News: Page 247

Preventing Oil Train Disasters

New regulations have not been met

News
Workers clean up after the Mosier oil train derailment.

A month after the oil train fire in Mosier along the Columbia River, activist groups such as 350 Eugene are upset with the government’s lack of progress and accountability for oil train accidents.  In 2008, Congress passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act, which called for stricter railroad safety regulations to be implemented by the end of 2015. The new regulations have not been met; Congress extended the deadline to 2018.  Continue reading →

Lane County Childcare Centers Not Required to Test Drinking Water for Lead

News

Toxins are everywhere. In Portland, the discovery and subsequent cover-up of high levels of lead in the drinking water of public schools led to Portland Superintendent Carole Smith’s resignation July 18. Here in Lane County, school districts are in the midst of testing drinking fountains and faucets for elevated levels of lead.  But for daycare centers and buildings where young children gather to learn, testing water for lead isn’t a sure thing. Continue reading →

Black Lives Matter

And so does Oregon’s history of racism

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Philando Castile, Alton Sterling. And before them Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Tamir Rice and Sandra Bland. Those are among the names we know, whose cases in the last three years came to media attention because a video of their deaths went viral or the protests were loud enough to finally draw the lens of the media.  Black Lives Matter.  For many, the knee-jerk response to that is, “All Lives Matter.”  Continue reading →

Activist Alert 7-14-2016

Activist Alert

• Some of the people from the Downtown Eugene Cohousing Group (that got crushed in the real estate bust a few years ago) have gotten back together, Martin Henner tells EW.  They are trying to put together a group to develop a downtown senior cohousing community. Things are in the formative stage and they are recruiting members. For  more info, email: eugenecohousingdowntown@gmail.com. Continue reading →

River Trips Provide History

Mike Hurd gives tours of the Willamette

News

A Harrisburg business owner is providing jet boat tours of the Willamette River from a perspective only a local could provide. Mike Hurd is the owner of Scenic Jet Boat Tours and Hurd’s Hardware and Custom Machinery in Harrisburg, just 30 minutes north of Eugene. “I grew up just a mile from the river and always enjoyed fishing and hunting around the river,” he says. Now Hurd gives tours of the Willamette on his 22-foot-long aluminum North River sled.  Continue reading →

Local Delegates Prepare for Democratic National Convention

News

Delegates from Lane County are preparing to head to the Democratic National Convention July 25-28 in Philadelphia, where the party will officially nominate its presidential and vice presidential candidates for the 2016 election. It is also where the Democratic Party adopts its official platform. According to the Democratic Party of Oregon’s website, “Senator Sanders has earned 36 of Oregon’s 61 elected delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Sec. Clinton has earned 25 delegates.” Continue reading →

Taking The Wild Out Of The Wild Horse

BLM has announced an experiment to sterilize wild horses

News

Roughly 67,000 wild horses roam the public lands of the western United States, and around 4,000 of them are in Oregon.  The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) considers the current population to be more than double the healthy level for the land and has suppressed the population for decades. Many mustang advocacy groups strongly oppose the BLM’s methods and motives for population control and believe that the agency gives preferential treatment to livestock. Continue reading →