We found a 10-day-old parking ticket from Portland the other day. Often the plastic trash we find has baby barnacles. It’s been out in the water a long time before we collect it.

It’s not the only thing and west is not the only direction.

We get our water from the Coast Range. “Here’s another map showing the area at the Arch Cape Creek headwaters that will be arial sprayed. There is a comment period that will end May 6 or 9th.

“If you want to comment email: jasen.r.mccoy@oregon.gov” 

They are, essentially, spraying my backyard.

The goal of spraying is to prevent plant growth. They do not want weeds or natural forest succession to begin—from shrubs, then hardwood (alder), to conifers (spruce and hemlock). They want a marketable crop as soon as possible. To achieve that goal they spray chemicals closely related to Agent Orange. On land where I have walked, land rinsed by our future drinking water.

This is my public comment: My family has summered in Arch Cape since 1911. We have lived here year around since the 1940s. I moved to Arch Cape in 1979 with my husband Gary C. Anderson just after the last clearcut, and I recall saying to him that there would not be another for at least 30 years. I knew what they had been spraying up in those hills. And I knew that rain would flush some it it down into local drinking water.

My husband and I have lived here for 39 years and raised our children here. My husband worked in local businesses and I taught in the Seaside School District. Each morning since our retirement we walk the beach and pick up trash from the shore. I can see the plastic bottles and broken toothbrushes, the bottle caps and nylon rope, the plastic foam and cigarette lighters. We see the trash and we can walk by or carry it home to put in the trash.

We cannot see the toxins deliberately introduced into our ecosystem.

It is criminal that this still happens at a time when so many people have become ill and even died from the impact of deliberate human action.

Please do not poison our watershed. Again.