Measure 20-373, “The Lane County Watersheds Bill of Rights,” which is on the ballot for the May 19th election in western Oregon, would enshrine “rights of nature” for water and watersheds in Lane County.
If their spending is any indicator, corporate interests find this incredibly threatening.
Records show that as of April 25th, $188,825 in donations have been made to a group formed in February to oppose Measure 20-373.
According to Kunu Bearchum (Northern Cheyenne, Ho-Chunk Nation), one of the chief petitioners behind the Watersheds Bill of Rights, the opposition group “Protect Our County” is what is known as an “astroturf group” — an organization pretending to represent grassroots people but in reality funded by powerful business interests.
State records show that Protect Our County has received more than $100,000 from logging companies, real-estate developers, chemical industry groups, construction and development companies, and mining interests.
That includes $30,000 from Oregon Realtors, $25,000 from an industry front group called Oregonians for Food & Shelter, $20,000 from the Northwest Pulp & Paper Association, $10,000 from LIFT Lane (the PAC formed by the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce), another $10,000 from construction company CPM Development Corporation ($10,000), and $5,000 from Delta Sand & Gravel Company.
The group has also received $85,000 from a Political Action Committee called Oregon Business & Industry Issues PAC (OBI) which was flooded with corporate cash following Measure 20-373 qualifying for the ballot late last summer, and which, judging from records, can be assumed to have redirected most of this money to Protect Our County (by far the largest expense OBI logged during the same period was a series of four donations to Protect Our County totaling $85,000).
Donations OBI received during that period include:
$25,000 from Koch Government Affairs
$25,000 from Oregon Forest & Industries Council
$12,000 from Sierra Pacific Industries
$10,000 from Guistina Tree Farm LCC
$10,000 from Western States Petroleum Association
$10,000 from Wildish Land Company
$10,000 from Oregon Farm Bureau Federation
$7,000 from Milling company Swanson Group
$2,500 from Oregon Wheat Growers League
$2,000 from Weyerhaeuser
$1,500 from Eugene Chamber of Commerce
Many of these funders are highly controversial.
The Koch network is well known for opposing limits to toxic chemical pollution, lobbying against rail safety and public transit, funding vast climate denialism campaigns and think tanks, and pro-oil propaganda campaigns, and securing vast federal subsidies and tax breaks for their dirty business. One report called the Koch companies the “kingpin of climate denial.”
The Oregon Forest & Industries Council, which represents some 50 logging companies, including Boise Cascade, Green Diamond Resource Company, Georgia Pacific, Interfor, International Paper, Roseburg, and Weyerhaeuser, was implicated in a 2020 report from ProPublica and OPB in the creation of a publicly-funded state agency to promote logging industry propaganda.
Sierra Pacific, the second largest logging company in the United States, has been implicated in serious violations of the Clean Water Act, abuses of worker rights, including blatant wage-theft, settled a negligence case related to the Moonlight fire brought against them by the Federal Government for $122.5 million, and is knowingly causing harm to 8 species of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead throughout northern California.
The Western States Petroleum Association is a California-based lobbying organization for oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Valero, and many others. It is known for lobbying and filing lawsuits to oppose pollution controls and for funding astroturf groups to oppose climate change policies.
Oregonians for Food and Shelter is a group created in 1980 to “do battle with activists seeking an initiative to ban the aerial application of forest herbicides,” according to an archived page of its website. While the name implies a grassroots social justice organization, its members include chemical giants Bayer and Syngenta, various agribusiness groups, and some of the largest logging interests in the state, including Weyerhaeuser, Roseburg Forest Products, and — there are many interconnections among these groups — the Oregon Forest & Industries Council.
The Guistina family is well known for a 2010 corruption case involving the transfer of 621 acres of old-growth forest owned by the State of Oregon to Guistina Resources, which clearcut the ancient forest and shipped the logs overseas.
Many of the same groups are, according to a recent story in the Eugene Weekly, flooding money into conservative candidates in the Lane County commissioners elections.
All of these industries rely on harming water and watersheds to generate their immense wealth. Logging and milling companies destroy and fragment wildlife habitat, discharge significant amounts of toxic pollution, degrade salmon and steelhead streams, and since they have cut nearly all mature forests on their lands, rely on unnatural and ecologically degraded tree plantations for timber production.
Oregon’s largest contributor to global warming is the timber industry, which is responsible for 35% of the state’s carbon emissions. Clearcut landscapes create a “flood and drought” cycle which causes erosion and further decreases water quality and quantity, and private forestlands across the state are regularly treatedU by aerial spray of pesticides which have been linked to cancer, reproductive health issues, and other serious illness.
Driven by warming, Lane County is expecting soaring water temperatures and declines in flow of more than 50% in most rivers and streams by the 2040s. These changes will threaten remaining salmon populations, many of which are endangered, as well as steelhead and other wildlife, forests, and water supplies for agriculture and drinking. It will also threaten outdoor recreation, an industry which supports 192,000 jobs and $20.6 billion in total economic output across the state, and drive up costs. Already, extreme heat is costing the average Lane County household nearly $9,000 per year in lower wages, decreased productivity, and increased costs.
Oregon and federal lawmakers have chartered these corporations, licensed them to engage in their Earth destroying activities, and issued permits giving them legal immunity from the harms they cause. This failure of government is why proponents of Measure 20-373 have decided to take matters into their own hands.
“Outside forces and corporate eco-terrorists are pouring dark money into this election because they are scared,” says Eron King, another Lane County resident and one of the organizers behind Protect Lane County Watersheds, the community group advancing Measure 20-373. “They’re scared that the people might actually gain some traction and stop their exploitation of nature.”
“We’re sick and tired of a system in which a few wealthy corporations have the legal right to pollute our water, poison our communities, and destroy the climate,” says chief petitioner Michelle Holman, a resident of Lane County who is also part of the watersheds group. “We’re pushing back. We’re ready for the fight."
This isn’t the first time industry has poured in money in an attempt to defeat a similar measure. Neighboring Lincoln County along the Oregon coast voted in a measure banning the aerial spray of pesticides in 2017. As The Intercept reported the following year, this effort was fiercely opposed by pesticide manufacturers and industry groups, which reported spending $475,000 to oppose the measure, 22 times more than was raised by proponents. The Intercept reports there may have been millions in unreported spending, and noted that “While [a] national industry group [called CropLife America] paid for all this, its name never appeared on the materials or was referenced in the local fight, which was instead framed as being led by local farmers.”
Following a lawsuit filed immediately after the vote in Lincoln County, Circuit Judge Sheryl Bachart ruled in 2019 that the county ordinance was pre-empted by a state law that permits aerial spraying of pesticides and prevents local governments from regulating pesticide use.
“Big money and corporate power won in Lincoln County, but that doesn’t mean the same will happen here” says Holman, who lives in western Lane County and miscarried multiple children after being exposed to aerial spray of pesticides in neighboring clearcuts. “We learned from the past and we’re ready to fight these poisoners, liars, and corrupt industries.”
Protect Lane County Watersheds is requesting that supporters volunteer their time to help spread the word about Measure 20-373 by putting out yard signs supporting the measure, go door-to-door with literature, and share content online. They are providing a series of training sessions for advocates to plug in, details of which can be found on their website. They also encourage grassroots donors to support their effort. Holman says that they’ve raised about $25,000, entirely from small individual donations.
“We don’t have the money our opponents do, so we need people power,” Bearchum says.
Mail-in ballots will be sent to Lane County voters on April 29th.
-Background on the Lane County Watersheds Bill of Rights
Measure 20-373, “the Lane County Watersheds Bill of Rights,” will be on the ballot for the May 19th election. More than 14,000 county residents signed a petition to qualify for a popular vote. The law, which is part of a broader global push for legal “rights of nature,” would have three main effects.
First, it would recognize and protect the rights of rivers, streams, wetlands, and aquifers to exist, flourish, and naturally regenerate along with people's right to access healthy drinking water. Second, it would provide for more direct means for people and the government to legally defend these rights. And third, it would expand local democracy related to the watersheds by allowing the county and city governments to set additional greater protections than currently exist in state or federal law.
--About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
CELDF is a nationwide organization of activists, lawyers, and allies who work to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s reciprocal relationship with Earth. For over 30 years we’ve helped communities resist corporate exploitation through understanding the false democratic promises of the regulatory model and asserting rights to local self-governance grounded in ecological balance and collective power.
Today, CELDF advocates for the rights of nature through legislation like the Great Lakes Bill of Rights, introduced into the New York State Assembly by Patrick Burke, and a number of pending local bills, through educational and cultural programs, and by frontline support for community resistance and resilience. More information about CELDF, including photos pre-approved for media use, can be found in our press kit.