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Hood River News Editorial
August 9, 2006
While Mount Hood begins to broil in the land transfer controversy,
actual fires began to burn Monday night on the scenic sentinel.
Preventing fires, along with fighting them, remains the top priority
with the mountain and any other public or scenic place.
Concerns have been raised, meanwhile, over the methods used in the
land transfer between the U.S. Forest Service and Meadows Corp.,
regarding properties at Government Camp on the south side of the
mountain and near Cooper Spur. The transfer was incorporated with the
Mt. Hood Legacy Act, the legislation that would expand Mount Hood
wilderness areas by 75,000 acres and improve river protection; the
proposal last week passed the U.S. House unanimously and now awaits
Senate action.
We welcome Rep. Greg Walden and Earl Blumenauer’s insistence that the
U.S. General Accounting Office look into assertions that land
assessments in the transfer were inadequately done.
Any investigation should not lose sight of the fact that the transfer,
like the Legacy Act itself, has a broad base of support from agencies
and community groups around the mountain, and is in the best interests
of economic development and resource protection on Mount Hood.
The transfer was a particularly welcome one regarding watershed
protection on the north slope of the mountain.
May the same spirit of cooperation that fed the formation of the
Legacy Act also sustain this supplemental scrutiny of legislation that
would become critical public policy.
Meanwhile, at Badger Lake and Cloud Cap and other locations, our
thoughts are with the firefighters whose task it is to contain
potentially damaging blazes around the scenic sentinel. |
