Almost 40 years ago, Gov. Tom McCall called for legislation to protect Oregon from the “sagebrush subdivisions, coastal condomania, and … ravenous rampages of suburbia” that were threatening to blight the state. The legislature responded with Senate Bill 100, which created a land use regulation system that became the envy of the nation.

McCall’s signature on the bill wasn’t even dry before the development-at-any-cost bloc began plotting to dismantle it, and it hasn’t stopped trying since. The opponents know they have virtually no chance of demolishing the whole structure, but that doesn’t discourage them from stealthily chipping away at it whenever and in any way they can.

The Hon. Greg Walden

2182 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Dear Greg,

We, the citizens and voters of Bend, have decided to try to reach you by letter because you’re an awfully hard guy to see in person.

The problem isn’t that you don’t visit your home district often enough. We notice there’s a neat little Google Map linked to your congressional website that’s titled “Where’s Walden?” (very cute, Greg) and shows all the places in the district (and many outside the district) that you’ve visited in the past couple of years.

Judging by all the flags and push-pins stuck in this map, you sure do get around. You’ve been to town halls in Mitchell, Long Creek, Rufus, Arlington, Ontario and Eagle Valley, among other places. You’ve found time to attend the Miner’s Jubilee Parade and the Americans for Prosperity Hot Air Balloon Rally in Baker City and the Union County Business Leaders Breakfast in LaGrande. You’ve toured the Boise Cascade mill in Elgin, Interpath Laboratory in Pendleton and the Wallowa Lake Dam in Joseph.

Waldo Lake, in the high Cascades west of the Deschutes County border, is one of the most ultraoligotrophic lakes in the world. That fancy nine-dollar word means the water is clear – amazingly clear. Experiments have shown that objects in Waldo Lake can be seen at a depth of nearly 160 feet.

But whether Waldo Lake will continue to provide a near-pristine wilderness experience for Oregonians and visitors is far from clear. The state Marine Board appears to be on the verge of doing a flip-flop that will threaten the clarity and tranquility of the lake and its surroundings.

 

conflict of interest – a situation that has the potential to undermine the impartiality of a person because of the possibility of a clash between the person's self-interest and professional interest or public interest. Source: BusinessDictionary.com

It seems like a pretty simple concept, but we felt obliged to post that definition of “conflict of interest” because the Deschutes County commissioners appear to have a tough time grasping it.

Deschutes County is responsible for maintaining more than 900 miles of roads in unincorporated areas, and it’s having an increasingly hard time finding enough money to do it. Tax revenues of all kinds have fallen off since the real estate bubble burst, and the payments the county gets from the federal government in lieu of timber receipts are shrinking and may soon disappear completely. This “perfect financial storm,” as the county calls it, has resulted in a shortfall of some $3 million a year in the county road maintenance budget.

A river wants to be a river, not a pond. You can make a river behave like a pond for a while by putting a dam in front of it, but sooner or later – sooner if the pond is shallow – the area outside of the main channel will fill up with sediment and the river will go back to being a river again.

Therein lies the dilemma for the City of Bend, which for decades has been wrestling with what to do about Mirror Pond.

The pond, formed by a dam built a century ago, is often described as “the jewel of downtown Bend,” but that jewel has a tendency to tarnish. Silt keeps building up until the pond threatens to become a mud flat – a problem exacerbated by spring and summer irrigation flows, which wash soil away from riverbanks upstream.