Timber tax cuts cost Oregon towns billions. Then clear-cuts polluted their water and drove up the price.
Updated on Jan 01, 2021;
Published on Dec 31, 2020
The 400 residents of Wheeler, Oregon, where muddy logging runoff filled the town’s reservoirs. (Brooke Herbert/The Oregonian) Brooke Herbert/The Oregonian
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On a damp night in November 2019, dozens of residents packed into the local firehouse in Corbett, Oregon, a town about 30 miles outside of Portland. Water manager Jeff Busto told the crowd that logging had devastated a creek that provided part of the town’s drinking water supply.
A timber company had clear-cut thousands of trees along the creek, leaving only a thin strip standing between the town’s drinking water and recently flattened land strewned with debris. A single row of trees was left on either side to protect it from mud, herbicides and summer sun. After many of those trees were bowled over by wind, the creek flow dropped so
Timber Tax Cuts Cost Oregon Towns Billions. Then Polluted Water Drove Up the Price. ProPublica 1/1/2021 by Tony Schick, Oregon Public Broadcasting, and Rob Davis, The Oregonian/OregonLive
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This article was produced in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting and The Oregonian/OregonLive. You can sign up for The Oregonian/OregonLive special projects newsletter here and Oregon Public Broadcasting’s newsletter here. Oregon Public Broadcasting is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.
On a damp night in November 2019, dozens of residents packed into the local firehouse in Corbett, Oregon, a town about 30 miles outside of Portland. Water manager Jeff Busto told the crowd that logging had devastated a creek that provided part of the town’s drinking water supply.
Several opinions recently published in the Herald, incorrectly asserted forest harvests around Jetty Creek should be postponed or prevented in order to protect Rockaway Beachâs watershed.
As a professional engineer with more than 45 years of water treatment experience, Iâve done extensive research on this topic. The truth is forestry is not to blame for past Rockaway Beachâs water quality issues. Rockaway Beach has a long history with water supply and quality issues, going back well over 50 years, pre-dating recent timber harvests around the cityâs water supply. The Cityâs water issues primarily stem from reliance on Jetty Creek, whose flow alone isnât sufficient to meet summer demand.
 A diverse group of organizations and individuals known as the Jetty Creek Working Group have agreed on a collaborative framework to conserve and manage the lower portion of the Jetty Creek watershed. The milestone marks three years of effort and begins the next phase of work toward long-term stewardship via conservation easements or similar methods.
The lower watershed - about 600 acres - is currently owned and managed by Lewis & Clark Timberlands, a holding of GreenWood Resources Inc. Including the upper portion, the 1,200-acre Jetty Creek watershed is the drinking water source for the Rockaway Beach community. GreenWood began managing the lower watershed in January 2017 and, as the working group came together to discuss conditions in the watershed, GreenWood volunteered a two-year moratorium on harvest and spray activities while the group explored opportunities for conservation. The working group met numerous times, including several hands-on field trips into the watershed. Su
The proposed Olympic Line Harvest unit activity in the Jetty Creek watershed represents a significant additional threat to the water supply for the city of Rockaway Beach.
During the last week local residents and the author measured stream buffers and photographically documented the Olympic line Harvest Unit in the Jetty Creek Drainage, the main source of drinking water for the city of Rockaway Beach.
Fundamental to any consideration of logging Olympic Line are the significant tributaries of Jetty Creek within the area planned to be clearcut. This logging will further exacerbate water quality and quantity issues for the town of Rockaway Beach. Natural forest ecosystems absorb Oregonâs heavy winter rains like a sponge and release that water during the dry summer. This means that a heavily logged watershed like Jetty Creek creates a pattern of stream flows that are elevated in the winter (thus increasing erosion and siltation which water treatment has to remove) and also very