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Slant: Short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes News: News: News: News: News: Happening Person: Lorena Young NATURE VS. ASTROTURF Athletics backers are pushing for a bigger piece of a proposed parks bond measure to go for artificial fields and other sports projects, rather than saving natural areas from development. Jim Torrey, former mayor and Republican candidate for state Senate, is leading the charge for the artificial fields. Torrey asked the City Council recently to include funding for five new synthetic fields, including a football stadium at Bethel High School and artificial turf at four local middle schools. Local businessman Charles Warren called the all-weather artificial fields "the best investment we could make." Warren said the city should also spend $1 million to resurface the four high-school football stadium fields taxpayers paid for with the 1998 parks bond measure. That was a disappointment for natural area advocates who hoped that the money would be balanced between funding sports and buying up natural areas threatened by development and rising land costs. Instead, only about one-seventh of the money ($3.7 million) went towards natural areas. The 1998 measure made no mention of controversial football stadiums, but that didn't stop the Torrey council from diverting $1.7 million from the measure to help athletic boosters build four 1,000-seat Astroturf stadiums at local high schools. Any money for more artificial turf could come out of the limited amount councilors and voters may be willing to fund in the proposed bond measure. As originally conceived, the 2006 parks bond measure would preserve 200 acres of ridgeline and 65 acres of riverfront for natural area parks, improve natural area access, buy land for a new natural area in west Eugene and buy land for nine new neighborhood and community parks for $20 million. — Alan Pittman ELECTRIC CLOUDS Portland is going wireless. So are San Francisco, Toronto, Philadelphia and hundreds of other U.S. cities that have announced plans to set up free or cheap wireless Internet "hot spots" over their urban centers. The world's biggest Wi-Fi zone, weirdly enough, is a 700-square-mile wireless cloud over the toxic little farming town of Hermiston, Ore. So what's up with Eugene? There's been no push yet to blanket the city with universal Wi-Fi, but laptop users can get free wireless Internet access at Indigo District, The Beanery (both on 5th Street and Hilyard) and Cozmic Pizza. Most of the UO is rigged for Wi-Fi, but access is restricted to students and faculty. The push for universal Wi-Fi is gaining momentum, but telecom and cable companies — which make millions by selling Internet connections — are pushing back. After Philadelphia announced plans to go wireless, Verizon successfully lobbied the Pennsylvania Legislature to pass a bill limiting other cities' ability to do the same. Similar efforts are underway in Ohio and Texas. Last May, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), a former Southwestern Bell Company executive, introduced the "Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act" (HR 2726), which would prohibit governments from offering Wi-Fi services to the public. Big telecom companies aren't the only skeptics. Internet forums and blogs teem with questions and concerns about universal Wi-Fi. If bandwidth is free, will people overuse it, rendering service slow and erratic? Will public agencies or private companies control the bandwidth, and with what privacy implications? While some see universal Wi-Fi as a way to provide more people with high-speed Internet access, others note that taxpayer-funded Wi-Fi would fail to benefit low-income residents without computers. Perhaps the most dire concern is the unknown health impact of increased "electrical pollution." Swedish researchers have estimated that 2 to 3 percent of the population is hyper-sensitive to electromagentic waves. Universal Wi-Fi would effectively bathe cities with radio and microwaves before the health implications are fully understood. For UO chemistry professor Paul Engelking, the trend toward Wi-Fi access in university classrooms is both distracting and potentially hazardous. It was bad enough when he noticed that some students cruise eBay or play online poker during his lectures. But he grew even more alarmed when he discovered that some Wi-Fi networks — albeit a small percentage — use microwaves. As Engelking explained to a reporter for The Oregon Daily Emerald: "Meat is a lot like people, and you cook meat in a microwave oven." — Kera Abraham
KITZHABER AT CITY CLUB Former Gov. John Kitzhaber, MD, will be the featured speaker at City Club of Eugene at 11:50 am Friday, March 31, at the Eugene Hilton downtown. His topic will be "Fear and Loathing in the U.S. Health Care System."
Kitzhaber is expected to talk about how rising medical costs eat into corporate margins, reduce the capacity of firms to grow and compromise competitiveness in the global economy. He says medical costs slow the rate of job growth, suppress wage increases for existing workers and foster labor disputes and lost productivity. "Past efforts to reform the U.S. health care system have taken place around the structure of Medicare, Medicaid and employment-based health insurance coverage without examining the assumptions and premises on which these structures were built," reads a statement on the City Club website (www.CityClubOfEugene.org)."These assumptions and premises reflect the realities of the 1950s and 1960s, thus shackling the structure of our system to a point in the mid-20th century, while the clinical, demographic and economic environment in which the system operates has changed dramatically since that time." Kitzhaber is calling for resolving the crisis in our health care system by "moving beyond simply defending programs and antiquated structures to a critical examination of the outdated operating system that both shapes and constrains the way in which we finance and deliver health care in America today." Kitzhaber is a former emergency physician, legislator and two-term governor of Oregon (1995-2003). He is the past president of the Oregon Senate, where he authored and implemented the groundbreaking Oregon Health Plan. The first question will be asked by Ruth Duemler, chair of Universal Health Care For Oregon. BIG DEBATE IS A SELL-OUT
Tickets were gone quickly for the first debate between Democratic gubernatorial candidates Pete Sorenson, Ted Kulongoski and Jim Hill set for April 6 in Tualatin. Only 300 tickets were available. Sorenson says his campaign received no notice of the tickets being released March 27, "even after asking the Democratic Party of Oregon repeatedly to be notified of the date." Sorenson says he wanted his supporters to order tickets "before the current governor packs the house with his supporters." BUSH GIVES NOD TO AGV Rep. Peter DeFazio was all smiles last week when he announced a funding coup benefiting the new Eugene-Springfield bus rapid transit link. An appropriations bill, just signed by President Bush, will allow the Lane Transit District to upgrade the buses earmarked for the new route. The equipment originally planned for the special bus right-of-way nearing completion along Franklin Boulevard was deemed too slow for its "rapid" name. The new buses are to be built by the French and English consortium Airbus at their main plant in Toulouse, France. The new buses are called AGVs for Autobus Grande Vitesse. The cruising speed of the AGVs will be similar to the high-speed French TGV trains at about 180 miles per hour. The new buses will cut travel time between two cities to 34 seconds. To achieve the maximum speed, both acceleration and deceleration must be keep to a minimum. Each seat on the new buses will therefore have nose-bleed kits and air bags. Planners feared the new route would have to be called the Eugene-Walterville High Speed Link, until someone hit upon the idea of outfitting the vehicles with arresting hooks like Navy jets. Even so, the buses are expected to be airborne during much of the Glenwood portion of the trip. Bush's support surprised Capitol Hill pundits until they realized he apparently supported the AGV thinking it was a classified military weapon. APRIL FOOL! Courtesy of Michael Hanner of Eugene. FEINGOLD FOR PRESIDENT? The March 18 demonstration against the Iraq War held in Eugene also marked the kick-off of a Feingold for President campaign in the Northwest. Among the signs carried by supporters of Feingold's resolution to censure President Bush were: "Russ as President is Fein(gold) With Me," "Reform Elections with Feingold," and "Back Feingold for President to End War." Russ Feingold, a senator from Wisconsin, is being compared to Oregon's Sen. Wayne Morse of the 1950s and '60s. Morse was one of only two senators who voted against President Lyndon Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin proposal that turned Vietnam into full-scale war. "For a thinking electorate," says John Saemann of Eugene, "Feingold is our only alternative. Too many Democrats have chosen the coward's way, supporting Bush's war. Even our Sen. Ron Wyden, who as a college student was a driver for Morse, trashed Morse's principles when he refused to support the Feingold resolution to censure Bush." For information on the local campaign, contact Saemann at 687-7112 or George Beres at 344-0282. CORRECTIONS/CLARIFICATIONS • A news brief last week stated that Lane Transit District would replace six trees cut from the median on Franklin Boulevard with 85 new trees. The 85 trees will actually replace trees taken from the median as well as trees taken from the UO parking lot at 13th and Agate. • The name of the artist who did last week's cover illustration, "Hole Foods," was misspelled. His name is Harvey Dickson.
LORENA YOUNG
"I love selling the idea of sustainability," says Lorena Young, sourcing rep for Weyerhaeuser's Eugene Recycling facility. "It's doing the right thing, and there's an economic benefit as well." A graduate of Thurston High, Young studied business in Missouri and worked at corporate finance in Ohio before returning for a UO master's degree in public affairs. She started at Weyerhaeuser Recycling as a financial manager 10 years ago, then took on her current job three years later. "It's partly sales," she says. "I've been working to find export markets for materials we pull from the waste stream." While Weyerhaeuser has used recycled cardboard and paper in its own mills since the '70s, Young has pioneered plastics recycling and sought markets around the world. "We have 80 grades of plastic," she says. "Last year we started taking fumigation film from farmers in the valley. I've sold to China, India and Korea." The public is invited to bring broken lawn furniture, toys, grocery bags, and other plastic items to the Weyerhaeuser facility, adjacent to Lane County's waste transfer station in Glenwood. -BY BY PAUL NEEVEL
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