Anthony
Rieger
PHS
100A Environmental Studies
David
Terrell, Ph.D.
Warner
Pacific College
January
8, 2014
Oregon’s
Regulations
When doing research for this topic I
came across a very interesting timeline of when the state of Oregon implemented
environmental regulations. The
first regulation put in place by the state of Oregon was in 1889 and it was a
law that “prohibited the polluting of waters used for domestic or livestock
purposes” (State of Oregon 1). In
class tonight we talked about different environmental issues but most of the
were closely related to present day, I was pleased to learn that 124 years ago
the people who lived here understood that there are different problems that we
are causing and that need to be handled appropriately or the people and the
state of Oregon could be in danger.
Another
law that was enacted which I felt was interesting was in 1969 about air
quality, burning, and smoke. I
have seen this regulation in place but I had not read or understood why they
did it. If you travel along
highway 213 from Molalla south to Stayton it is about a 45 minute country drive,
and along the way you will see rolling hills of farm land. During a couple of my trips down there
in the fall I noticed that the farmers would drive tractors around their fields
that had an attachment that several high
powered torches were on, and they would proceed to torch their fields.
This was of course after harvest, and like we discussed in class tonight fire
bring revitalizing properties to plant growth. Anyways, I noticed that the
farmers would never burn all of their fields at the same time which I felt was
inefficient, but come to find out it was a state regulation. In 1969 the smoke from farmers burning
their fields was so thick that it covered Eugene and resulted in a pedestrian
being killed by a driver that could not see and a 12 car pile-up on I-5(State
of Oregon 1). That is where there is a limit to how much land a farmer can burn
in a day. Also tied into this I
found a list of materials that are illegal to burn at any time, the list mostly
contained petroleum based products such as oil and tires but what surprised me
was that you are not allowed to burn dead animals or wet garbage and food waste
(State of Oregon 2). I cannot say that I have ever thought about burning those
things, but I sure did not know they were illegal.
The
next regulation that I thought was interesting was in 1971 when the state of
Oregon passed the nation’s first bottle bill. This bill has been in place for 15 years longer than I have
been alive, I never gave it a second thought, and as far as I have ever known
people have always paid a five cent tax on their can’s and then had to take
them back to the store to get your money back. According to Oregon DEQ “In 2009, more than one billion
beverage containers were recycled under the bottle bill” and in doing so Oregon
saved “three trillion BTU’s of energy” (State of Oregon 3). That is an astonishing amount of energy
saved just by recycling beverage containers. I knew that recycling was helpful, but I had no idea that we
could do that much with beverage containers, I am surprised that this
information is not more widely known to Oregonians. It is one thing to tell everyone that recycling is good for
our state and planet but I believe that if people understood exactly how much
we can save with such little effort more people would join in and try to
recycle just a little bit more.
References
State of Oregon 1. (n.d.). Oregon DEQ: Historical Timeline. Retrieved
1-8-2014, from: http://www.deq.state.or.us/about/historytimeline-p1.htm
State of Oregon 2. (n.d.).
Oregon DEQ: Air Quality Burning Smoke. Retrieved 1-8-2014, from: http://www.deq.state.or.us/aq/burning/index.HTM
State
of Oregon 3. (n.d.). Oregon DEQ: Land Quality – Solid Waste – Oregon Bottle
Bill. Retrieved 1-8-2014, from: http://www.deq.state.or.us/lq/sw/bottlebill/index.htm
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