Protections were coming to the Nehalem River.

In late February, the state parks commission agreed the river that ambles through the heavily logged Coast Range should be designated as a scenic waterway. State water officials concurred.

Environmental groups had been pushing the cause for years. Calling the Nehalem scenic would require landowners and loggers to consult with parks officials on ways to reduce visual impacts of future clearcuts or other projects along the river.

All the designation needed was Gov. Kate Brown’s signature. The only time Brown designated scenic rivers, just four months lapsed between the formal recommendation and the governor’s order.

Yet when the Nehalem landed on the governor’s desk earlier this year, advocates with the environmental group Oregon Wild said the governor’s staff told them it wouldn’t be signed until after the Legislature adjourned, delaying its implementation until 2020.

Things were “very delicate” in the state Senate, Oregon Wild conservation director Steve Pedery said his group was told.

Translation: Brown needed state Sen. Betsy Johnson’s support on more important things. And the Nehalem is in the Scappoose Democrat’s district. Although Johnson wouldn't respond when asked her position on the scenic designation, she routinely sides with timber interests on legislative matters. She’s taken more than $100,000 in campaign money from timber.

State Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose. (Dave Killen/Staff)Dave Killen

The delay meant the Oregon Department of Forestry had more time to work on clearcutting a section of the Nehalem that parks staff cited as particularly scenic. Discussions about selling the state-owned timber began a year before the state started trying to protect the Nehalem.

While the scenic designation sat unsigned by the governor, the Department of Forestry pushed forward to cut 70 acres of hemlock, alder and fir, some as old as 80 years.

The state agency’s planned clearcut sat entirely in what would become the scenic corridor.

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One sunny day in May 2017, staff from the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department donned life jackets, piled into rafts and slid into the Nehalem’s inviting waters.

The undammed river starts in the highlands of the Tillamook State Forest, coiling back on itself like an uroboros as it zags almost 119 miles through Oregon’s Coast Range, ending where Nehalem Bay empties into the Pacific.

The bureaucrats’ mission: Decide whether the views along a 17.5-mile stretch of river met the state’s legal definition of scenic.

Was the scene pleasing, “as viewed from the river and related adjacent land”?

If it was, the Nehalem could be designated as the latest scenic waterway, a program created by a large majority of Oregon voters in 1970. A scenic designation requires landowners to notify state parks staff about development plans within a quarter-mile of the river and try to find ways to avoid things that look bad. If they disagree, a landowner just needs to wait a year before doing what they want anyway.

It’s not the strictest requirement. But most of the time, state officials say, it works.

Though rivers can be continually added, the effort has languished since its creation. Before Brown recognized scenic stretches of the Molalla and Chetco rivers in 2016, none had been named since 1988, when voters added to the list of rivers originally designated in 1970.

On their 2017 float trip, the state employees undertook a rudimentary analysis: They looked at the scenery, river mile by river mile.

The views they found were undeniably pleasing. Along the Nehalem, mossy alders sigh over glassy pools. Kingfishers rattle as they alight. Endless flows whisper their never-ending story, an emerald susurrus of water over boulders.

Governor Kate Brown has been noncommittal about whether she will designate the Nehalem River as a scenic waterway before the Legislature adjourns. If she waits, it won't be official until 2020. Beth Nakamura/Staff

Their launch spot met the legal definition. “Generally pleasing,” they noted in a report.

On they floated, past a state campground called Beaver Eddy. It met the legal test, too: “A pleasing river view with steep forested slopes.”

Downstream, they passed another campground called Morrison Eddy. The view? “Of very high scenic quality.”

And in an area of Oregon heavily logged for generations, where all the old growth vanished by the end of World War II, the bureaucrats didn’t see much evidence of clearcuts in the scenic corridor.

Parks employees painstakingly documented the beauty in a report endorsing the Nehalem as a scenic waterway.

Then the pushback came.

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Oregon’s timber industry wanted to ensure the scenic designation would not supersede state logging rules, which include some of the weakest environmental protections on the West Coast. And, in a state where the timber industry donates more to lawmakers than anywhere else in the country, those interests often get what they want.

Weyerhaeuser, the Washington state timber giant, owns large swaths of land along the proposed scenic stretch. No private landowner controls more. The company was one of just 10 parties to oppose the designation (nearly 1,400 commenters supported it), saying the Nehalem wasn’t that scenic.

Kevin Godbout, the company’s environmental affairs manager, acknowledged the views from the river were pleasant. But they aren’t undisturbed, he wrote. Forests along the Nehalem are logged too much to qualify as scenic, he said.

A gully eroded by a landslide off a clearcut next to the Nehalem River. The exposed rocks allow water running into the river to warm up, causing problems for salmon, which need cold water. Beth Nakamura/Staff

His comments made clear that the industry had forever changed the Nehalem’s landscape in the last century. “This area cannot be restored to a primitive condition,” Godbout wrote.

The Oregon Farm Bureau, another powerful political force, said there was no “compelling reason to increase protection of the river.”

“There are no current or foreseeable threats to the existing scenic and recreational values as they exist today,” bureau attorney Mary Anne Cooper wrote in late 2017.

But one was already being planned.

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Alongside the parks staff on that 2017 float trip was someone from the Oregon Department of Forestry. The agency controls 80 percent of the land in the proposed Nehalem scenic corridor. What Weyerhaeuser doesn’t own predominantly belongs to the state.

In the months after the float, while the blueprint to protect the Nehalem inched forward, state forestry workers developed their own plan for the views: A 67-acre clearcut.

With the exception of a required 100-foot buffer on the river, the cut would denude steep hillsides that form the vista from the Beaver Eddy and Morrison Eddy campgrounds, which parks officials called “pleasing” and “of high scenic quality.” The agency called the $853,000 timber sale “The Double Eddy.”

The agency would give most of the revenue to Tillamook and Clatsop counties. But it would have kept $309,000 for its own budget.

Though Oregon law requires trees to be replanted after a clearcut, the impact of cutting is unmistakable around the Nehalem. Across the river from the planned new cut, landslides on the steep slopes have carved a deep gully down to bedrock. It allows water draining into the Nehalem -- home to coastal Coho salmon and other threatened and endangered fish -- to first warm up as it courses over sun-baked rocks.

The Nehalem already has problems maintaining temperatures cool enough for salmon, which are dependent on cold water, said Maggie Peyton, executive director of the Upper Nehalem Watershed Council, a group that works to conserve the river.

“It’s not going to be the same when it grows back,” Peyton said, sizing up the planned clearcut recently from the riverbank. “Now, it’s beautiful. There’s other values we can capture that exceed the value of the timber they’re going to get off that.”

Maggie Peyton, executive director of the Upper Nehalem Watershed Council, says the state should move swiftly to designate the river as a scenic waterway. Beth Nakamura/Staff

Environmental groups protested the proposed Double Eddy clearcut. In a May 2 letter, 13 groups called for the Oregon Department of Forestry to cancel the sale.

The Wild Salmon Center and Oregon Wild, two of the groups, separately urged the governor to accelerate the scenic waterway designation. If she signed it before July, it would take hold upon the Legislature’s adjournment this summer. If she waited, it wouldn’t be official until next year. Steve Pedery, Oregon Wild’s conservation director, said a Brown adviser told his group she planned to wait until after adjournment.

A spokeswoman for the governor was noncommittal about the timing when asked by The Oregonian/OregonLive. “Our team is focused on the legislative session,” Brown spokeswoman Kate Kondayen said. “However, the governor will consider signing this designation this month, June, or July, and is eager to do so.”

Kondayen did not respond to subsequent questions about whether Brown delayed signing in order to satisfy Sen. Johnson.

Even though the Nehalem’s designation wasn’t official, the Department of Forestry asked Parks and Recreation Department officials for their opinion on the clearcut. They didn’t object.

But they also said they didn’t conduct as thorough a review as they normally would for a scenic waterway. They didn’t make a site visit to examine the area up close and ensure state foresters were doing everything they could to minimize the clearcut’s visual impact.

From the Nehalem, the cut on the steep forested slopes would have been obvious.

The Double Eddy timber sale became part of the forestry department’s operations plan for the budget year that starts July 1.

The clear cutting was ready to move forward.

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Last week, The Oregonian/OregonLive began making inquiries about the planned cut. An advocate notified the governor’s staff about a reporter’s interest in the timber sale on May 16.

The next day, when a reporter toured the area around the planned clearcut, state forestry employees held a conference call.

Employees from the agency’s state, Northwest Oregon and Astoria offices discussed the planned timber sale and “reached consensus,” a forestry department spokesman said.

The sale was canceled.

“Having considered all the circumstances,” spokesman Jason Cox said, “not harvesting the area contributes more to Oregonians societally and environmentally than the harvest would have contributed economically.”

Clarification: The governor’s staff was notified about a reporter’s interest in the timber sale, not the actual site visit.

— Rob Davis

rdavis@oregonian.com

503.294.7657; @robwdavis

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