I was appalled to read your recent puff piece about
the Bea-Lang house being constructed in a critical place in my
home, the Columbia River Gorge (HCN, 2/15/99). Your supposedly
objective article claims “a big house slipped through” protections
enacted by Congress in 1986. Nonsense. This monstrosity is not an
anomaly but the norm – just as I predicted would occur when the
so-called “Friends’ of the Columbia Gorge were formed by then-Sen.
Mark “Mr. Salvage Rider” Hatfield and bankrolled by the likes of
Weyerhaeuser and PacifiCorp. That destroyed the then-thriving
environmental movement in the Gorge so corporate interests could
prevent the Gorge getting the type of National Park System
protection given all similar landscapes – nationally significant
places adjacent to urban centers.
Since the
establishment of the national scenic area managed by the U.S.
Forest Service and a weak commission, more than 500 other trophy
houses have “slipped through” and been built in the supposedly
protected rural parts of the Columbia Gorge. The majority of the
private forests have also been clear-cut.
These
obscene degradations in a scenic wonder that John Muir compared
favorably with his beloved Yosemite were approved not only by the
Columbia Gorge Commission, but also by the “Friends’ of the Gorge
legitimized and promoted by your article. The very fact that we are
even debating building new houses directly across the Columbia from
the area’s premier natural gem, Multnomah Falls, the second tallest
waterfall in the country, proves that the 1986 legislation was a
hoax.
In a nice feature, High Country News once
described me as a hopeful optimist (HCN, 4/22/91). No more. Not
only is Columbia Gorge protection now completely hopeless, but I
and the other local activists who began the gorge-protection
campaign have been ruthlessly forced out of politics by the same
elitists claiming to be our best friends. The “Friends’ and Sierra
Club staff accomplished what right-wing, anti-preservation groups
had not been able to do, even with death threats: Force me out of
mainstream politics. Even though I began the campaign for a
Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area and was the national parks
expert for Friends of the Earth at the time, I have never once been
allowed to meet with the board of the misnamed “Friends’ of the
Gorge. Plus, our wealthy “Friends’ got me and all other local
activists (and any mention of the logical National Park System
alternative) totally banned from the monopoly Oregonian ever since
that paper bought and put out of business its competitor, the
Oregon Journal, which supported our position and gave us equal time
with our “Friends.”
I’m Cascade Indian, and my
father’s great-grandfather was the head chief of the western gorge
– until he was hanged by then-Lt. Phil Sheridan and the U.S. Army.
My ancestral home is the first National Park System-caliber
landscape in the country being destroyed because of wealthy
urbanites pretending to be environmentalists. This sellout by
supposed environmental groups in exchange for corporate funding is,
unfortunately, no longer an anomaly, either, but rather is becoming
the norm for a new environmental movement I’m coming to
loathe.
Chuck
Williams
The Dalles,
Oregon
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The gorge has been given away.
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