"Location, location, location" - a message lost on Warm Springs Tribes | The Greenwash Brigade

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"Location, location, location" - a message lost on Warm Springs Tribes

Planners at The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs don't seem to be familiar with the well-known marketing mantra: location, location, location.

The Tribes are embroiled in a highly controversial proposal to build a 603,000 square foot off-reservation mega-casino (roughly three times the size of a Wal-Mart super store) in tiny little Cascade Locks, Oregon, adjacent to,and some would argue -- in the very heart of -- one of this region's spectacular gems, the Columbia River Gorge.

(Image credit: Golder Associates)

Its proponents argue that it will be built to LEED standards and apparently carbon offsets would be used after construction starts, "possibly by planting trees." And where will these trees be planted or by whom?

It makes sense to evaluate siting decisions by looking at context, scale, site characteristics and little niggling things like greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

The Columbia River Gorge, 80 miles long and up to 4,000 feet deep, was designated as a National Scenic Area in 1986. The area generates millions of dollars each year in nature-based tourism revenue and is home to threatened salmon, bald eagle and old growth forests.

To my eyes, this is yet another lipstick-on-a-pig story:

• Round trip travel from the Warm Springs Reservation to the proposed casino site is a whopping 220 miles (the Interior Department in a recent memo (link to PDF on page) stated it would give greater scrutiny to tribal benefits as the distance increases between the acquisition -- here the industrial site in Cascade Locks -- and the tribe's reservation.)

• The site -- in addition to 603,000 square feet worth of buildings -- will include 25 acres and an additional 35 acres of pure unforgiving parking lot, utilities and other hard surfaces. 20 acres of parking lot = 413,000 gallons of polluted runoff from one, one-inch rain event (and if you know the area, rain is a regular companion out there)

• The casino would draw 3 million visitors annually and would require an expansion of Interstate 84 over a salmon bearing stream, including "de-watering" the stream. Last time I checked, fish don't drive. Can anyone say traffic, climate change and poor air quality? The Forest Service is already plagued by poor air quality in the Gorge, where visibility is impaired 90% of the time.

LEED standards don't address contextual siting, scale, community opposition or adjacency issues so although it's admirable to build to LEED standards, it alone is a poor indicator of a project's environmental sustainability. The community of Cascade Locks is equally divided and its local government very boldly denounces its opposition. In a list of 20 hyperlinked documents, oddly the only one not working was the link to the Environmental Impact Statement. How coincidental...

Similar to the issues raised by mega mansions scattered across the nation, enraging neighbors and creating visual discordance (ugly is bad enough, huge-ugly is insufferable), scale, location and climate change are deal breakers when dealing with complex smart growth and sustainable development issues.

July 27, 2008 by Heidi Siegelbaum
3 comments

tags: casinos LEED siting Warm Springs

Comments (3)

Allen | Respond
August 11, 2008 10:45 PM PT

So shame on those red faces for utilizing one of the couple of ways of making money they have left, eh?

Heidi | Respond
August 12, 2008 8:32 AM PT

The situation is not that simple. No organization deserves a "pass" because of past aggrieved actions by the US government. There are plenty of viable casinos that are not located on the edge of protected areas, using 55 acres and requiring 220 miles of driving when we are collectively addressing the serious ramifications of climate change.

Allen | Respond
August 28, 2008 7:05 AM PT

So keep the red men down, eh? After all TODAY the reservations are located far from population centers. You either have to develop far from population centers or get those population centers to open up to it. And they're not doing it. So the end result, whatever the good intentions, is no development (jobs, money, etc) for the injuns. Nice.

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Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Dennis Markatos-Soriano recently completed a Master's in Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He is now launching Sustainable Energy Transition (SET) to help individuals and institutions move from dependence on oil and gas to an efficient use of renewables. Previously, he co-founded SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), which aims to bring young progressives together across issues of environmental and social justice throughout North Carolina and beyond. In the summer of 2006, he helped to start a small green company, Greenway Pedicabs, to provide a greenhouse gas-free transportation option for people in the Triangle of North Carolina.

Heidi Siegelbaum is a principal with Calyx Sustainable Tourism and works primarily on advancing sustainable tourism practices. She also specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst with the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the technical advisory committee of the Seattle Culinary Academy and a long standing member of the Chefs Collaborative.

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