Amen!!

If you want to protect all the land outside the UGB you have to allow development within it. That's the grand bargain of our system here.

Also, if you're concerned about (lack of) jobs you have to allow industrial activity.

It's nice to imagine that the whole city can be employed making green products that run on rainbows, but the fact is that actual well-paying blue-collar jobs tend to happen in dirty warehouses and paved industrial yards. Real industries use natural resources, belch smoke on occassion, and need big trucks and ships to move things around. That's the harsh grown-up world that Portland eschews and then we wonder why our economy sucks.

Cancer = Growth for the sake of growth.

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.

Joni Mitchell

Bravo, Jack! Thank you!

Eileen, Please do step up exactly as Jack says. This issue should not be negotiable.

actual well-paying blue-collar jobs tend to happen in dirty warehouses and paved industrial yards.

Of which Portland has dozens sitting empty. But no, wait, they're giving those away to Homer Williams.

Wow! Bald Eagle habitat. That makes it sound downright holy. Bald Eagles like to nest in tall trees along rivers. They are not an endangered species. Their preferred prey is carrion. They do look neat. Attacking industrial development because it may include pavement is not a strong argument in the real world. Is there really a significant environmental downside to this plan or just anti-industrial bias?

Dean, get off your high horse. There's this thing called Google -- look into it.

http://audubonportland.org/issues/hayden

Not to mention the disaster on a "developed" Hayden Is. when the next major Cascades earthquake breaks Bonneville Dam upstream....

Natural?

Isn't that area river dredgings - totally man made?

Thanks
JK

Here's the other guys' argument: http://www.oregonsvoiceonline.com/whi/index.html

I think the economic grounds for opposing the plan are stronger than the conservation ones but you're probably more likely to win the bald eagles vs bulldozers argument.

The problem begins, of course, when we think of nature based only on what we can see. I don't agree with Audobon's approach--list off the species there and expect people to care. Why should they? Why expect people sealed in concrete and glass towers who drive their Prius 10 blocks to have some thoughtful relationship with the environment they live in? Why expect people who live nearly all their life on top of pavement to care enough about what's under the pavement?

Nature isn't just a cast of fuzzy or feathered critters on display for us. We are nature; the interdependency goes deep, and nobody understands it all. West Hayden Island is one more part of it to be paved over, in an ongoing effort to pave over land as fast as we can arrange for it to happen. We don't want nature--we want fenced off, carefully managed and landscaped areas that we define to be "nature". Nature is our bitch, so we punish it, call it names, dismiss it, ridicule it, pretend to care about it, abuse it...until it retaliates. Then, we just make the fence around nature higher, thicker, and meaner.

Have no illusions--if West Hayden Island isn't paved today, it will be tomorrow. The forces at work aren't just Mayor Prius and Randy the Ram.

And, has anyone stopped to consider *why* species like the eagle are so important? Hint: it's not because they're on our money.

Isn't that area river dredgings - totally man made?

You're confusing the word "nature" with "natural", Karlock. They mean different things.

If you want to protect all the land outside the UGB you have to allow development within it.

Not everything inside the UGB is up for grabs for any intensified industrial use. That's why we have zoning, and also exactly what CoP wants to change here.

There has to be some open space.

I'm confused again. The area along the Willamette around Linnton in NW Portland is in the UGB zoned Industrial, including the Linnton Plywood property. But Sam/Rand wants to rezone the area to mixed use with condos. How are condo's that much "greener"? How are we going to accommodate industry and where do they go-Hayden Island?

Portland's 5,500 acre North Reach River Plan that extends 12 miles along both sides of Willamette in Portland's North Harbor surrounding Linnton calls for "greening" all the Industrial zoned lands with trees, setbacks, gently sloping river banks, etc. Sure, greening improvements can be made, but how do you green the skidways for barge, ship building, or for unloading ships bringing in vehicles, or loading scrap metal onto ships, or petroleum ships and barges?

This "industrial argument" is getting to be like the bike vs. vehicle argument around here. 95% of trips are by vehicle but Sam makes the new Transportation Pyramid with walking and biking being 70% of the Pyramid-not reality. Common sense needs to prevail on the Industrial Issue. We can't keep pushing industry out, like we have from North Macadam and Johns Landing, now from North Harbor, Inner Eastside Portland andInner Harbor around Fremont Bridge. Now there are pushes to rid NW/Yeon Portland of Esco and other manufacturing plants.

Some industry needs to remain to pay for the bikeways and give us a few bucks for Starbucks and Stumpbucks.

I quite agree.

You do know this makes you a 'tree hugger', don't you?

Kudos to lw for "Stumpbucks".