Letters to the Editor
From our weekly issue dated January 9, 2008
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Gold along with aggregate
From Robert Perkins
Cave Junction
On display in the Kerbyville Museum is a replica of a 7-pound gold nugget discovered in Althouse Creek, a tributary of Illinois River.
In the far, distant past, the mountains just south of present-day Cave Junction reached an elevation of 25,000 feet. Erosion created the present Illinois Valley.
Early day miners discovered considerable deposits of gold in all the creeks emptying into Illinois River. Suffice it to say, untold gold deposits exist adjacent to the east fork of Illinois River.
Proposed removal of aggregate will include gold. A smelter could easily separate valuable gold, which has a present-day value of $850 per ounce, as occurred on Applegate River.
Should the proposal by Barlow/Copeland interests be approved by JoCo officials, the process must be monitored.
Public safety issue
From Ward Winter
Cave Junction
I thought that one of the duties of the county commissioners was to provide for the public safety. If it is, then let’s get with it.
This county is fast becoming dysfunctional, and I am tired of reading in the I.V. News Police Blotter that a deputy could not respond.
I’ve hated guns since Vietnam, but I now sleep
with a pistol under my pillow. It appears that if I am robbed, the sheriff will tell me to phone my insurance company.
It is time to get off the dime and quit the ridiculous in-fighting. Figure it out or give up the job to someone who can do it.
Where are baseball sponsors?
From Darlene Anderson for I.V. Little League Board
I.V. Little League Board once again is soliciting for 14 baseball team sponsors and additional sponsors to help with the program. This year, the board has chosen to allow sponsors specific to equipment and activities (see our ad elsewhere in this issue).
With various levels of sponsorship available, it is the board’s hope that more people will be willing and able to donate to the league in support of the Little League Baseball program.
Last year’s program supported the play of 170+ junior athletes in Illinois Valley, culminating with a State Championship title for the Illinois Valley Senior Division. This program provides positive enforcement of team play, social interaction, and encourages competition with fair play.
Our program also gives the youth of the valley an outlet for their energies that may otherwise be detrimental in the community.
All donations of sponsorship are used for Illinois Valley youth and help to continue the program each year. Community members have been wonderful to us in the past, and we are hoping that they will be even more generous this year.
We hope that people will check the sponsorship advertisement and send in what they can afford to help us continue keeping youth involved in positive activities.
OHV plan criticized
From Mark Brockman
Selma
I am a retired sheet metal worker. I live on a fixed income. The land I own is my largest asset.
BLM’s Western Oregon Plan Revisions lays out two Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Emphasis Areas that threaten my investment. The Elliot Creek OHV Emphasis Area is practically in my backyard, and, from a noise point of view, it is. That’s also true of the Illinois Valley OHV Emphasis Area.
I know that its noise will travel to me and my neighbors because we can hear the remote-controlled airplane events held at Lake Selmac, and dirt bikes are a damned sight louder. If the OHV Emphasis Areas are established, every day could be noisy.
Property prices drop when a neighborhood is consistently noisy. I don’t like my “quality of life” to be lowered, and I don’t like my savings to be stolen.
The Executive Order signed by President Nixon in 1972 says off-road vehicles on public lands “shall be located ... to ensure the compatibility of such uses with existing conditions in populated areas, taking into account noise and other factors.” This is law. BLM should obey it and keep OHV Emphasis Areas away from people’s homes.
I bet others wouldn’t want people biking through their back yard either; probably for the same reasons.
Signs not IVMA matter
From F. John ‘Frank’ Abernathy, president/CEO
Illinois Valley Merchants Association
Cave Junction
This is in response to your Dec. 26 letter to the editor from Linda Corey-Woodward. Her letter stated that “… Illinois Valley Merchants Association … should move forward now …” regarding the “Welcome to the Illinois Valley” signs.
The published letter also stated that, “Those interested can contact the chamber and IVMA, and have a planning meeting.”
I want to make it clear that Illinois Valley Merchants Association (IVMA) does not involve itself in the “Welcome to Illinois Valley” signs, or promotion of tourism in Illinois Valley. The signs are a function of the I.V. Chamber of Commerce, and not IVMA.
Comments or questions concerning the signs should be directed to the chamber (592-3326), and not IVMA.
IVMA strives to provide benefits for a wide variety of merchant and nonmerchant members of Illinois Valley. Its tasks include collaborative advertising and sponsorship, securing business for I.V. merchants, and protecting merchants from the effects of crime.
Also, holding community forums on business issues, establishing community partnerships, and providing technical mentoring experiences.
Ready for 747s?
From Ed Russell
Cave Junction
The reality of 747s down Main Street is not far out for our airport and our future.
Illinois Valley Airport was built for smoke jumper planes and possible use as a military runway if we were invaded during World War II. The runway is long and sound.
Most don’t know that the “Airport Master Plan” already dictates the relocation of Airport Drive and would buy all the property north of the airport for some distance. A simple extension of the runway would take similar form.
In this New “20 Year Plan,” without oversight and community input, who knows what “Eminent Domain” may accomplish for the sake of some, legitimately questionable, commercial venture.
Ever since the “Industrial Park” was established, the airport, is, could, or shall be, some kind of “International Trade Zone.” The cargo aircraft large enough to carry a “pay load” and cross our borders, and/or to fly to Asia, are very large, very loud aircraft.
(Be careful what you ask for.)
The encouragement for an industrial theme for this airport is inappropriate. We are just located in the wrong place in the transportation matrix. We are surrounded by an irreplaceable natural asset which provides value to property and our lifestyles; it won’t provide any benefit to reasonable or successful enterprise, and will cost too much in any terms anyone wants to discuss.
Plus, we have to give up the “Greater Economic Potential” of a beautiful, relatively mundane, naturally evolving, local resource that is symbolic of, and symbiotic with this community.
This is a rural airport that serves our needs, and is its own/our own, unique destination attraction/money maker.
It doesn’t make sense to give up our historic Siskiyou Smokejumper Base, the camping, the community space, and our airspace overhead, just to profit a very few, and, maybe, hopefully, temporarily, get a handful of unskilled unsustainable jobs while destroying more of the valuable character of this community.
The fact is that this will be at the expense of lots of well-paying, “homegrown,” high-tech aviation jobs in the smaller aircraft and hospitality industries that are currently evolving at the airport. These are in harmony with our tradition, our community, rational economic development, respect, and this spectacular place we live.
It really doesn’t make any sense to bring huge jets here and lose the potential of what “here” could be, or could have been. The “why” most of us are here.
If people don’t talk to our county commissioners we will all live with the effects of big jets in our neighborhoods, and lose real jobs and valuable community assets in the process. This train is leaving the station, and it is serious.
Barlow aggregate data
From Ken Stern
Cave Junction
In the Jan. 2 letter to the editor from Robert Thomas, “Unintentional consequences,” there was much speculation that painted a dire picture if Barlow/Copeland doesn’t get to turn I.V. Ranch on Holland Loop into a strip mine.
I would like to point out that all the information provided by STRIVE (Save The Illinois Valley Rural Environment), including the number of truckloads per day (150 two-way) and number of years (10), came straight out of the Barlow/Copeland conditional-use permit application. STRIVE is not trying to halt all aggregate mining in Josephine County, only that which adversely affects the farms, ranches, vineyards and neighborhoods.
Accusations against Barlow/Copeland include dumping roofing tile down by the river at Barlow Bar, digging an illegal pit that captured the fish, and trying to get I.V. Ranch approved for mining by questionable methods. If true, these are hardly the acts of a responsible business.
As for Copeland’s adding to our local work force, people can go to the north end of the city of Cave Junction and take a look at where the Copeland construction equipment and their drivers working on the LID (local improvement district) came from, and draw their own conclusions.
‘Sustainability’ defined
From Andrea King
Selma
Sustainability is a word bandied about for eco-cachet as if it has no meaning. Included below are three definitions from three organizations. Defining “sustainable” is important because it bears on how the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages public land.
On the cover and first inside page of BLM’s Summary of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR) BLM quotes the Oregon and California Lands Act of 1937; explains the principles of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976; and supports the revision of its Resource Management Plan of 1995 (RMP), reporting that each is based on principles of “sustained yield” or “sustained flow.”
“Sustained yield - The yield that a forest can produce continuously at a given intensity of management.” (BLM RMP).
“Sustained yield is the achievement and maintenance in perpetuity of a high-level annual or periodic output of the various renewable resources of the public lands consistent with multiple use.” (43 U.S. Code (USC) section 1702[h]). Multiple use ... takes into account the long-term needs of future generations … with consideration being given to the relative values of the resources and not necessarily to the combination of uses that will give the greatest economic return or the greatest unit output.” (43 USC section 1702[c]).
“Sustainable forest management is the stewardship and use of forests and forest lands in a way, and at a rate, that maintains their biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality and their potential to fulfill, now and in the future, relevant ecological, economic, and social functions, at local, national, and global levels, and that does not cause damage to other ecosystems.” (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations).
Does BLM have a record of managing forest lands sustainably? Does the WOPR bring real alternatives to BLM’s land management practices?
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” (Albert Einstein).
To support BLM’s WOPR is to ravage Oregon’s last stands of forest based on dead-end economic claims couched in double-speak. Sustainability, on the other hand, is good for our health.
Planning commission meet
From Jill Gruenberg
Cave Junction
The community needs to be reminded of an important meeting that concerns our future. Copeland from Grants Pass, which owns Barlow Sand & Gravel, wants to dig an 11-acre hole next to Illinois River to mine aggregate (rock.).
Some might or might not think this is a good idea. Those concerned can attend a hearing by the Josephine County Planning Commission on Monday, Jan. 14 at 7 p.m. in the county building in Cave Junction.
It is quite unusual for the planning commission to move its meeting from Grants Pass. It is doing this at the request of I.V. residents who have been traveling to Grants Pass to attend previous hearings. It is important that everyone show up for the meeting in Cave Junction.
Numbers can make a difference. Remember the prison issue?
It is my belief that Copeland already started digging a 4-acre hole to mine aggregate, across Illinois River from the proposed 11-acre hole. This is at Little Elm Ranch (the old Martin Dairy) off Rockydale Road. Copeland is calling it a pond for wildlife habitat.
I further contend that the county commissioners OK’d this without any hearings or community input. How many other holes are being dug?
‘Cheap aggregate for?’
From Douglas Trowbridge
Cave Junction
In the Dec. 2 I.V. News there was a letter to the editor by someone from Grants Pass. He complained about STRIVE and efforts by our neighborhood to stop the proposed mining by Barlow/Copeland on the farm called I.V. Ranch.
Most of my neighbors who live here on Holland Loop are opposed to the mining as it would drastically change our peaceful farm oriented neighborhood. We have a stake in this area; one can only speculate about what motivates someone to write in from Grants Pass and tell us what activities we should allow in our neighborhood.
I was amused by the Chicken Little-Sky Will Fall scenario proposed. To predict such dire consequences as businesses folding if an existing farm isn’t converted into a mine is ludicrous. I’m surprised he didn’t factor in the cost of a new truck in his estimate of what a cubic yard of concrete would cost if Barlow/Copeland doesn’t get their way.
I.V. Ranch has never been mined for rock, despite claims to the contrary, and claiming the entire economic future of the area hinges on it being reclassified into an aggregate site is ridiculous.
Doesn’t Barlow/Copeland really want the cheap local aggregate for their personal projects in Cave Junction that were awarded on contract for a set price? We hear the mining activity across the river over on Little Elm Ranch and feel sorry for the people who have to live in closer proximity to it.
One neighbor showed me the permit application that said this “agricultural sump” would provide enough aggregate for local contracts for the next 18 months.
Water quality concerns were discussed during one of the neighborhood meetings held last year. Barlow/Copeland said they would have an “oil spill kit” on hand in case some of the mining equipment had an accident. Now add in that they admit they are going to mine the aggregate under water, stirring up who knows what.
I’m fortunate that I have a well up on the hill, but what about the people in town?
Barlow/Copeland knew that I.V. Ranch was a farm when they bought it. Turning it into a mine is a huge change from its traditional use. If these people are conscientious about the ecology they will continue to honor the farming tradition of our neighborhood.
There are plenty of other places with suitable aggregate that wouldn’t affect the nearby farms, orchards, and vineyards.
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