Make the McKenzie Connection!
Make the McKenzie Connection!
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The extraordinary costs of climate change hit home for Cody Desautel during the 2015 wildfire season. Now the executive director of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation, Desautel was a forester and a firefighter who had just completed taking a full inventory of the 922,000 acres of forest on the 1.4 million acre reservation in north-central Washington. About half of those forests – 450,000 acres – were nearly ready to be enrolled in California’s emissions trading progr...
BLUE RIVER: “We had to learn to trust that our lives in this community are worth rebuilding.” Those words from McKenzie Valley Wellness president Val Rapp helped explain that the area’s rebuilding efforts involve more than just putting up new walls. “There was not a single one of us here who could do this by ourselves,” she said. “But working together, we began to figure out who could be our allies and support and help us and others in the community.” Rapp spoke at Saturday’s dedication of t...
OLD MCKENZIE PASS: The east side gate to McKenzie Highway (OR 242), located near Sisters, will close for the season on Friday, November 1st ahead of an incoming storm, the Oregon Department of Transportation reported on Monday. ODOT is also clarifying a report from last weekend regarding whether it allows snowmobilers, skiers and recreationists into the closed area. The west side gate near McKenzie Bridge was closed last week. When the east side gate closes Friday, highway vehicle access across...
FINN ROCK: Public input on a possible community disaster recovery grant was limited last Thursday when only one person showed up at the old McKenzie High School gymnasium. Up for discussion was an initiative managed by Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS) aimed at aiding recovery in disaster-impacted communities. Up for discussion were aspects of possible U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funding to help after major disasters, such as wildfires, flooding, or other emergencies. The CDBG-DR funds are flexible,...
The Lane Transit District (LTD) will host a Día de los Muertos celebration on Friday, November 1st. The party will take place from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Rosa Parks Plaza at LTD’s Eugene Station. Attendees will see live performances from local groups Mariachi Cuervo and a folklórico dance by Raíces de Oregon. Also planned are interactive activites for children, including bilingual storytime on an LTD bus and family-friendly art projects. Community partners, including Plaza de Nuestra Comu...
A small statue of St. Francis sits on a stump holding court in Julie and John Christensen’s forest in Corbett. The patron saint of animals and ecology is at home among the couple’s 70-acres of Douglas firs, cedars and hemlocks near the Columbia River. The Christensens moved to Corbett, a small, unincorporated town 30 miles outside of Portland, in 1984, intending to make it a communal home for themselves and friends they’d met through Julie’s work as a Catholic campus minister at Western Washing...
Over the past year, I've been fortunate to make some energy efficiency and weatherization upgrades to my home. During this process, I examined the feasibility of installing solar panels. As it turned out, my home was not a great candidate for installation (too much shade), but I still wanted to know more. So, this month, I turned to local installation expert Jeremiah Chavez, General Manager of Energy Design (solarenergydesign.com), to ask a few follow-up questions. First on my list: what makes...
Fall Season has arrived armed some pretty decent rainy days putting to bed another long and dry fire season. If you recall, however, the Spring season was wet and warm and responsible for profuse vegetative growth, some still standing. Earlier in the summer, McKenzie Locals Helping Locals sponsored a Blue River Cleanup Day. Those efforts around the South end of town helped remove invasive Scotch Broom plantations and other invasive plants as well as pick up many, diverse scattered items remaining following the Holiday Farm Fire and initial...
The Oregon Health Authority is launching a new rental assistance program through its Medicaid plan that serves low-income Oregonians when medical crises impact their ability to pay rent. The health authority’s plans are intended to keep people housed who need a short-term bridge to make ends meet and pay rent. Its goal is to help people maintain their health and their housing, which can lead to better long-term outcomes. People who face homelessness or the threat of eviction are 35% more l...
At least four progressive organizations that previously backed an Oregon ballot measure to hike taxes on businesses and divide proceeds among all Oregonians have withdrawn their support. Voters will decide in November whether to approve Measure 118, which proponents say would give about $1,600 annually to all Oregonians by making corporations pay more. Opponents across the political spectrum, citing analysis from state economic researchers, warned that it would raise prices and blow a hole in...
LEABURG: Two candidates - Michelle Emmons and Darin Harbick - are vying to represent the 68,000 residents of Oregon’s House District 12. Each had an opportunity to outline their background and plans for governing during a McKenzie River Chamber of Commerce-sponsored event last Thursday at Ike’s Pizza. An Oakridge resident, Emmons said she’s been involved in outdoor recreation and environmental stewardship for the last 40 years. Part of her resume includes working on a national level for the outd...
An incoming storm system means crews will close the west side of the Old McKenzie Pass, OR 242, this coming Friday, Oct. 25. Crews will close the gates on the west side of the pass near the junction with OR 126 and also the gates near the summit at Dee Wright Observatory on Friday morning. Gates on the east side are expected to stay open a bit longer, with the latest possible closing date scheduled for Nov. 7. Weather on each side of the pass varies, and it's not uncommon to close or open each...
On the morning of October 25th, the Springfield Police Department received information from a Mental Health assistance hotline regarding a reportedly active threat to Thurston High School. SPD responded, began immediately investigating the threat, and shared this information with the Springfield School District. As SPD could not immediately verify the credibility of the threat, the decision was made to place Thurston High School in a lockdown status, while officers remained on site. A short time later, out of of caution and after discussion...
FINN ROCK: “The spill drill is helpful to keep our partnerships working well so that we’ll be ready in the case of a real incident,” according to Eugene Water & Electric Board Water Resources Supervisor Susan Fricke. The annual exercise brought together close to 50 members of the McKenzie Watershed Emergency Response System (MWERS) last Wednesday. They came from more than a dozen local, state, and federal agencies participated, including McKenzie and Upper McKenzie fire departments, Eugen...
BLUE RIVER: There was good news this week for revitalization efforts, thanks to a $750,000 grant awarded by the Oregon State Parks Department. This funding was earmarked for the recreation site’s much-anticipated reconstruction, which has been a long-standing community goal. Josh Cloke and Tony Casad, who developed the grant proposal, said Lori Roach of Studio 6 Consulting and the National Park Service provided invaluable assistance. In addition to the major grant from Oregon State Parks, B...
The Cascade Homeschool Club is hosting a 4-week science unit at the Vida McKenzie Community Center and a small science fair with a raffle for the VMCC community social at 3 pm. on November 3rd. Prizes include family passes to the Eugene Science Center, the Raptor Center, and more. The raffle will be held just before 5 p.m., although you don’t have to be present to win. To purchase tickets ($1/each) you can pay at the fair or email [email protected]. Entries from outside the club a...
BLUE RIVER: The public is invited to the ribbon-cutting of the new McKenzie River Clinic at noon on October 25th. The new building replaces the original one that was lost in the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire. Established as Oregon’s first rural health clinic around 1977, the McKenzie River Clinic is the only medical clinic in the McKenzie River Valley. It was spearheaded by local residents who wanted to address the lack of primary healthcare services in their isolated area. Following the Holiday F...
Oregonians have become increasingly dissatisfied with our systems of representation at the state and local level and are interested in ways to restructure our elections to better reflect their interests, according to surveys by the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center. These sentiments would appear to set the stage for their approval of Measure 117, which would establish systems of ranked choice voting for federal, state and local elections that promise more choices for voters and fewer obstacles fo...
No man-made machine on Earth can better capture planet-warming carbon dioxide from our atmosphere than a healthy forest. And the most effective carbon-storing forests in the world are the wet, dense, giant conifer forests of the Northwest. The forests in Oregon’s Coast Range absorb and store more carbon per acre than almost any other forests in the world – including the Amazon Rainforest. For more than a century, these forests have been heavily logged, supporting a vast timber industry wor...
The Lazy Days Mobile Home and RV Park, rebuilt by Homes for Good after the Holiday Farm Fire, has twenty, two-bedroom modular homes available as replacement housing for fire survivors. Priority is given to people living at Lazy Days at the time of the fire, followed by other people who lost their homes. Applicants should be at no more than 80% of the Area Median Income (or 120% for former Lazy Days residents). For example, 80% AMI means: Two people = $57,050 annual income. Four people = $71,300...
Oregon was the first state in the U.S. to pass a law capping greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and the first to create the prototype of a state-mandated carbon exchange. In 1997, the Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 3283, requiring all newly built energy facilities to keep their carbon dioxide emissions 17% below the cleanest power plant in the country. If unable to reach that target, the companies could pay to offset their emissions by investing in activities that would absorb...
LEABURG: A two-vehicle crash on Monday near Milepost 24 of the McKenzie Hwy. took the life of a California man. According to the Oregon State Police (OSP), their preliminary investigation indicated that around 12:20 p.m., an eastbound Dodge Ram 3500, operated by Colton Lane Wellette (20) of Monroe, was pulling a gooseneck trailer loaded with bales of hydroseed. As the Dodge negotiated the curve around Leaburg Lake, the trailer overturned, spilling the load into the westbound lane. A westbound...
VIDA: "We've structured what we've presented tonight not just to take a position but to look at the whole decision that has been made by EWEB to see what is the right thing to do," was how Bob Weeks summed up the purpose of a meeting that drew more than four dozen people last week. The gathering at the Vida McKenzie Community Center last Tuesday was sponsored by Neighbors For Neighbors, which grew out of the Save Leaburg Lake group. "It isn't for us to say the dam should stay," Weeks explained....
Residents of the McKenzie School District could change how school board elections are decided in the upcoming May 2025 election. If approved, petition 20-2024-75 would allow voters to rank candidates in order of preference on a single ballot in an at-large election. Sometimes referred to as “instant runoff voting,” ranked-choice voting (RCV) was not on a statewide ballot until this year. While Measure 117 will decide if Oregonians adopt RCV statewide, Benton County has already implemented the system, and Portland voters approved it for loc...
BLUE RIVER: After years of work, the Blue River Water District’s (BRWD) new well house is scheduled for a final electrical inspection next week and will be completed by the end of the month. Officials said the completion of the well houses marks a significant milestone in the district’s ongoing efforts to restore and modernize the water system following the devastation caused by the 2020 wildfires. The new well house is expected to safeguard the community’s water supply, ensure more effic...
