Pacific Gales Needs your help

[Emile Bonfiglio]

Per their Facebook page.....

JOIN THE PACIFIC GALES ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGN!

Hello friends of Pacific Gales, we're asking for a little help. There is only one opponent to our Port Orford golf project, and that's the Oregon Coast Alliance environmental watchdog group. So we're asking our supporters to send letters and e-mails highlighting the positives of the Pacific Gales project (both economic and environmental) to help push the Oregon Coast Alliance Board of Directors toward a decision to work with us rather than against us.

For details on the all the environmental concerns that have been taken into account by our team to build Pacific Gales, please visit the new "Environmental" page at the link below. And then, please, put together a quick letter (preferred) or e-mail and send to:

Oregon Coast Alliance
Board of Directors
P.O. Box 857
Astoria, OR 97103

E-mail for the Oregon Coast Alliance Land Use Director:
cameron@oregoncoastalliance.org

All we request is that you keep it positive and civil. We want to be good neighbors on the Oregon Coast, and hopefully persuade the Oregon Coast Alliance to turn their attention to other most pressing environmental concerns elsewhere and allow our team to build the conservation-minded golf course we've been planning since the beginning.

http://pacificgales.com/pacific-gales-golf-history/environmental/

[Norbert P]

 A bump for an important issue.

Thanks for the heads-up Emile.

I shudder to imagine what would NOT have happened in Bandon if Mr. McKee wasn't involved.  What that resort has done for a languishing local economy is positively amazing and has encouraged many other successful ventures in the area.  

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."  Neal Peart  "Free Will" ( Rush )

[Pete_Pittock]

The Curry County Commission is/was hearing their appeal this morning.  

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Re: Pacific Gales – NEW Oregon Pacific Coast Golf Course Development

« Reply #87 on: March 25, 2014, 08:26:45 PM »
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http://www.dailyastorian.com/news/northwest/appeal-filed-against-new-port-orford-golf-course/article_f5f05357-1065-59c7-a866-d7fa5f803786.html

The environmental group, the Oregon Coast Alliance has filed an appeal on county consideration for Pacific Gales. The proposal was supposed to go before the Curry County Commission this Thursday, March 27th. The appeal delays that appearance until April 17th.

The county planning commission approved the course last month. The way I read their final order, it is final and anything appealed in that procedure cannot be reappealed. They have to cover new ground. That should throw out most of the OAC's latest gambit.

The OAC is relitigating the exclusive farm use of high value farmland. They already appealed that and lost.

They claim the golf course uses too much land, since it is more than 150 acres.

They allege the buildings are too large because they conflict with the Port Orford urban boundary rules. Those rules limit capacity to 100, which is what the size of the proposed structure.

The OAC is looking for clearer language on monitoring plans and archealogical stuff.  They may have a point, but it's no smoking gun.

They are concerned about salmon in a nearby river, which has already been appealed, and they lost.

The three weeks of delay hopefully won't impact their overall construction schedule any more than this August's music festival in nearby Sixes.

 

[JC Jones]

What are the environmental positives of this project?  Is any golf course an environmental positive over the status quo?

[Emile Bonfiglio]

What are the environmental positives of this project?  Is any golf course an environmental positive over the status quo?

Removal of Gorse is seen as a positive.

[Norbert P]

1.  What are the environmental positives of this project?

2.  Is any golf course an environmental positive over the status quo?

1. Reduced methane manufacturing by cattle.     
    Perhaps gorse eradication?

2. Brownfield golf course stand out immediately but there are also golf courses that exist in urban areas. Perhaps they were rural or suburban at the time of construction but their continued existence has tremendous value in a world of concentrated human habitat.

Has Bandon Dunes Resort introduced positives to the environment?   It removed a runaway invasive species that burned down the city of Bandon, twice.  It may be called a collection of golf courses but, it should not be forgotten, that it is also a reclamation and protection project.

 

[JC Jones]

My post was in no way a "protect Bandon Dunes" post.  It is a serious question about environmental impacts of golf courses, both positive and negative, over the status quo.

Methane production from cattle is only an issue in concentrated farming operations, in other words, factory farms where the cows are concentrated and fed a diet of corn, animal byproduct and other such things cows were never intended to eat and can't digest in their stomachs.  Pasture raised cows, while still producing methane do not do so at a harmful rate.  So, unless there is a CAFO on the site of where the golf course will be, I'm not sure the methane reduction claim is a good one.

I like the control of the non-native gorse.  Do golf courses protect against it better than other solutions?  Also, how does the introduction of large quantities of nitrogen and other fertilizers affect the water and is there a concern of run off into the ocean?

[Tom_Doak]

I like the control of the non-native gorse.  Do golf courses protect against it better than other solutions?  Also, how does the introduction of large quantities of nitrogen and other fertilizers affect the water and is there a concern of run off into the ocean?

Golf courses have a compelling reason to keep the gorse in check, and the financial wherewithal to do so.  There aren't many other uses that do ... clearly leaving the land as untouched Nature allows the gorse to spread, as it has.

"Large quantities of nitrogen" are generally not necessary for fescue turf on the Oregon coast; Bandon Dunes's golf courses use much less fertilizer than most. 

There will be state regulations pertaining to any runoff directed into drainage pipes [point source pollution].  For Bandon Dunes they were much more worried about pollution in the little creek that runs down the last two holes of Bandon Dunes, than they were about water directed toward the beach, because of the potential concentration in a small water body.