A group called Protect Lane County Watersheds has filed a ballot initiative, and hopes to bring a measure to voters to increase protections for water.
Rob Dickinson is one of the organizers. He said watersheds are key to healthy communities and ecosystems and he doesn’t think they’re adequately safeguarded.
He cited one practice allowed by Oregon law: “When timber companies clear cut forest stands, the next thing that they’ll do for many seasons is to come back through with helicopters and aerially spray herbicides," Dickinson said. "Those herbicides are then deposited on plants in the soil, and when it rains, those herbicides will flow into the rivers and streams in our watershed.”
The proposed law would require any party that damages the ecosystem to restore it to the state it was in before the damage was done.
Dickinson said the proposal is based on a movement called Rights of Nature, which has passed laws in dozens of countries as well as U.S. cities and counties. Rights of Nature believes the environment is not a resource to be degraded, but that humans and the natural world are intertwined, and nature has a right to thrive.
Petitioners will need about 11,000 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot, and have two years to do so. Most signature-gathering efforts attempt to collect a cushion of signatures above the minimum required, since some signatures are usually ruled to be invalid.
Regionally, Lincoln County voters passed a law in 2017 banning aerial spraying, and Dickinson said that measure had some wording about nature having rights. That law was overturned by a judge in 2019, ruling that aerial spraying was preempted by state law.
Dickinson said the proposed Lane County law would not violate state preemption, as the Lincoln County law did.
