Since 1919, when Oregon became the first state in the nation to levy a gas tax, the revenue stream has been as reliable as winter rain in Portland. Today, it generates about $400 million annually, but in the near future, with the push for energy independence and electric cars in particular, paying for pavement may become more difficult.
OSU graduate student Jesse Abrams interviewed ranchers, homeowners, business people and local officials to understand changes unfolding in Wallowa County.
When California-based Amy’s Kitchen opened a plant in Southern Oregon in 2006, the Oregon Department of Agriculture called it “a large feather in Oregon’s organic cap.” The nation’s largest producer of organic frozen foods, from complete meals to pizza, now employs about 700 full-time workers in White City. Its success is a sign that, over the last decade, organics have morphed from counterculture to mainstream.
In the two decades since the co-op formed, it has “evolved into a key player in the natural beef industry,” the researchers say. Country Natural Beef has the power to sustain not only the landowners but also the land for generations to come.
As wind turbines and solar arrays sprout up across the landscape, an urgent challenge arises: How to capture all that alternative energy for the electrical grid. Wind velocity and solar intensity vary wildly as weather changes and as seasons shift — fluctuations that are often out of sync with power demand.
As Arctic ice thins, sea levels rise and glaciers recede, Ken Faulk takes stock of his trees in the Oregon Coast Range. Last summer, he began measuring his stands of Douglas fir and white oak by pounding plastic pipes into the ground to mark the centers of circles nearly 30 feet across.