Legislature approves forestland acquisition.Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard SALEM - Four years after the Oregon Legislature blocked the city of Eugene from accepting a federal grant to put forestland for·est·land n. A section of land covered with forest or set aside for the cultivation of forests. into trust, the Senate on Tuesday sent to the governor a bill that allows just that. The Legislature's approval of House Bill 2468 removes an earlier Legislature's requirement that a proposed Forest Legacy grant be used to acquire land only within an urban growth boundary "UGB" redirects here. UGB may also refer to Unión de Guerreros Blancos (White Warriors' Union), a death squad founded to repress leftist elements in El Salvador. An urban growth boundary, or UGB . It comes just as the city of Eugene is on the verge On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning) is a play written by Eric Overmyer. It makes extensive use of esoteric language and pop culture references from the late nineteenth century to 1955. of securing a Forest Legacy grant to acquire a 25-acre parcel in the south Eugene hills. The land would make what a city official called "a key recreational and habitat connection between the Ridgeline ridge·line n. See ridge. Noun 1. ridgeline - a long narrow range of hills ridge arete - a sharp narrow ridge found in rugged mountains Park system and the West Eugene Wetlands." That characterization was in an e-mail sent to fellow city employees by Philip Richardson Sir Philip Wigham Richardson, 1st Baronet (January 26, 1865 - November 23, 1953) was a British sport shooter and Conservative politician. Richardson competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics and 1912 Summer Olympics. , landscape architect with the city's Parks and Open Space Division. Richardson sent the e-mail last Thursday to alert colleagues to the approval of federal funding for the project. The e-mail said the paperwork finalizing the grant award should be finished by June 1. The parcel is to be paid for with $460,000 from the Forest Legacy program and an equal amount from the city of Eugene and a donation from the landowner, James Evans James Evans may refer to:
Although the newly passed legislation won't affect this specific acquisition, since it's within the Eugene-Springfield urban growth boundary, it will help with an overall regional effort to preserve uplands and ridges that surround the southern end of the Willamette Valley The Willamette Valley (pronounced [wɪˈlæ.mɪt], with the accent on the second syllable) is the region in northwest Oregon in the United States that surrounds the Willamette River as it proceeds northward from its , Richardson said. Local governments and the state, along with the Nature Conservancy Nature Conservancy, nonprofit organization established in 1951 to preserve or aid in the preservation of natural environments. It protects wilderness areas in the United States and Canada and is affiliated with similar groups in Latin America and the Caribbean. , have identified this horseshoe around the valley - running counterclockwise from Fern Ridge south to the south Eugene hills and continuing east and then north to encompass the Coburg hills - as an important ecosystem to protect from development, he said. And since much of it lies outside any urban growth boundaries, the ability to pursue federal dollars will provide one more way to pay landowners for purchases or the establishment easements EASEMENTS, estates. An easement is defined to be a liberty privilege or advantage, which one man may have in the lands of another, without profit; it may arise by deed or prescription. Vide 1 Serg. & Rawle 298; 5 Barn. & Cr. 221; 3 Barn. & Cr. 339; 3 Bing. R. 118; 3 McCord, R. , Richardson said. The Forest Legacy program has been the source of political controversy since 2003. That session, key Republicans in charge of the House took issue with the notion that tax dollars would be used to preserve land that might otherwise be used for commercial farming or forestry. That stance ended up forcing Oregon to turn away $5.3 million in federal grant money. It included $2 million for the purchase of a 200-acre tract of oak woodlands in the south Eugene hills and an easement easement, in law, the right to use the land of another for a specified purpose, as distinguished from the right to possess that land. If the easement benefits the holder personally and is not associated with any land he owns, it is an easement in gross (e.g. for 1,240 acres in the Coburg hills. Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, had positive words Tuesday, when the bill easing restrictions on the state's acceptance of Forest Legacy dollars passed, 17-8. Having already won House approval, the bill goes to Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who plans to sign it into law. Walker said the Senate vote wasn't so much a bold or visionary stroke as it was a common-sense fix that brought state policy back in line what most Oregonians would have expected it to be all along. "It shouldn't have taken this long to provide communities the opportunity to do great things," Walker said. "It really made no sense to the public that there should be opposition to this." Not everyone in the Senate saw it that way. Sen. Roger Beyer, a Molalla Republican and tree farmer, said the original intent of the Forest Legacy program was not to take commercially viable forests out of production but to protect them - and continued logging - from encroaching developments such as subdivisions. "If you want to create a park next to a city, fine," he said. "Just don't use my federal tax dollars to pay for it." |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion