Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglass protected a park from a parkway
Eugene City Manager Jim Carlson birdwatched in that park while in Washington, D.C. but supported West Eugene Porkway through West Eugene Wetlands park.
www.registerguard.com/news/20020228/1a.newcitychief.0228.html
February 28, 2002
"Consummate insider takes turn out front as city manager," By
DIANE DIETZ The Register-Guard
excerpt:
While he’s quiet and watchful at work, Carlson is a man of passions in his private life.
His chief avocation and major social outlet centers around birds. "I would say that I'm an expert birdwatcher," he said.
He travels the state seven or eight times a year - with wife Judy and several close friends - in search of rare and sometimes colorful plumage, visiting everywhere from Umatilla to Curry County. Over three decades, he's spotted 630 species of birds, including 410 in Oregon.
During a lobbying trip several years ago to Washington, D.C., Carlson, his wife and Gordon took a taxi to the D.C.-Maryland border. Then they walked five or six miles back to Georgetown along a canal pathway - birdwatching all the way.
The trio is headed for Washington again next week for the annual regional government lobbying effort, and they hope to find an afternoon to do something similar.
Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2002
From: Mark Robinowitz
Subject: parkway vs protection of bird habitat
Dear Jim Carlson:
I read in the Register-Guard yesterday that you are a bird watching enthusiast and walked along the C&O Canal National Historical Park when in Washington DC to lobby for federal funds for protecting the West Eugene Wetlands Park.
You may not be aware that your walk along the C&O Canal – perhaps the nicest "linear park" on the planet – would not have been possible if Supreme Court Justice William O Douglas had not led a campaign to prevent its conversion into a highway a half century ago.
Similarly, plans for the West Eugene Porkway are also unlikely to get past the drawing board. The money still isn't there. It would be the "dominant feature" (according to the BLM) of the West Eugene Wetlands, which would make a mockery of efforts to protect/restore these public parklands. It would likely extirpate the Endangered Fenders Blue Butterfly, requiring a "license to kill" under the Endangered Species Act. It would fuel ugly sprawl and overload the highway to Veneta, requiring even more taxpayer money. It would anger the citizens and groups that have spent lots of time and money to help make the West Eugene Wetlands plan a reality. The BLM’s policy on "Prohibition on Disposal of Acquired Land" states that "BLM’s ‘trust’ relationship with [nonprofit] organizations would be jeopardized if the BLM entertained disposal of tracts they so diligently assisted with."
Please read Justice Douglas’s impassioned plea for nature over freeways and contemplate the peak of world oil production as you readjust West Eugene plans to recognize the reality that the WEP cannot be built. Please also help end the era of environmental schizophrenia, where the government claims to want to protect the environment even as it plans further destruction. This merely breeds cynicism, which is not good for a healthy, democratic society.
In the spirit of Justice Douglas, a number of citizens are sponsoring another walk on the WEP route in the West Eugene Parklands on Sunday March 17, St Patrick’s Day (to see the Green of Eugene) at 1pm, starting at First and Bertelsen (to see Bertelsen Slough, which needs to be transferred from ODOT to the BLM for inclusion into the West Eugene Wetlands Park). We will also explore the Amazon Creek / WEP crossing, the nicest area of Amazon Creek and the location where the WEP would have the widest right-of-way, more than required for four lanes.
I look forward to seeing ODOT’s WEP highway reservations converted into the newest additions to West Eugene Wetlands Park.
Mark Robinowitz
William O. Douglass and the C&O Canal National Historical Park
January 3, 1954 Washington Post editorial
The renewal of official interest in the proposed parkway along the old C and O Canal between Great Falls and Cumberland will stir the enthusiasm of many Washingtonians...By utilizing the old canal – no longer either a commercial or a scenic asset – it is estimated that the parkway could be built for $100,000 a mile. The lovely Potomac Valley could thus be made available to sightseers, campers, fishermen, and hikers with little distraction from its beauty...
Douglas January 19, 1954 Letter to the Editor
Fishermen, hunters, hikers, campers, ornithologists and others who like to get acquainted with nature first-hand and on their own are opposed to making a highway out of this sanctuary.
...In the early twenties, Justice Brandeis traveled the canal and river by canoe to Cumberland. It was for him exciting adventure and recreation... It is a refuge, a place of retreat, a long stretch of quiet and peace at the Capitol's back door–a wilderness area where man can be alone with his thoughts., a sanctuary where he can commune with God and nature, a place not yet marred by the roar of wheels and the sound of horns.
It is a place for boys and girls, men and women. One can hike fifteen or twenty miles on a Sunday afternoon, or sleep on high dry ground in the quiet of a forest, or just go and sit with no sound except for water lapping at one's feet.
I wish the man who wrote that editorial...would take time off and come with me. We would go with packs on our backs and hike the 185 miles to Cumberland. I feel that if your editor did, he would return a new man and use the power of your great editorial page to help keep this sanctuary untouched.
One who walked the canal its full length could plead its cause with the elegance of a John Muir. He would get to know muskrats, badgers, and fox; he would hear the roar of wind in thickets; he would see strange islands and promontories through the fantasy of fog; he would discover the glory there is in the first flower of spring, the glory there is even in a blade of grass; the whistling wings of ducks would make silence have new values for him. Certain it is that he could never acquire that understanding going 60 or even 25 miles an hour.
January 21, 1954 Washington Post editorial
We should not want it to be supposed that we are insensitive to the call of a warbler, the blush of buds in late winter, the crunch of autumn leaves under hiking boots, or the drip of water from canoe paddles...
We are pleased to accept Justice Douglas's invitation to walk the towpath...He has only to name the time and the starting point of the journey and to prescribe the equipment to be taken along.
note Douglas and a Post editorialist spent a week walking the length of the canal, and the Post reversed its stance, and opposed the highway. It is now part of the National Park system, 184 miles long along the Potomac River from Washington DC to central Appalachia. Its towpath is truly the Interstate Bicycle Highway System and a critical migration corridor for countless species.