It wasn’t exactly "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," but the scene that played
out in the Riverside Room at Mt. Hood Villages RV Park was a pretty good
sequel.

Standing in for Jimmy Stewart was George Wilson, Rick Applegate, Michael P.
Jones and Keith Schacher as they vied for honors and turned in performances
that were worthy of their Hollywood predecessor.

As drama goes, it was pretty good stuff for The Mountain.

The opening lines of the script were penned by the Oregon Department of
Transportation when in its august opinion the Miller Road Quarry was to be
the excavation and disposal site to provide rock and gravel for the Hwy. 26
slide in Sandy.

Cast in the role of the villain, the unfortunate ODOT character part fell to
spokesman Rich Watanabe, the Metro East Area Manager who appeared at the
Villages.

Applegate, a board member of the Villages at Mt. Hood, had already stolen
the scene by calling an emergency session of the board at 3 p.m., March 3 out
of protest for use of the local quarry.

Clamoring for supporting roles on exceptionally short notice, an overflow
crowd showed up.

The drama unfolded as Watanabe explained ODOT’s intentions. In order to
rebuild the embankment in Sandy from the winter storm damage, the
department had contracted for blasting and excavation of the Miller Road
Quarry. One thousand six hundred 10-yard truck loads of rock would be
mined, and 1,200 10-yard truck loads of rock debris would be deposited on
the site.

Applegate was the first to respond.

"What about the resort (Mt. Hood Villages RV Park) facility?" Applegate asked.
His concern centered on the blasting and how that would affect the park.
"That’s also a premier fly fishing area. Where’s the transparency? Why haven’t
we been notified?"

Watanabe apologized for not coming to the community ahead of time.
"How do you justify using this as a disposal site?" Schacher said. "It’s going to
be less than 150 feet from the river."

Watanabe assured the site was 300 feet from the river and that the
excavators would make erosion control measures to compact the debris and
set up two rows of silt fencing.

Schacher was not convinced. "What about the environmental damage?" he
asked.

"What precautions are you taking for safe trucking out of Miller Road onto
(Hwy.) 26? Will there be flaggers?"

"We don’t use flaggers," Watanabe said. "We typically put up signs."
It was Wilson’s turn to steal the show.

"I’m so angry I can’t stand myself," he said. "We’re all too familiar up here on
the Mountain with being over-run by Clackamas County, ODOT, on and on.
This is our community, our resources, our land. We have a working rock
quarry in Brightwood. Did they get to bid?"

"I apologize again," Watanabe said. "Our projects are advertised on our Web
site. I don’t know if Brightwood knew."

"Well, what is done is done," Wilson said. "I know BLM owns the land. I know
this is all legal. But it doesn’t make it right. We keep getting railroaded. Until
there’s dialogue, transparency, we don’t have a clue."

Michael P. Jones stood in defense of the river.

"The Salmon River is sensitive," he said. "There is no plan. You’re gonna have
stuff in that river. It’s unstable ground. Just because you have mineral rights
doesn’t mean you have to use them. I can show you erosion control that
didn’t work. We need time to evaluate this. It’s no shock we weren’t notified."

Watanabe apologized again for the lack of communication.

The meeting went beyond the one-hour time limit, and Watanabe persevered,
doing his best to respond to the partisan attack.

It seemed to end in frustration. But a Hollywood ending was coming.

On March 11, Watanabe sent this e-mail message to Bob Reeves, chair of the
Villages at Mt. Hood:

"After listening to the neighborhood concerns and further discussions
regarding the use of the quarry, the Oregon Department of Transportation
(ODOT) has decided not to use the Miller Road Quarry for the landslide repair
project in Sandy, Oregon."

"This is the first step," Reeves said. "We now can concentrate on having the
quarry closed permanently. In follow-up calls to Mr. Watanabe, I found him to
be very receptive to our concerns."

"We did it," Applegate said. "This is a victory for the community and it
couldn’t have happened without the coalition of community voices who
gathered at Mt. Hood Village Resort at the special meeting."

Wilson thanked Applegate for organizing the meeting and for his help "in
moving the issue forward ... to ensure Mountain residents have a voice in how
our community is to be shaped now and in the future."

For now, the quarry is safe as the screen fades to black and the credits roll.