Sources Say • $500,000, and what did we get?

The Portland Tribune, Jul 29, 2010 (3 Reader comments)

It took $500,000 in public money, and 17 months’ work by a west Hayden Island citizen task force, to tell us what we knew all along:

Environmentalists and neighbors want to preserve the western 830 acres of Hayden Island for wildlife habitat. The Port of Portland, the city and business interests want marine terminals on the island.

Duh.

When the port ponied up $440,000 to subsidize the review, the plan called for evaluating three scenarios for how nature and port terminals could share Portland’s largest unprotected natural area. But the task force never got to that issue. Instead, it deadlocked on what was seen as a threshold question: if nature and industry can coexist, not how.

Mike Rosen, watershed division manager for the city Bureau of Environmental Services, says the task force process wasn’t a waste of time and money. In fact, he says, a new $50,000 environmental study shows there could be a mix of protected wildlife habitat and marine terminals on the island.

Chasse revelations leak out

Although the City Council has yet to authorize release of all police documents in the James Chasse in-custody death case, Portlanders got a good preview of the revelations they contain when the city auditor released an independent review of the internal investigations on July 23.

The report, prepared by the OIR Group, cited unreleased documents prepared during both the criminal and internal affairs investigations into the Chasse case. Chasse died of internal injuries after being arrested on Sept. 17, 2006. Among other things, the report suggested that Officer Christopher Humphrey did in fact tackle or fall on Chasse. Humphrey maintains he merely pushed Chasse down during a foot pursuit.

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