Prior to being appointed interim Coos County Commissioner, Fred Messerle testified at a hearing for the Pacific Connector Pipeline arguing for an alternative route that avoids his property. 
His prepared statement did such a good job of describing the negative effects the pipeline would have on present and future property values that Jody McCaffree included his testimony in comments to the federal regulatory agencies permitting the Jordan Cove LNG project.
Messerle later sought to be elected to the board of commissioners and received indirect campaign funding from Jordan Cove through the CCAP (Coos County Alliance for Progress) and raised a record $32K that included contributions from many vocal proponents of siting LNG on the North Spit. Messerle was defeated by a narrow margin of 14 votes by incumbent Bob Main.
Yesterday, Messerle and Sons, Inc filed with FERC to be an intervenor on the Jordan Cove LNG export facility
Basis for Intervening:
“Intervention should be granted pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 385.214. Fred Messerle & Sons, Inc. dba Messerle & Sons requests intervention because:
1). The proposed export facility is in partnership with the Pacific Connector pipeline whose current proposed route runs directly through Messerle & Son‘s property. The decision of whether or not the export terminal will be permitted will directly affect whether or not the pipeline is built.
2). If allowed, the export and pipeline project will lessen the value of Messerle & Son‘s property and the quality of his land.
3). No current party will or can adequately represent Messerle @ Son‘s interests as an affected private landowner.”
Messerle, along with his wife Sandra who is the executive director of SCDC (South Coast Development Council), a position partially funded with tax dollars, both champion the Jordan Cove LNG export facility and associated pipeline arguing short term construction jobs and payments in lieu of taxes will translate into long term economic revival for Coos County. At the same time they recognize that landowners who rely upon their property for their livelihood will be adversely affected by the pipeline but this is okay as long as they aren’t one of them. Messerle is proposing an alternate route that avoids his lands and directs it through some superb mountain bike trails which you can view at BlueRidgeLNG.
Draw your own conclusions about the character of people willing to promote an industry harmful to timber and ranching as long as it doesn’t affect their timber or their ranch. The Messerles aren’t alone in this perspective and most of the economic development schemes promoted by SCDC and the Port of Coos Bay rely upon the suffering of others in order to be a success. Consider this quote by Jordan Cove spokesman Michael Hinrichs from a May 23, 2013 article in The World.
The environmental impact to local communities would be minimal, Hinrichs said, since the terminal will not conduct hydro-fracking, a controversial process used to extract natural gas from the ground.
“It is a facility and pipeline only,” he said. “It will be constantly evaluated during the FERC process.”
Consider how drought stricken farmers are outbid for precious water by the hydro-fracking industry or how local promoters of a coal export terminal justified the exploitation of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin because “someone is going to profit, it may as well be us”.
There is something wrong with this, even if the people suffering are a whole county, or a state or even a continent away.
For Messerle to make a come-back that soon he would have to run against one of the two insiders sponsored to sit beside him. That could be too shifty and disloyal for the rest of the SCDC members to handle. But I might not be giving the other SCDC members enough credit for being as vile to each other as the groups directors have been to the overall community.
SCDC is the power center of the local “legal” development groups that have managed to pull levers at all of the other such quasi-government organizations in our midst. With its formation coinciding with the LNG developers wishes to exploit Coos Bay, we have witnessed this group of local players influence itself into every board this county has to offer and they used Clark and the paper to do it. We have watched them get their chosen people seated at the port of coos bay, the county commissioners board,the Airport board, and I suspect ORRCA was more important to them than the public will ever know, and that conclusion is just from watching the same pro-LNG supporters use the local paper to perform a mob witch hunt with the pre-determined goals to replace the top people at ORRCA. That was a self inflicted wound to the community that the paper was quick to fan the flames on. When the same online bullies that were being used as pro-LNG shills at theworld, started using their group effort in the papers comment section to attack ORRCA, the whole reason for the papers extra effort became somewhat suspect.Was the whole story of corruption in ORRCA just a chess move by SCDC used for mis-direction purposes at the very least? When our local paper joined SCDC and became a tool of SCDC and the Jordan Cove LNG lovers club, this community was handed a company paper and told it was news.
FredM and SCDC may not recover from having their barrel of ink kicked over, and hopefully losing Clark accomplishes that. Clark should contact Jeff Bishop for advice, maybe he can learn how to get a European Vacation and a years salary from his employers on the way out the door.
So we can add the duo of Messerle to the list of NIMBY’s. Hypocrites! OK if that eye sore decreases our property value but not his. Thank GOD for the 14 who helped get rid of him. He will be back in a year.
I’m not so sure about that. Messerle wrote himself a $2,077 check zeroing out his OreStar account. To me that signals he is done… or just broke
14 votes let Main keep his job. How many votes were cast for write-ins just Because Bob Main let SCDC take control of the county commissioners board? Yea I think a lot of us were willing to let Bob loose to Fred just to accelerate the corrupt influence and decline of SCDC.
You also made me recognize the author of the “someone’s gonna profit” mantra as the current head of the local democrats, MarkM. To me they just hired the equivalent of a pimp or a drug dealer to advocate for the oil industry and protect the efforts of the people up the ladder he’s trying to climb.
Mark is just one of many willing to excuse their actions with a cliche