In 1996, floods and landslides exacerbated by decades
of logging forced over 200,000 Oregon residents to boil their
drinking water. Now, the Oregon Natural Resources Council and 20
other conservation organizations want the Forest Service to stop
all logging of municipal watersheds in the
Northwest.
Streams draining Forest Service lands
provide drinking water to two-thirds of Oregonians and 70
communities in Washington.
When heavy rains
caused flooding in the Pacific Northwest last year, water flowing
from logged areas picked up large amounts of mud and sand, which
made the water costly to purify. Water treatment systems in Salem,
Ore., were so overwhelmed that residents were asked to cut their
water use by 50 percent for six weeks.
“The
logging industry has been funded with cheap trees at the public
expense for decades,” says Ken Rait, ONRC conservation director,
“and now they are being funded at the expense of public health.” A
petition filed by the coalition of environmental groups seeks an
end to all logging and logging-related road building in municipal
watersheds, unless there is a sound environmental reason to cut.
The Forest Service and timber industry have not yet responded to
the June 4 petition.
* Alan
Schussman
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Coalition says: Stop logging watersheds.
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