Oil
Trains, Salmon, and Dead Heads: Management Without Stewardship
A
few years ago, fisheries and forestry managers pursued an aggressive
campaign to clear logs and debris from Northwest streams and rivers.
The goal was to “improve” the efficiency of the migratory
wild salmon “highway.” It viewed the declining salmon
numbers as a “factory process” problem. Tinker with the
steps in the “production line,” raise enormous numbers of fish in
fish factories (hatcheries), dump them in streams and rivers and
Presto!, problem solved.
Of
course, the folly of cleaning streams of logs and debris destroyed
the very environment the salmon needed to survive and flourish. Local
author and career salmon biologist Jim Lichatowich, in his
beautifully written book, Salmon, Place and People, calls this
misguided activity “Management without Stewardship”.
What
is missing, he argues persuasively, is the lack of understanding of,
or willful ignoring of, what the salmon actually need to thrive. This
mindset ignores the salmon’s habitat, its interactions within its
complex biological web, and the larger environmental and cultural
impacts if it becomes extinct. In a certain sense, it ignores
the salmon’s “community,” and fails to exercise stewardship
over it.
In
Columbia County active stewardship would display an understanding and
appreciation of our complex community. It would give equal
weight to maintaining our community safety, curtailing pollution of
all kinds, protecting livability, and sustaining the natural world
where the community lives. Yes, it also means job creation and
growth, but not just any industry, any job, at any cost.
In
the past I’ve seen very little evidence that the Columbia County
and Port of St. Helens (POSH) commissioners have exercised this
broader responsibility of community stewardship beyond their narrow
management goals. Particularly at POSH meetings, more
than one citizen has come away feeling that their stewardship
questions and concerns have been met with an attitude of dismissive
condescension, bordering on arrogance, from some commissioners and
their hired staff.
1,429.
That number represents the number of children and young people at
Scappoose High School, Middle School and Grant Watts elementary
school. This doesn’t even count the hundreds of adults who
work in or visit these 3 schools every day. Two of these schools are
very close together and none sits more than a block from the railroad
tracks.
On
November 13th, 2013, the Port of St. Helens (POSH) commissioners
voted unanimously to allow increasing the number of long oil trains
in our county to 38 per month by 2015. The approval was given
despite widely known and easily discovered information about the
explosive nature of Bakken crude oil, and the DOT111 oil tankers that
carry it. Those tanker cars are susceptible to puncture,
rupture, and have easily damaged valves. Either the
commissioners were not aware of these dangers before their decision,
or they knew and proceeded anyway. Both show a frightening lack
of stewardship for our community in the pursuit of their narrowly
focused management goals.
To
give credit where it’s due, the County commissioners decided to
exclude coal from their approval for the zone change at Port
Westward. I would be more inclined to see it as an act of true
community stewardship, if the same stroke of the pen did not doom
over 800 acres of valuable farmland to ultimate destruction. At
the recent POSH public meeting with Portland & Western railroad
representatives, some commissioners pressed hard for information
about P&W insurance coverage for injury, property damage, and
environmental destruction should an accident occur in our community.
I hope they keep it up, as these are the questions responsible
stewards of the community must insist be answered.
Finally,
I cannot seem to get the image of the public display of rotting
cattle heads out of my brain. To me, a POSH commissioner allowing
this display on her property reveals either an inability or
unwillingness to practice stewardship in her own neighborhood. It
displays her failure to take her share of responsibility for the
harmony, esthetics, environment and safety on her own street.
Addressing citizens’ stewardship concerns about the trains,
she has publicly stated that citizens who don’t like it should just
move. Can any voter seriously expect her to wield her power for the
stewardship of the entire community?
We
the people of Columbia County must not allow our complex community to
be damaged by management without stewardship, as happened to the
Pacific wild salmon. We have a right and responsibility to
insist that our elected officials display action, evidence and
transparency in their stewardship of this community that we love, and
not just present reassuring platitudes and press releases.
I
for one will not be moving as suggested. Along with ever
increasing numbers of community voters, I will stay and fight for
meaningful stewardship of this home that I love. We all invite
our elected officials to join us.
Danner
Christensen
Founder,
Envision Columbia County
St.
Helens OR
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