Not everyone thinks Nikki Whitty’s egg timer is a good idea but she used it anyway to limit public comments and questions relgarding ORC mining leases to one minute. After driving as much as 35 minutes to attend and sitting through a 35 minute slide presentation given by and for ORC some citizens were annoyed.

An especially vocal citizen objected to the time limits more than once prompting County Counsel Jackie Haggerty to put in a quick cell phone call to the Sheriff’s office. Within minutes Haggerty directed two plain clothes deputies to stand behind the citizen who later gave her name as Kate, although it is unclear what they could legally do in a public meeting. Kate stood up and spoke at the podium at the end and pointed out the police and pointed at Haggerty telling the audience how shameful it was the public should be denied their right to speak.

Whether from embarrassment or anger is not clear but Haggerty turned a brilliant red and the two locked horns again after the meeting with Haggerty wagging her finger in Kate’s face and Kate telling Haggerty to ‘get your f@#king finger out of my face’. She told Haggerty, and I am paraphrasing here, she will have to get used to people demanding a more transparent commission and public hearings mean hearing the public.

Jody McCaffree asked if the Board was aware the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) requires the balance of competing resources, in this case mining with timber and fisheries. Failure to balance these resources may void the CZMA Coastal Management Plan and terminate access to millions of dollars in federal funding for its coastal programs.

A recent court decision to penalize Mas Tec construction for violating the Clean Water Act during the 60 mile natural gas pipeline project connecting Roseburg to Coquille in 2003. The judge also found fault with regulatory oversight and blamed the County for not locating appropriate disposal sites for spoils.

The $1.5 million verdict, while hefty, wasn’t nearly as substantial as what the plaintiffs sought: between $12 million and $19 million, depending on how the number of violations was determined. The plaintiff’s case was based in part on assertions that the company had saved $6 million by avoiding its Clean Water Act obligations, but Hogan disagreed. MasTec lost $9.23 million on the project, Hogan wrote in his decision.

Another factor in determining the fine amount had to do with government oversight, Hogan wrote. He blamed the Corps for a “lack of guidance and notice” and the county for failing to provide disposal sites for spoils that ultimately wound up in sensitive streams.

“In this case, there was a failure of all parties concerned,” Hogan wrote. “The lack of communications had a serious impact.”

The County settled paying $55,000 in attorney fees to The Sierra Club in exchange for them dropping a $4.3M lawsuit. The County also settled with the Army Corp of Engineers agreeing to pay $495,000 to complete a series of fish passage improvement projects along the pipeline route over the next five years. Finally, from Sept 04, the county must also pay $25,000 annually for the next three years out of the general fund to the U.S. Treasury.

While the citizens of the County can hope the Board learned from this mistake the damage by Mas Tec continued despite the public coming forward and alerting the commissioners there was a serious problem. Therefore, limiting public input and denying access to the negotiations regarding any mineral leases with ORC is not likely to sit well in light of past egregious errors on the part of the Board.