Students, farmers join forces on LNG

Bike ride along pipe route brings together three generations of activists

By Christian Gaston

The Forest Grove News-Times, Apr 15, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Chase Allgood / News-times

Richard Hanschu points to a map of a proposed pipeline route. He said that if an LNG terminal is built in Oregon, the gas pipeline that feeds it will ruin his forest land.

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Richard Hanschu doesn't look like your run-of-the-mill environmentalist.

Wearing an old blue shirt and a worn baseball cap, Hanschu stands with a western swagger.

It's exactly what you'd expect from a man who spends his days tending to thousands of 70-year-old trees near Gales Creek.

But Hanschu, who grew up on a dairy farm in Oklahoma, is just as comfortable talking about the environmental impacts of a proposed natural gas pipeline as he is the quality of wood being grown on his family's tree farm.

And last Saturday, Hanschu got a chance to gab with some Pacific University students about the gas pipeline that he and a diverse group of property owners feel will imperil their livelihoods.

“Thank you young people for being interested,” the 68-year-old Hanschu said.

The meet-and-greet came at the end of a bike ride that roughly followed the proposed path of two natural gas pipelines in the works.

The bike ride was organized by Green Jobs Not LNG, a student group opposed to two proposed liquefied natural gas terminals and the pipelines that would snake from the terminals on the Columbia River through Washington County along Gales Creek and eventually to Molalla in Clackamas County.

“To me fighting fossil fuels is the number one way to fight climate change,” said Monica Vaughan, principal organizer of the event. “So when I see liquid natural gas coming in, it's the number one climate change issue in our region.”

The bike ride gave students an opportunity to meet with landowners along the pipeline and see how the proposals could impact their land.

For Hanschu, a proposed pipeline path that would cut a 150-foot-wide swath through his forestland, winds tumbling down the coast range would rattle his crop to pieces.

“If you cut a wind tunnel of 150 feet in ten years it'll all collapse,””Hanschu said.

For Anne Berblinger, who farms organic vegetables near Gales Creek, the pipeline would mean the loss of her organic certification for a number of years. That would probably put her out of business.

Before Berblinger started farming, she was the Oregon representative for the U.S. Economic Development Administration. Her experience there leads her to believe that any LNG projects will result in an overall loss in jobs.

“It'll have an impact on fishing jobs and forestry jobs,” Berblinger said.

And she won't be able to take fresh greens to farmer's markets around the metro area.

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