the plan to be a non-dud. But only if the blogger's critique is taken seriously. I urge you to read the entire blog post. Here's some excerpts.

If the plan is going to be at all serious, more than a Potemkin plan for show, it's clear that Council needs to stage an intervention and redirect the planning process to ensure the plan is reasonably likely to meet the goals.

Principals and an Enthusiasm Gap?

One of the biggest problems with the Climate Action Plan process has been demonstrated recently. The principal City planners don't appear to believe in it. When Staff have been given the opportunity to lean into the plan, they leaned away. They may say "climate matters," but their actions show they may not actually believe this.

In one case, when City Staff had a direct opportunity to coordinate and integrate climate planning with other formal planning activities, they not only passed on that, they acted as if climate didn't matter and even hindered other, more important activities.

...Separately, in a Salem Reporter article on climate, the other principal City planner had every opportunity to say, "here are the most important things we can do to reduce emissions," and instead they said we "need to build more resiliency." We need to endure and adapt to the climate emergency, not prevent its worst excesses, they appear to think.

...Nowhere Near a Plan for 50% Reduction by 2035

So as we near the end of this process for a Climate Action Plan, it turns out we are far from a plan. We have wishes and hopes only.

...Council should step in and give stronger direction so that we have a plan with reasonable expectations for success.

On Monday City Councilors should grill staff and consultants about why the Climate Action Plan doesn't come close to meeting the greenhouse gas emission goals set by the council, and why there's an undue emphasis on resiliency as global warming ravages the planet, rather than on reducing Salem's contributions to global warming.

Here's how I put it in a December 2020 blog post, "Salem Climate Action Plan is going in wrong direction." Sadly, there hasn't been a change in direction. 

Very disappointing. But not surprising.

City of Salem staff have a long history of ignoring what the City Council and citizens want, instead substituting their own bad ideas for good ones.

So here we go again...

The City Council wants a Salem Climate Action Plan to specify how we're doing to do our part in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions that are literally cooking our planet. Recently these goals were approved by the council.

By 2035, Salem’s greenhouse gas emissions shall be reduced to 50% of the citywide greenhouse gas emissions for the baseline year of 2016, and by 2050, Salem should be carbon neutral.

OK. One would think that the Climate Action Plan process would be focused on how these goals are to be achieved.

But whoever the proverbial "One" is, they will be shocked to find that so far, what's being talked about is how Salem should deal with the nasty effects of climate change, not how the city's carbon footprint can be reduced.

I don't know who is responsible for this fiasco, but the Climate Action Plan needs to get back on track as soon as possible. It's astounding that the current "envisioning" exercise is for people to say how Salem can be resilient by 2050, not how Salem can be carbon neutral by 2050.

This is a major test for the 6-3 progressive majority on the City Council.

It's one thing for them to let city staff have their way on less important issues. It's a whole other thing if the six progressives allow the Climate Action Plan to fail at achieving the greenhouse gas emission goals set by the Council. 

Because, you know, it's just the fate of human civilization that's at stake here.

Otherwise, I guess, no big deal if city staff and the hired consultants want to foist a "business as usual" Climate Action Plan onto the citizenry, assuming an acquiescent City Council will go along with it. Hopefully this won't happen at Monday's work session.

Chris Hayes features extreme Oregon heat on MSNBC

This afternoon I felt good for a couple of reasons. Marine air coming from the south finally lowered Salem-area temperature from about 113 to the mid 90s. 

And the first 20 minutes of MSNBC's All In With Chris Hayes featured the crazily high Northwest temperatures we've been suffering through as obvious evidence that dealing with climate change has to be the top priority in any Congressional infrastructure bill or bills.

So that's one good thing that came out of the past three days, when an amazing number of cities in Oregon and Washington not only broke their all-time high temperature record -- that record was demolished in, not surprisingly, a record-breaking fashion.

Meaning, as Treena Jensen, a meteorologist with the Portland office of the National Weather Service told Hayes, a town in Washington state broke its all-time high temperature record by 11 degrees, the largest difference between two record highs ever seen in the United States. 

Hopefully the nation will see this hugely unusual Northwest weather pattern as a shocking example of how climate change is leading to extreme weather events that normally would be extremely rare, but will be disturbingly frequent as global warming increases. 

A CBS News story says:

The heat wave baking the U.S. Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, Canada, is of an intensity never recorded by modern humans. By one measure it is more rare than a once in a 1,000 year event — which means that if you could live in this particular spot for 1,000 years, you'd likely only experience a heat dome like this once, if ever.  

...Turns out, the models were correct and we should expect extreme heat waves, even unprecedented ones like this to become more routine. "There is no context really, in the sense that there is no analog in our past for what we are likely to see this week," says Dr. Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University and author of the new book "The New Climate War."

But calling it a new normal does not suffice says Mann, "Some people called this a 'new normal. But it is worse than that," explained Mann. "We will continue to see more and more extreme heat waves, droughts, wildfires and floods as long as we continue to warm the planet through fossil fuel burning and carbon emissions." 

You can see the All In With Chris Hayes segment about Northwest temperatures at the beginning of this video.

The segment features an interview with Washington Governor Jay Insleee about the imperative to make climate change front and center in every discussion of our nation's infrastructure needs.

Inslee said that $350 billion for fighting climate change was stripped out of the bipartisan infrastructure proposal agreed to by a group of moderate Democratic and Republican senators. That isn't nearly enough, yet it was too much for those senators.

Which makes it a necessity for Congressional Democrats to include that money, and hopefully much more, in another infrastructure bill that will have to be passed with only Democratic votes via reconciliation to avoid the inevitable GOP filibuster. 

Time to really freak out about climate change, Salemians

I'm a big believer in global warming. But until this weekend the stark reality of what climate change means for everybody on our planet hadn't really hit home for me.

Sure, last September Oregon suffered through devastating wildfires exacerbated by drought conditions and rare high winds. My wife and I breathed a lot of smoke as our furnace filters turned black.

And February of this year saw an unusual ice storm that cut off power to hundreds of thousands of Oregonians. We had no electricity for eleven days and got to be best friends with our wood stove and Honda generator.

Those were extreme weather events. Neither could be directly tied to global warming, though climate change was implicated in each.

Now, Oregon is facing the hottest temperatures in recorded history. Extreme heat is to global warming as an ice cube is to a freezer: they're so closely related, seeing one means seeing the other.

Today Portland broke the all-time record for a high temperature at the airport, 108 degrees.

Today Salem tied the record for a high temperature in the month of June, 105 degrees.

Tomorrow, Sunday, it's almost certain that Salem will break its all-time high temperature record of 108.

Salem tied its record high temperature for June on Saturday by hitting 105 degrees at the Salem Airport, but the capital's all-time record for heat looks all but certain to fall on Sunday. 

Meteorologists said just about every weather model is showing Salem hitting a high of around 113 on Sunday, which would shatter the previous record of 108 that was set in 1981, 1941 and 1927.

Records in Salem date all the way back to the 1890s. 

So, yeah, it's time to freak out about global warming, fellow citizens of Salem. (I call us Salemians, because saying Salemites is just flat-out wrong.)

Rob Davis is an investigative reporter with the Oregonian. He speaks the truth. There's no denying the reality of climate change, though many people still do.

Today the Oregon Senate passed House Bill 2021. It requires Oregon utilities to provide 100% carbon  free electricity by 2040, with an 80% reduction in the next ten years. Both PGE and Pacific Power supported the bill.

Yet no Republican senator voted for it. I guess Republicans love making our planet minimally habitable for humans, something most of the rest of us think is a really bad idea.

If I could rule the state legislature pecking order, I'd demand that a bill be passed that requires every legislator who voted against HB 2021 to live in a dwelling without air conditioning.

That way global warming deniers in the Oregon legislature will have to experience what they wrongly claim isn't happening: rapidly rising temperatures and more extreme weather events.

Alternatively, they could be required to wear a heavy coat outside when the temperature exceeds 90 degrees. That's what our dog, Mooka, has to do all the time, given her coat of fur. When we let her out in the yard  to pee this very hot afternoon, she instantly laid down and didn't want to get up.

Kind of pathetic that our dog is more attuned to the reality of global warming than Republicans are.

PGE's storm communications are astoundingly inept

Along with a disturbingly large number of other people, my wife and I have endured a full week of no electricity after the February 12 ice/snow storm devastated much of Oregon.

(Our dog is doing just fine.)

How much longer will our electricity be off? Starting last Monday, Portland General Electric, or PGE, has considered this to be a secret not to be disclosed to their customers. 

Whenever I log into my PGE account, I'm met with a cryptic "not available at this time" in the Estimated Time On part of our outage report.

OK, I can understand that PGE wouldn't be able to provide its customers with a valid estimate of how long their power will be off in the early days of a widespread outage.

But even after a week, PGE still won't tell people how much longer they have to put up with all the inconveniences that come with having no electricity. 

This is causing a lot of frustration. 

I know, because regularly I pick up my iPhone, click on Tweetbot, a Twitter app, and search for tweets matching "@PortlandGeneral."

Maybe a quarter of tweets with this tag praise PGE for restoring the person's power.

The rest run the gamut from mildly critical of PGE to full-on rants about how horrendously awful PGE's response to the storm has been -- both in terms of turning electricity back on and PGE's dreadful communications strategy, which seems focused on keeping customers as much in the dark as possible regarding when their power will return.

This afternoon, though, I noticed a tweet from PGE that seemed promising. 

It didn't take long, though, for me to realize that the new online map not only wasn't useful, it was less than useful. Here's why.

On Thursday, I think it was (yesterday), PGE announced that it expected to have power restored to 90% of its customers by Friday. This is what the Storm Restoration Update page on the PGE web site says.

It's difficult to tell how many customers comprise that 90%, or the remaining 10%, without knowing what "currently" means in the screenshot above.

Regardless of the number, the important thing is that thousands of customers are going to be in the unfortunate 10%, which includes me, since our power is still off. 

On that same web page, PGE described how many customers would lack power after Friday night and where the longest waits to have power restored would be.

This certainly implies -- in fact it basically says it outright -- that the 15,000 customers who haven't had their power turned on by Friday night, tonight, and don't live in the areas listed above, won't have to wait as long as the people who do live in those areas.

UPDATE: I just came across a PGE tweet that said "As of 5pm today, 54,900 customers are still without power." So unless a lot of customers got their power restored between 5 pm and midnight today, PGE underestimated how many customers would lack power on February 19 by 39,900. Sure doesn't make me feel any more confident in PGE's competence.

So, yay, I thought after reading this. My wife and I live in rural south Salem near the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge. We're nowhere near the areas hit hardest -- Silverton, Woodburn, West Linn, Canby, etc.

I looked forward, then, to learning from the new map when we'd have electricity again. 

That hope was dashed when I actually looked at the map. The title above the map was a giveaway: Check Your Zone. I didn't want to check a zone. I wanted to check our specific outage area, our local neighborhood which had been showing 503 customers without electricity.

This is a screenshot of the overall area, showing the Legend. Light blue has an estimated restoration time of up to 3 days; yellow, up to five days; brown, up to nine days.

The map looks much different when it is zoomed in on my iPhone. This is Salem.The whole city of Salem appears to be in the yellow "up to 5 days" category. The purple dots show individual outages. I'm assuming the mass of dots obscuring much of Salem is covering up yellow.

How useful is this information? So minimal I'd call it useless.

People want to know when the electricity for their home or business will return, not the maximum amount of time it will take to restore power in all parts of Salem, which could range from one day (Saturday) to five days (Wednesday).

Likewise, here's the screenshot for my area. Our house is a bit north and east of Spring Reservoir, better termed Spring Lake. Our neighborhood is in the brown "up to nine days" zone. Again, though, this information is useless.
Here's a zoomed-out screenshot of the brown area. It's huge. There's no way every customer currently lacking power in this area is going to wait a similar length of time to have their electricity back on.

Thus PGE has produced a map that contains essentially zero useful information. It seems to be a way for PGE to say "we're providing customers with an estimate of when their power will be restored" without actually doing this.

Also, saying "up to nine days" is meaningless. A neighbor talked with a PGE employee today who was inspecting a downed line in our neighborhood. Reportedly the PGE guy said we might have power restored as early as tomorrow.

That's within the "up to nine days," because tomorrow would be one day. But one day is much different from nine days. 

Botton line: PGE is persisting in its screwed-up post-storm communications strategy -- which is aimed at giving customers as little useful information about their specific outage as possible. I sure hope legislators and state officials conduct hearings into how PGE has handled getting electricity back for its customers.

I have many questions about this, as I'm sure others do also.

Lastly, the conflict between this map and the list of hardest hit areas listed on the PGE web site -- Woodburn, Silverton, West Linn, Canby, etc. -- is huge. Most of those "hardest hit" areas are shown in the same color as Salem, yellow, up to five days restoration time.

So PGE is saying one thing at the top of that web page, then it is saying another thing in the map further down the page. Like I've been saying, the PGE communications strategy is so bad, it would be comical if being without electricity weren't so serious.

Hazardous waste from Santiam Canyon fire may have polluted Salem

A few days ago the Statesman Journal ran a story about clean-up efforts after hundreds of houses were destroyed in the Beachie Creek fire that ravaged the Santiam Canyon in early September. 

KATU News photo

Here's some excerpts from "EPA hauls hazardous waste from homes burned in Beachie Creek fire."

Static from Geiger counters and creaks from metal echoed as crews in hazmat suits carefully inspected and sorted rubble where a house once stood off E. Central Road in Gates. 

The property, devastated by the Beachie Creek Fire in early September, is one of many sites across the state being cleared of hazardous waste by crews from the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

...The EPA's cleanup effort is the first in a two-step process funded by FEMA and the State of Oregon. The service is free to residents who submit Right of Entry forms. 

Crews are collecting material ranging from bleach containers to batteries, paint to propane tanks —"anything that is compromised and potentially threatens public health," said Randy Nattis, incident commander for EPA. 

So far, the teams have been able to clean up about 450 properties across Oregon, Nattis said. Officials anticipate the process will take several weeks, and each property can cost about $75,000.

The goal is to have the hazardous debris removed to start phase two: ash and trash cleanup. 

Problem is, now it's late October. As you can read below, earlier this month someone sent me their concerns about metal from burned homes being handled at Cherry City Metal in north Salem. 

It appears that this was debris being removed from the Santiam Canyon before environmental agencies began to put into place protocols for separating out hazardous waste from non-hazardous waste. Here's what I was told:

The largest environmental catastrophe to ever hit the Salem community is at the beginning stages.

 

Federal, state and local governments are allowing this catastrophe to unfold in plain sight. The impacts will last for centuries unless there is action in the next month.

 

There are two components to the environmental catastrophe. Let us begin with the "point source" in north Salem.

 

There is a plant that is raining down heavy metals, sulfur, and asbestos across the Salem metropolitan area that originates within blocks of the Blind and Deaf School in North Salem.

 

Many pounds of toxins are being released into the air six days a week with no government monitoring.  How could this be happening in Salem Oregon in the year 2020?

 

Well, here's how it's happening and it is similar to the environmental and economic catastrophe that unfolded in Kellogg Idaho in 1973 that left the region as a Superfund site.

 

"In 1973, a fire broke out at Bunker Hill and destroyed part of the baghouse—the main pollution-control system for the lead smelter. For the next year and a half, the smelter continued to operate, and dust polluted with heavy metals rained down on the area." (Quote from Newweek article in 2016. https://www.newsweek.com/2016/06/24/bunker-hill-superfund-silver-valley-lead-poisoning-469222.html)

 

Salem has our own Bunker Hill that began operation in early October 2020 that is raining heavy metals down on the area and it should be shut down before it runs for a year and a half and leaves a legacy that will need to be remediated at tremendous cost and harm the lives of thousands of Salem residents.

 

Cherry City Metal is the destination for hundreds of thousands of pounds of metal that is being recovered from the 600 plus homes that burnt in the North Santiam Canyon.

 

Six days a week plumes of toxic dust with heavy metals and sulfur originate at the Cherry City Metals operation in North Salem.  There is not even a minor attempt to control the dust which is filled with toxic ash. If they sprayed water to control the dust, they would have another environmental catastrophe like what will be washing down the north Santiam River beginning this rainy season.

 

If you have not driven up to Gates and made a loop back on the opposite side of the North Santiam River, you need to take a drive to see ground zero for the source of Salem's environmental catastrophe.

 

Metal dumpsters are being loaded and hauled west on Highway 22 to the Cherry City Metals plant. Foundations at the edge of Salem's drinking water are being cleared of ash and debris.

 

While dump trucks of ash are disappearing into private non-regulated landfills all through the North Santiam Canyon and will leach into Salem's water supply for centuries, the metal recycling semi trucks are running down Highway 22 in plain view and releasing plumes of toxin over North Salem.

 

I watched a recording of the Marion County Commissioners meeting this week where they got an update on the fire debris response. Kevin Cameron read out loud a letter from a resident in the North Santiam Canyon and then proceeded to ignore the concerns.

 

The reality is that a property owner in the North Santiam Canyon has to pay at least $2,000 just to get their ash and fire debris tested. Only after a high-priced consultant writes a report, can the ash can be trucked to Coffin Butte landfill near Corvallis.

 

There are plans being developed for how government can help to clear the burned building debris, but the deadline for initiating that process is October 16th.  Government supported efforts to remove ash will likely not begin for six to nine months. 

 

Hundreds of property owners are not waiting. The deadline for applying for help is a month and a half after the Beachie Fire raged. Many property owners are not waiting around for government, they are creating their own landfills at the edge of the North Santiam River which is the source of water for Salem residences.

 

Even aside from the toxins, there is a complete lack of awareness of the forest ash and mud flows that will impact Salem's drinking water.

 

Regarding that last observation, I was sent links to two related brief articles about the long-term impact of wildfires on water quality in streams and rivers. Since Salem gets its drinking water from the Santiam River, this certainly is something city officials need to be monitoring. See:

"Legacy of severe wildfires on stream water quality"
"The legacy of a severe wildfire on stream nitrogen and carbon in headwater catchments."