Addressing the 1980 Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan blamed high gasoline prices and a poorly-performing economy on anti-pollution regulations and high taxes on rich people: “Large amounts of oil and natural gas lay [sic] beneath our land and off our shores, untouched because the present administration seems to believe the American people would rather see more regulation, taxes and controls than more energy.”
Once in office as President, Reagan sought to greatly increase oil drilling off every coastal state, including Oregon. Oregonians were wary, from environmental activists in Portland to marine biologists in Corvallis to crab fishers in Tillamook. They had seen the disastrous results of oil spills which had destroyed marine life on other parts of the coast, and wanted to protect marine habitat which was both delicate and commercially valuable – and could still be valuable long after any oil had been pumped out of the sea bed. These people, who in other parts of the country were at one another’s throats, somehow managed to sit down together and find a way to work together. An Oregon Way, which included talking to one another
A protected area was proposed for the delicate area around Ecola Point. It would have prevented any new oil drilling operations – but also would have stopped the crab fishing that had been going on for generations. John Corbin and other crab fishers sat down with the people drawing the boundaries and looked at the map of the area, the parts which were sandy, muddy or rocky.
“We’ve now got just certain, you know, rocky spots and things that are closed,” Corbin told Kate Kaye of Jefferson Public Radio, “but the sand and mud bottom and whatever is opened up, and it opened up a tremendous amount of area back to fishing again.”
Bob Bailey was head of the Oregon Coastal Management Program at the time. “We ended up eventually working with the Reagan administration and ultimately the H.W. [George H. W. Bush] administration to take Oregon and Washington off the lease sale list,” he said.
Bailey went on to take part in writing Oregon’s 1994 Territorial Sea Plan, which had a fate similar to so many documents with majestic-sounding names: “at the end of the day, the state agencies didn’t really do anything with it. You know, it sat for 25 years.”
Not every effort to get people to co-operate to protect the Oregon Coast was as successful as the 1980s project which prevented oil exploration. In the early 2000s, a project which ultimately created five Marine Reserves off the coast was acrimonious in the extreme. Bailey hopes it won’t be repeated. “It was unbelievable, and I’ve got the scars on my chest to prove that.”
OPAC Today
Today, Oregon’s Ocean Policy Advisory Council is reviewing the 1994 Territorial Sea Plan for possible revision, with a special concern for rocky habitat. They’re trying to do it the Oregon Way, consulting with local groups along the coast about what sites they think should be set aside for conservation, education or research.
There’s a greater awareness of some issues now, like the damage that simply walking in a tide pool can cause to intertidal life. There are new issues which weren’t even thought of in 1994: how is the state to regulate the use of aerial and aquatic drones, for instance?
Bailey isn’t involved in the process this time, but he isn’t pleased with what he sees of it, and isn’t convinced that the current approach is a real acting-out of the Oregon Way, so much as it is a way of putting off decisions onto others. “I just think it’s people abrogating their responsibilities and avoiding them because it’s too hard,” he said. “Well, my attitude is, suck it up, you’re working on behalf of the public, let’s go.”
Charlie Plybon, chair of OPAC’s rocky habitat working group, disagrees. “A bottom-up, stakeholder-driven approach is generally the favored way for arriving at these sorts of things.”
In March, the new proposals will be presented for public comment, after which OPAC will vote on them. And while the comment period is closed for now, it will open again in October.
By John M. Burt
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