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The fate of Kesey Square still hangs in the balance. Will Eugene City Council members vote to develop it or won’t they? Will they improve it for the public to use or leave it without management? Meanwhile, community members have expressed interest in hosting events at the city square also known as Broadway Plaza, which was deeded to the public “forever” by the Eugene Urban Renewal Agency in 1971. Continue reading
Your individual choices affect climate change — if you drive a car, or what car you buy, what products you consume and if you reuse and recycle. At the same time, major corporations have spent millions of dollars denying climate change. As Big Tobacco once denied cigarette smoke is unhealthy, corporations such as the Koch Industries and ExxonMobile have spent millions to sow doubt about climate change, despite knowing the science is real. Continue reading
• Oregon Department of Transportation will soon be spraying roadsides. Call Tony Kilmer at ODOT District 5 at 744-8080 or call 1-888-996-8080 for herbicide application information. • Giustina Resources, 726-3588, plans to hire Strata Forestry Inc, 726-0845, to spot spray a total of 287.5 acres at seven sites near Mount Zion and Lost Creek south of Dexter Lake and one site near Bear Creek, southeast of Cottage Grove with hexazinone, clopyralid, sulfometuron methyl and/or 2,4-D. See ODF notification 2016-771-02653, call Tim Meehan at 726-3588 with questions. Continue reading
After college at Jacksonville University in Florida and a four-year enlistment in the Air Force, Kathy Ford headed west in 1976 to Los Angeles where she worked for AT&T, the phone company, and where she met her partner, Jill Winans. The pair escaped the Southern California heat in 1985 when Ford took a job with US West in Seattle, and left the big-city rat race in 1992, when she transferred to US West Wireless in Eugene. Two years later, Winans opened the CatSpa, a boarding kennel for cats. In 10 years of operation, the CatSpa became increasingly involved in animal rescue. Continue reading
• The 34th annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference on the UO campus begins Thursday, March 3, and runs through Sunday with numerous local experts on panels and participating in discussions. For example, Beyond Toxics is involved in a panel on “Fighting Aerial Pesticide Sprays and Water Quality Violations on State and Private Lands” at 9 am Saturday, March 5, in LAW 184. Find a schedule at pielc.org. Last-minute changes in the schedule can be found listed in the lobby of the UO Law School. Free. Continue reading
• Lane County has a new Spanish language radio station, reportedly the first ever on the local FM dial. KEQB, La Que Buena, began broadcasting Feb. 17 on 97.7 FM. The station is owned by McKenzie River Broadcasting and will serve the “almost 30,000 Latinos in Lane County and more in the surrounding counties,” says Program Director Steve King. McKenzie River Broadcasting also operates KMGE-FM (Mix 94.5), KKNU-FM (New Country 93.3) and KEUG-FM (105.5 Bob FM). Continue reading
Fracking is coming to Morocco. Americans might associate the North African country on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea with the black-and-white romance of Casablanca, but Morocco faces some of the same modern environmental issues as we do in the U.S. Samira Idllalène is visiting Eugene for 10 days via the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide to study how to make environmental laws in Morocco more effective and to give a presentation at this weekend’s Public Interest Environmental Law Conference. Continue reading
Fixing large class sizes in Eugene School District 4J can be like “moving around deck chairs on the Titanic,” 4J School Board Chair Anne Marie Levis said at a Feb. 25 meeting. Parents, teachers and staff from across the district filled the library at Edison Elementary School last Thursday to discuss class sizes in the 30s at the elementary school level. No clear answers came out of the meeting, although school officials suggested that parents write letters to 4J’s Budget Committee and to the Oregon Legislature. Continue reading
It may come as a surprise to some landlords, renters and even attorneys in Oregon that pet fees have not been permitted by Oregon statutes for the past five or six years. But confusion about the law remains, most likely because Oregon Revised Statutes 90.302 does not actually declare that pet fees are prohibited; rather, the list of “Fees allowed for certain landlord expenses” no longer includes non-refundable pet fees. Continue reading
Among the long list of speakers at the University of Oregon’s Public Interest Environmental Law Conference is president and founder of Eugene-based Grape Solar, Ocean Yuan, who’s proven there’s a market for consumer solar panels. The Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC), open to the public, runs March 3-6 at the UO School of Law and features a variety of green-oriented keynote speakers, panels and films. Continue reading