Support SB 30 In The House - Marie Sheahan Brown (Camp Sherman) and Leslie Ann Brown McMillan (Brooklyn, NY)

[Sent to the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources and Reps. Boone, Merkley, and Rosenbaum:]

Please support SB 30 to Save the Metolius by preventing destination resorts in the Metolius Basin. Large-scale developments would surely harm the delicately balanced ecology, irreversibly draining the Basin of the very values the resorts would exploit.

Your constituents have different visions for the Metolius Basin. Those who see a private economic resource to be rightfully developed, strain to deny the adverse consequences to the ecosystem. Others, with nothing to gain economically, see an enormous threat to a natural treasure held in common by all citizens. Which vision will prevail?

Opposing visions are an old story in the Metolius Basin. Some years ago, Becky Johnson ~ stateswoman of Oregon, beloved elder of the Metolius Basin ~ told us a story. Becky passed on early this year, at 93. We’ll try to do justice to her story of transformed vision.

Her father-in-law, S. O. Johnson’s, first view of the Metolius River headwaters took his breath away. In his mind’s eye, he saw a mill pond, a saw mill, and a cash crop of giant ponderosa timber all around. Mr. Johnson was seeing through lenses of the era. He bought 160 acres around the Metolius River headwaters for $16,000 in 1924.

Before that, in the late 1800s, T. Egenton Hogg had a green glint in his eye ~ the glint of cash. He envisioned railroad tracks and trains running from the Oregon coast into Central Oregon over the Santiam Pass. With transcontinental vision, he could see trainload after trainload hauling giant Oregon lumber to the East. Mr. Hogg’s railroad scheme crumbled, tainted with suspected misuse of investors’ funds. Perhaps, too, potential investors were rightly skeptical to sink money into a railroad built on the crumbly volcanic rock of Santiam Pass. Even today, great chunks of highway are prone to tumble down the hillside. The possibility of a railroad died out only after 1930, when the Portland and Southeastern Railroad filed for a right of way across “Hogg Pass,” which evidently was never granted.

Meanwhile, S. O. Johnson was experiencing transformed vision. Instead of an industry with raw materials all around, he began to see a sacred mystery of exquisite and delicate beauty, to be protected yet shared. He transmitted this vision to his son, Sam, to whom he sold the property for $1 in 1934. S. O. Johnson chose to serve as statesman for the common good instead of henchman to the Almighty Dollar.

Sam and Becky Johnson, and now their daughters, kept the tradition of statesmanship, generosity, and preservation of a Creation not their own. As just one example, thousands of people each year can view majestic Mt. Jefferson from the Headwaters of the Metolius, without much harm, thanks to the scenic easement the Johnsons donated to the Forest Service in 1971.

You can't have a full-blown river coming out of the base of Black Butte, and smaller springs downstream, unless you have a large, uninterrupted groundwater supply. Tourists along the banks up and down stream are one thing, but source disruptions are quite another.

In recent years, Becky worried because she saw the springs at the headwaters diminishing. We are distressed to see similar dwindling of the spring we know best, a few miles downstream. IT JUST CAN’T BE RIGHT to allow destination resorts in the Metolius Basin, with thousands of homes and possibly golf courses sucking up unprecedented and inconceivable quantities of this diminishing groundwater.

We don’t need to spell out the lesson in this story for Oregon Representatives who choose to serve as stateswomen and statesmen protecting the common good.

As inheritors of scarce private acres in the Metolius Basin, we know some might see us as selfishly wishing to preserve for ourselves a unique treasure. On the contrary, fly-fishers, rafters, hikers, bird watchers and other unknown visitors often pass through our undeveloped fence-free forest; we simply trust them to respect it. Like most Metolius property owners, for generations our family has saved the Metolius for countless others by remaining alert to forces that would diminish it for all.

That we happen to own land does not cancel out the harm threatened by giant destination resorts that would alter the Metolius beyond recognition. We urge you to support SB 30, with a vision to Save the Metolius and its irreplaceable values for all of the people.

Sincerely,
Marie Sheahan Brown
Camp Sherman, OR

Leslie Ann Brown McMillan
Brooklyn, NY