By Nick Budnick

The Bulletin

SALEM — A group of Deschutes River safety advocates on Thursday told state lawmakers that everyone who floats rivers in Oregon should have to wear a life jacket in dangerous whitewater.

“You will never know how many lives you have saved when you pass this bill — but I will,” said Mark Angel, a Redmond-based whitewater salvage diver who estimates he’s pulled eight corpses from the waters of Oregon and California in the last decade.

The Dalles Republican Rep. John Huffman, whose district includes Jefferson County and the northwest corner of Deschutes County, has introduced a bill that would require all floaters to wear life jackets while they are traversing rapids of Class III or greater.

Since 2006, rafting companies in Bend, Maupin and elsewhere in Oregon have been required to make sure their customers wear life jackets. Guides face a $10 fine if anyone in their vessels is caught violating the law. But people who are not part of a guided trip have no requirement other than that they have life jackets somewhere in their boats.

Huffman’s bill received an informational hearing Thursday before the House Emergency Services and Veterans Affairs Committee, and is expected to receive another hearing before the committee votes on it.

Class III, or intermediate, rapids are defined as requiring complex maneuvering in tight spaces in strong currents, possibly featuring large waves and obstructions such as “strainers” — logs hiding beneath the waves that can snag a person’s body underwater and keep it there. American Whitewater, a nonprofit organization, classifies as Class III the stretch of Deschutes River between Dillon Falls and Lava Island Falls.

Class III “is where whitewater begins,” said a longtime Deschutes River patrol officer, Wasco County Marine Deputy Roger Pearce.

That level of rapids can be found on 16 rivers in Oregon, but it’s on the Deschutes River in the last decade where they’ve been the most dangerous.

From May 2001 through August, seven of the 10 whitewater fatalities in Oregon have occurred on the Deschutes. Of those, four were either not wearing life jackets or not wearing them properly.

Brandishing a cheap red life jacket in his left hand, Pearce, the river patrol officer who spearheaded the bill, told lawmakers that currently anyone can buy a $20 “rubber ducky” inflatable boat and — as long as they don’t have a guide — take on the toughest rapids in the state.

“All you have to do is take this and throw it in the bottom of your boat,” he said. “You’re legal.”

After the hearing, he said that while he sometimes goes days without spotting a rafter braving rapids without a life jacket, some days he’ll see entire boatloads. And river photographers who work for rafting companies often share their photos of rafts coming through rapids, where he sees “picture after picture” of people not wearing life jackets.

Beyond the effect on parents who lose their children, there’s also his agency’s cost of responding to river emergencies, which he said typically costs taxpayers from $1,000 to $5,000 each.

Sherry Holiday, a Wasco County commissioner who operates the county’s volunteer ambulance company, says whitewater fatalities have other costs as well. In 2006, a year when the Deschutes had six fatalities alone, “the phone stopped ringing in the middle of July” at Maupin rafting companies — which are key to the former logging town’s economy, she said.

Huffman said that just as with motorcycle helmets and seat belts, he thinks the infringement on individual rights represented by mandatory life jackets is outweighed by the benefit to society.

“There are certain things where it’s in the greater good, and you have to say, ‘We need to do this,’” he said.

No one spoke in opposition to the bill. It must be approved by both the House and the Senate in Salem before it can be signed into law by Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

Nick Budnick can be reached at 503-566-2830 or nbudnick@bendbulletin.com.

Governor pushing to block resort development in area

By Lauren Dake / The Bulletin

Gov. Ted Kulongoski has launched two separate approaches to stop development of destination resorts in the Metolius River Basin.

Last week, the Department of Land Conservation and Development, acting on a request from the governor, started the process to designate the Metolius basin as an Area of Critical Concern.

The governor asked officials to work with local residents and Jefferson County officials to develop a management plan that “should not allow destination resorts within the Metolius basin.”

Kulongoski’s staff described the critical concern designation as Plan A.

If it doesn’t work, the backup plan is through legislation. A bill was recently introduced on behalf of the governor that would ban planned resorts within the basin.

Proposed projects

Unlike Crook and Deschutes counties, Jefferson County doesn’t have any destination resorts, but two proposed resorts have spurred concern about protecting the Metolius River Basin.

The larger one, which is being proposed by the Ponderosa Land and Cattle Co., would be a 2,500-unit development with a golf course.

The other, proposed by Dutch Pacific Resources LLC, would be built on 640 acres, without a golf course, and resort officials said it is more of an eco-resort than a destination resort.

During the Legislature’s 2007 session, the governor opposed a Senate bill that would have banned resorts in the Metolius basin. He said a region-specific ban was a piecemeal approach to statewide land use policies.

“The governor has always believed this area deserves special protection,” said Jillian Schoene, spokeswoman with the governor’s office. “He didn’t support Senate Bill 30 but directed state agencies to explore ways we could protect this area through existing law.

“He heard back and reviewed existing law, and there is only one mechanism to protect this area, and that is the designation of the area as one of critical concern.”

Area of Critical Concern

Michael Morrissey, a policy analyst with the Department of Land Conservation and Development, said the only other time the commission considered using the critical concern designation was in 1977.

“Informally, a critical concern area is an area that is somehow unique,” Morrissey said. “It has unique resource values in terms of natural resources. … It’s an area that presumably needs some special management and designation to not degrade it.”

The Metolius basin would be the first place in the state to receive the designation.

Last week, the agency decided to start the process, which will include a series of public hearings held in Jefferson County in February.

Morrissey said the first step will be to look at the area itself. “What do we want to have happen or not happen in the basin?” he said. “On the radar screen is of course, destination resorts. Do we allow or not allow destination resorts?”

Morrissey said everything from natural resource protection issues to impacts on other jurisdictions, such as transportation, will be considered.

The management plan would include the boundaries for the designation, how big resorts can be, how dense and what kind of protections for the water supply and wildlife would be necessary.

“There is more feedback allowed in this process,” Morrissey said, as opposed to the governor’s proposed legislation.

The governor has asked the agency to complete the process by the mid-March, so there is enough time for the 2009 Legislature to consider the issue. The designation needs legislative approval to be enacted.

The backup plan

In his request to the Department of Land Conservation and Development, via a letter in December, the governor stated he prefers the designation of critical concern. It is a more “collaborative process with Jefferson County and other interested parties and citizens,” the letter said.

But, if that doesn’t work, his proposed bill would both ban planned resorts within the area of the basin and add more requirements for the resorts existing within 10 miles of the basin. The bill also adds that property owners cannot seek compensation because of the state’s decision to not allow them to develop.

That legislation, however, could face some challenges.

“When a local government has made a ruling on the issue like the Metolius, that should be the ruling that stands,” said Michael Gay, communications director for Sen. Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, whose district includes the Metolius River Basin. “It’s a bad precedent for the state Legislature to become the land use board for individual communities around the state.”

Rep. John Huffman, R-The Dalles, agreed. “I’m disappointed that the governor has chosen to get involved in this matter. I was under the impression he was going to let the process work,” said Huffman, whose House district includes Jefferson County and the northwest corner of Deschutes County.

“We have a process, we have rules; let’s let them do their job,” he said.

Rick Allen, lobbyist for the Ponderosa Land and Cattle Co. destination resort, said he will participate in the critical concern designation process, but when it comes to the governor’s bill, he said, he’s not in favor of changing the rules in the middle of the game.

“We oppose any legislation,” Allen said. “The county has followed the process that was set out by the state of Oregon.

“To change the rules, after the county and developers have spent money based on the laws that were on the books that were well established and well used throughout Central Oregon … we don’t think it’s fair or right.”

Jefferson County approved its destination resort overlay map in 2006. It was appealed to the state Land Use Board of Appeals and into the state courts. The county is waiting for an Oregon Supreme Court decision, which is expected in June.

Allen said the proposed Ponderosa destination resort has approximately 60 percent of its land inside the basin, but about 40 percent, or 4,300 acres, exists outside the basin.

But the other proposed resort’s 640 acres are inside the basin.

Hasina Squires, a lobbyist for the project, said she doesn’t think the eco-resort should even fall under the destination resort statute.

“We’re this kind of odd creature that isn’t really a destination resort, and we’re doing something completely different from a destination resort, but this is the statute that exists today,” she said.

Squires said project officials are expected to seek legislation that would show the project to be something different from a destination resort and proceed in a different matter.

Erik Kancler, the executive director of Central Oregon Landwatch, which supports protecting the Metolius, said he expects the whole process will take many more turns before a decision is made, and he expects more legislation to come.

“If you look anywhere in Oregon that deserves special protection from the threat of development, it’s the Metolius River Basin,” Kancler said.

Lauren Dake can be reached at 541-419-8074 or at ldake@bendbulletin.com.

With money tight, there’s no lack of ideas on the best path through the downturn

By Erin Golden
Bend Bulletin
Monday, January 12, 2009

Oregon lawmakers will report to the Capitol today to begin a session filled with tough choices.

After a year that brought budget cuts, inflation and dropping employment levels across the state, lawmakers said they want to move forward on issues ranging from transportation to education, but they all agree the budget will be at the heart of most discussions during the 2009 session.

Democrats again hold a majority of the seats in both the House and the Senate. Leaders of the party have already unveiled plans for new transportation, health care, public safety and other programs that would be at least partially funded by tax and fee increases — plans that have some Republicans speaking out in opposition.

Legislators on both sides of the aisle, however, said there will be no shortage of work as they try to keep state services running, at a time when a slowing economy is forcing more Oregonians to look to the state for help.

“It is going to be a tough decision-making session, and it’s going to be a busy session,” said Rep. John Huffman, R-The Dalles, whose district includes Jefferson County and part of Deschutes County. “I haven’t heard anybody talking about a lack of bills being introduced.”

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