House plan threatens forest watersheds
September 15, 2013
Sunday Oregonian — Guest Opinion by Michael C. Blumm and Tim Wigington
Tim Wigington is the business and legal analyst at The Freshwater Trust.
On Sept. 6, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced that in the next few weeks the U.S. House of Representatives would take action on the bill drafted by Oregon Reps. Peter DeFazio, Kurt Schrader and Greg Walden to significantly boost harvests from federal forestlands in western Oregon.
Environmentalists are quite worried about the effect of this bill, placing a full-page ad in The Oregonian that maintained that the bill would mark a return to widespread clear-cutting. The Clackamas and Washington County water commissions have also expressed alarm, worrying that increased timber harvests on federal lands will degrade watersheds and increase the costs of supplying municipal water.
Read the full story here.
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