How to Destroy God's Kingdom and Democracy at the Same Time. Case Study: Water Supply of Portland, Oregon.
Sandy, OR: Self Published, 1989.
Analysis of the environmental dispute known as the Battle of Bull Run, by one of its top generals. First edition. [ii], 59 pp. Very Good with light wear, toning, cup ring and a little dampstaining to wraps; contents overall clean. Scarce in commerce, with only three institutional copies located in OCLC.
The Bull Run watershed has been the main source of drinking water for the city of Portland since the end of the 19th century. In the 1950s, the U.S. Forest Service quietly decided to allow logging in the forests surrounding the watershed. The public was kept in the dark for years, but when news broke in 1971 that the Forest Service planned to open the area to recreation, local resident Dr. Joseph Miller Jr. wondered what had led to the decision to endanger Portland's pristine water supply. He discovered that it was an attempt to make the public receptive to an increase in the logging that was already taking place, and Miller and his wife banded together with environmental organizations to sue the Forest Service for allowing the destruction of the forest and degradation of the water supply. The Forest Service, the timber industry, and Portland's Water Bureau lined up on the opposing side, but the Millers and their allies won the case in 1977, and logging came to a halt.
The U.S. Senate, however, stepped in on the side of the timber industry. It replaced the Bull Run Trespass Act of 1904 with the Bull Run Act of 1977, which allowed logging. Joseph Miller never stopped fighting, though it took almost twenty years for protections to be restored by the Oregon Resource Conservation Act of 1996. He is remembered as one of the greatest environmentalists in Oregon history.
Price: $500