Why You Might Smell Smoke This Week. Plus Salem's Data Center Revolt and the Real Reason PDX Trees are Dying

I'm Today on CityCast Portland, Oregon's current wildfires are set to become the largest in our state's history. Salem is standing up against encroaching data centers. Plus, the more probable reason our airport's trees are dying. And it's not dog pee. I'm your host, Claudia Meza. And with me, our K-Boo News Director, Althea Billings, an outdoors editor and host of the Explorer Oregon podcast at the Statesman Journal, Zach Ernest. How's it going, guys? Hey, Claudia. Thanks for having me. It's going great. Awesome. Zach, it's been a while since you've been on the show. Yeah, it's been, I was trying to think, a year or two? At least two years. I would think so. And I think last time I was also on talking about wildfires. Oh, no. This is not good. You got to have me out for a happier reason. I think so. Yeah, totally. What's your other passions aside from wildfires? Well, I mean, wildfires aren't taking up the entire season. We have lots of great stories about cool stuff to do in the outdoors and environmental stories. So we got lots to choose from, but wildfires kind of block out the sun this time of year. So, you know, it is what it is. Conspiracy theory, the wildfires were started to get Zach. back on the podcast because they knew that those were the conditions. Oh my God. Like we just found out that city cast Portland are a bunch of sociopaths and we're just creating news for our own enjoyment. All right. It's good to have you back on, Zach. Now, before we jump into our opening question, I have a little update on a story that we talked through last Friday. I shared the news of the city shutting down a beloved waterside at Brooklyn Park in southeast Portland. Parks and Rex said the nearly 50-year summer tradition, which is fully run by neighbors, by the way, was damaging the grass underneath and around the slide. This slide is massive. It's like 100 feet long, but it only really comes out during 90-plus degree weather and any damage. grass according to the residents in the area grows back by the end of September. Anyhow. Willamette Week reported on this whole thing last Tuesday and by Friday afternoon, the city reversed course after a ton of backlash. So the slide is no longer banned and all is well in the Brooklyn neighborhood. So if you're in the area, you might see it back out this week since we're supposed to be getting a few scorching days. And as for today's opening question, though, we're also back to a previous story we talked about a month ago. Listeners might remember that the Oregonian had reported that some of the trees

inside the PDX airport were dying. Officials were blaming travelers for either pouring their coffee into the planters or even letting their dogs urinate in them. Well, now a horticulturist by the name of Elizabeth Snodgrass, which is the perfect name for a horticulturist. is telling Willam at Week that she doesn't think it's careless travelers that are killing these trees. It's the lack of sunlight. Snodgrass, who has been an interior plant landscaper in Portland for about 40 years, pointed out that all the trees dying are the ones not directly underneath the skylights. And those happen to be the black olive trees who also happened to need six to eight hours of direct... sunlight. She also said that she called at the moment she saw the cluster of black olive trees in the periphery of the skylights. She was like, I even texted my friend about it, which I love that just all the people traveling, all the thoughts in your head, and in comes Elizabeth Snodgrass. And she's like, oh, those trees are dying. Like, I would never. I love that. So anyhow, she's calling bullshit on the official line that the trees are dying because of excessive coffee and dog pee. And it's hoping that the port of Portland chooses better trees for the light they're providing them. because there is talk of the black olive trees being swapped out. And this brings me to my opening question. Do you have a favorite tree in your neighborhood or city? I mean like a specific tree. If so, what is it? For example, one of my favorites is that big apple tree by the bluffs. Alfia, you might know it. Zach, you live in Salem. You may not know it. That's wonderful. I started thinking about this and unfortunately my favorite neighborhood trees are always the ones that just got cut down or something like that. You know what I mean? The one outside of the Kibu radio station, we had like a flood and they had to dig up the road. And so our pear tree had to get taken down. We have a new tree now. Shout out to the new tree. Shout out to the new tree. Shout out to the friends of trees who gave us that tree. But I have to give, and you know, they'd be mad at me if I didn't do this. All-timer shout out to the tree outside my childhood home, which was like a giant. purple beach tree that you could see from pretty far away. And, you know, that's kind of mythic when you're a kid. Purple beach tree. I've never heard of such a thing. Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that's gorgeous. Whoa, that does look like magic. They do have also these, like, funny little nuts that fall. Well, they're not really nuts, but like the things that fall and they hurt, they really hurt your feet. They got spikes. So you'd think that'd be a drawback. But I guess, you know, nostalgia weighs in on that a little bit. Oh, Althea in Ballard, Seattle. Like, I can just imagine it. I'm assuming that it was in Ballard. Oh, yeah, it's in Ballard. Oh, yeah. Still there? Oh, yeah. Still there? Well, knock on wood. Nice. What about you, Zach? Well, this is actually an important topic for me because you mentioned that I live in Salem. I actually live about 45 minutes east in Sayo. So I live on a couple acres out on a long Thomas Creek out here. Nice. And I have... a cluster of favorite trees and they're big Douglas fir trees that were planted probably 80 years ago. And they really bring a lot to the area. And they're my favorite because we're rooting for them right now. And what I mean by that is in our area, we're having a huge dieback for Douglas fir trees that are no longer accustomed to living in the climate.

especially at the base of the Willamette Valley. I did a long story on this. Oh, too hot. Yeah, dieback is spreading and we've had this, you know, years and years of drought. And so the Douglas fir are really having a hard time. And so a lot of my neighbors, Douglas fir, are dying. And what I'm doing is these are my favorite trees because I'm really rooting for them to survive. Because there's insect infestations, there's the trout, which are killing them off. And I really want mine to survive. And so I've been soaking them with water. And, you know, they're close to the creek. So I'm hoping that they survive. So they are my favorite tree. And I'm working hard to keep them alive actively. Oh, wow. I had no idea. I just thought like we were lush with dogfers and they never go away. That's. A fascinating thing. Like the area that they're dying back is areas that they were planted. So in the early 1900s, we planted Douglas first basically everywhere because they're so good for timber and things like that. But their native range is a little bit higher. It's closer to, you know, 1,000 feet, 1,500 feet. And so the ones that are struggling are the ones that are in those lower elevations. And it's just hotter or dry. Yeah, exactly. The ones that are in the foothills, the casket, their native range, still doing pretty well. But the trees are here now, so I want them to hang on. For sure. Well, good luck with that, Zach. Thank you both for your answers. They both, like, transported me somewhere. So I really appreciate that. Before we take a quick break, I just wanted to share that. are cleaning out our merch closet, our swag bags. We have all these extra Portland penance and tote bags. So if you have at all been thinking of joining our Portland neighbor membership program, now is the time. It's only $10 or like 100 a year, which is a discount. You head over to membership.citycast.fm. It'll tell you all about it and how to join. Aside from these penance, which, by the way, I saw one in the wild. We've been like giving out these penance and these they say Portland on them and they say like, I live here on purpose. And we were out videotaping a slushy video, really important stuff that we cover here at CityCast Portland. And then like some dude on a bike drove by with it and it was so cool. Like just to see your stuff out in the wild, you know, it's like, oh my God, it exists. So I can attest that these pendants specifically look awesome on your bike. Again, membership.citycast.fm. When we come back, Zach is going to update us all on the wildfires happening in our state.

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by far the worst year in state history for wildfires. Those fires had a much greater impact. They burned about 4,000 homes. This year, it's awful, but we've only lost about 24 homes. So that's a good way of understanding size versus impact. Right. Those were the Labor Day fires. Yeah, the Labor Day fires of 2020. That was terrible because the pandemic happened and it was just like everything was happening. Do you know what I mean? It felt like the end of the world at that point. I mean, between the wildfires and the pandemic. On top of each other, it was really brutal. It was crazy. I know that you're saying, hey, not many homes have been burned down, so the impact is not as great for humans. But I'm wondering about, I don't know, the earth. It's good for the earth, right? They like it? Yeah, like air quality and the ecosystems around there. Like, wouldn't this be kind of terrible? Like, I'm here in Portland can see. You know, you always can tell when there's a wildfire somewhere because the sky gets a little pink or the sunlight gets pink. You know, like you're just like, this is a little too warm of a color for, you know, I don't know, 11 a.m. And it feels like sunset already. Do we know how it's affecting our air quality? Oh, yeah. And I would mention, you know, just... Saying that it's not as impactful as 2020. I mean, that's a crazy high bar. This season has been really, really impactful on the east side of the state. I mean, thousands upon thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes. It's burned ranches. It's had a huge impact, particularly on the central and east side. And like you mentioned, air quality has been brutal east of the Cascades. I mean, it's been unhealthy in places like burns for weeks on end. We're just really lucky here on the west side because we just haven't experienced it yet. We get these great marine winds that come in from the Pacific Ocean and tend to push that smoke to the east and keep it away from us. By the way, I know I don't love my title as Harbinger of Doom, but this coming week, the wind's going to shift a little bit and is going to bring smoke into the Willamette Valley, really for the first time. this season. We've been spoiled, frankly, compared to the rest of the state. And we're going to start to feel it a little bit. And all those fires and all that smoke is we're going to start to get it a little bit this coming week. I don't like that one bit, especially because this week is supposed to be one of the hottest weeks. So just that's a terrible combo. Hot and smoky, yeah, not much fun. Yeah. I know there was a lot of talk. March, February, around that time about how little snowpack we had, how warm of a winter it was. I know it was making me like uneasy, how easy of a winter it was in the valley. Like we were we were outside. We weren't even that wet. You know, is this fire season that we're seeing right now like on the scale that would be expected based on the lack of snowpack? Yes. And I would say that, you know, every time you go into a wildfire season, there's the setup for it. And, you know, they look at how, what was the snowpack like? In particular, how cool and damp is spring. And you kind of determine what sort of wildfire season it could be based on that. And coming into this season, yeah, it was, I mean, it was the tide for the warmest winter on record statewide.

you know, the lowest amount of snow that we've ever had on record, at least as long as we've been keeping those records. And then spring was also hot and dry. So coming into the season, the fuels were as receptive to fire as they've ever been in recorded history. Then again, that doesn't always mean that there's going to be a bunch of fires. You need that other ingredients. And the ingredient this year was lightning strikes. So we got 10,000 lightning strikes between two thunderstorms on July 15th and July 22nd. And when you take those extremely dry fuels and you add lightning to them, You can have a huge firefighting force, but the fires spark so fast and grow so fast that the fire teams can't get around them in time. And so you'll have, you know, maybe a couple hundred fires. And some of them just take off. And that's what happened this year. We had all the lightning. Some of them turned into giant wildfires. And, you know, it grows so fast that they, it just takes a long time for them to get containment on them. Oh, man. Well, Zach, this is, I guess, I don't know. I'm a little bummed to here we're going to be getting smoke, but I guess it's better than fire, you know? I mean, we might get fire, too. That's the other thing. There's a red flag warning today for the Eugene area. And we've got all of August. And, you know, I mentioned on the east side, like those fuels being as ready to start fire as they've ever been. The same is true on the west side. It just hasn't happened yet. But so when you talk to fire managers, they really stress, like, paying attention to everything you do outside. So, like, even things like. like dragging your chains if you have your boat on or like parking on grass or just having charcoal briquettes like by a park, you have to be really careful because any spark can start a fire really fast and it's going to grow really rapidly. So August tends to be when west of the Cascades gets more fires. Love to knock on wood. I hope it doesn't happen, but we are primed for fire on this side too. All right. I hope everyone's listening and everyone's on their best. fire behavior. Let's not start a fire, you guys. Please. Well, Zach, thank you so much for joining us and telling us a bit more and just keeping us on our toes because this is a big issue. And also, I had no idea we were getting smoke this week. So now everyone listening, check your filters. I know you can find online. I know we've on our site, we've had instructions on how to create your own filters and all that. So for sure, don't go running outside when we have a smoke warning. It's not good for you. Yeah, just watch the air quality map is great. It's in real time. But maybe it won't be that bad. You never know. Yeah. Well, let's take a quick break here. And when we come back, Alphia has actually more news from Salem. They're really standing up against data centers. Alfia, I feel like we should have just a regular segment on the show that's just called Data Centers. What is the deal?

Do we still have them? Did we figure it out yet? No. Oh, my God. What's the deal with data center? I just feel like every other week we're just like, now this thing. What's going on? Because I know Hillsborough put like a moratorium on data centers. I don't know for how long, like a few months, a few weeks. Four months. Oh, dear. And now Salem is somehow following suit. Like what's going on? Yeah, there's a couple things happening here. So I was looking at reporting from Lauren Dake at OPB and, of course, Mike Rogelway at the Oregonian. Last week, Governor Kotech canceled the sale of state-owned lands in southeastern Salem to a data center company out of California. It was going to be 32 acres, and they were planning to build this $5 billion data center. The Salem officials were under NDA since last year, and so the community just found out about it, and were really outraged. This is following the trend that we've seen across all different parts of Oregon, where, you know, the temperature on data centers is really changing. And so... Salem folks were quite upset about this. Salem City Council themselves said they didn't know that this was happening and weren't sure what their role could be. But Kotech did respond late last week. to cancel this sale. Does that mean that there's not going to be a data center? No, but it won't probably be on those 32 acres. The company Varus was in talks for three large data centers in the area, and I believe they already owned some of the land that they were planning to use for that. So, yeah, we're seeing this progress in different ways. And one thing that I think is maybe helpful to dig into a little bit is just the different ways that the interaction. between data center companies and the government have been challenged, right? Because I felt like I was confused by this as well. There was Cotech statewide moratorium on the tax incentives, which is worth a ton of money. And that took effect in May, right? And then Hillsborough, the other week, had a moratorium on further land permitting. And then this is that we're not going to sell state land for it. And then we're also talking about... having data centers pay more of their fair share of the strain on the electrical grid that they're posing. So there's a lot of different angles that municipalities are kind of coming at this. Well, I know that PGE already passed that. Like they're like, hey, they're going to pay way more. And, you know, residents are going to get a 3% decrease. And we're like, yay. And way more was like 27% or something, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, for sure. But I'm curious, Zach, I know from social media that the Salem City Council meeting was contentious. Like I saw some dude riding his bike and behind like on his trailer was a guillotine. I don't think it was a real one. It was like, you know, like he made one up and he was just riding around outside.

The city council, I don't know if he spoke, but I mean, that energy was, yeah, you could just tell people were pissed. Like, what was going on? Yeah, I mean, it was like Salem gets randomly animated about different issues, third bridges and local issues and stuff like that. But I think the thing that they were most frustrated with was... The surprise that this had been being negotiated behind closed doors for a long time. And people didn't know about it until kind of the last second. And that really sparked something. Yeah, I mean, the council meeting ran until, you know, we had reporters there until, I think, 1 a.m. in the morning just because there was just so many people that wanted to talk. The city council wanted to give them time. I think they're having another meeting for public comments. The videos you mentioned, there are some pretty wild videos from outside that event. It's definitely the front burner in Salem right now. Well, Althea, I know you can't, like, predict what's going to happen. But my concern is that a lot of this is pressure from citizens. Because let's be honest, before this, Kotech was just like, data centers, that's what's up. And then all of a sudden... I think that was the policy. I think that's what it was called. Data centers, that's what's up. Uh-huh. I think it was Das was up. And it passed. Yeah. But then, like, you know, people were just like, uh, the water and, oh, you know, the pollution and all this other stuff. And things have been slowly kind of getting pushed back. But like, to me, a four-month moratorium isn't strong enough. And we also know that data centers have to go somewhere, you know? So, like... I'm just wondering if this is all for show in a sense or if this is for real. I mean, I think the benefit of the moratoriums in either in Hillsborough or the statewide tax incentive is ideally to just push off some of the flood, right? We should have better information about what impact this is going to have on communities. And people should be able to have a say in what's going on because it's something, you know, folks have. now called a lot of attention to it and seen that it's sort of this this runaway industry in a sense in Oregon. You know, Kotech has changed her tune somewhat calling Oregon a cheap date when it comes to building data centers that were kind of... rolling out the red carpet when we have something valuable, like know your own worth. Get up off the ground, girl. Like Oregon, you have, you know, valuable land and, you know, you could ask a little bit more for it. I think there's also, you know, it's an intersection of a lot of different things. There's a lot of different reasons that you might be upset about AI data centers. It could be the environmental impact. It could be that it. is now next door to you and there's a low grade hum all the time and the birds died. You know, like maybe that's part of it. Or also that they are...

getting huge handouts and our government doesn't seem to be able to do anything about it, no matter who you talk to? They're like, well, our hands are tied. It's like, dang, who tied your hands? But also that they're connected to massive, massive companies, a lot of them with names that you will recognize, meta, TikTok, X, for example, that people don't necessarily have a relationship with that they're like, yeah, I'm all, I love everything I see on TikTok. I love the X and Grock is here, you know, the child porn machine. I love that we're spending our time and money on that. Child porn machine. You don't know about this? I'm sorry. That's what it is. Whenever I give Alfia more than two minutes, we always end up on this child porn machine. No, no, no. I have to reel her back and I'm just like, what are you talking about Althea? AI image generation. Okay, sorry. Okay, anyhow. Sorry, it snowballs into these weird places. I'm sorry. Those are the things that it brings up for me. I know, I hear you. I hear you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being so hyperbolic. Well, Alfie, thank you for your passionate breakdown on. Yeah, I believe you. You're welcome, Claudia. I'm always happy to talk about data centers, the foremost issue of our time. You know, here's a deal is that like I'm always down to talk about data centers. The one thing I have not heard is the pro data center. Like I have not heard people coming in and going, my AI, it's so fresh. You know what I mean? Like no one's. Talking about why they love having, oh, Zach, hand up. Go ahead. I'm not here to, like, be pro data center. But one of the big problems in Salem, I think, was how it was presented to the public. Because one of the things the company is pitching is a whole lot of revenue for the tax base, which Salem badly needs. Like, our parks have been really struggling. Like, there's been a legit budget crisis. So if it had been presented not as like, hey, we've been working on this behind closed doors for months in months. you know, beforehand, I think there might be some interest in negotiating something, but the public is so dead set and frustrated and pissed off about it right now. I think it's hard to hear any pro things to it. And they do exist. You know, again, I'm not pushing for it. But like, in terms of bringing revenue to a city that really needs it, like, there might be something there. I don't know, man. That's not a pro. You're seeing business. You're like, the business loves it. I'm like, oh, how about that? No, I mean, the city needs it. Like, to fund stuff that's been getting cuts. So there is an interest in boosting revenue. And the data centers might be a way to do it. But, you know, just the way that this has all gone down has, I mean, there's no. room for it, I don't think, because people are so frustrated. I know. Yeah, the incentive structure is kind of strange, but, you know, because they have many data center developments have gotten such incredible tax deals where they haven't really been contributing to the base. So I think you would find maybe a more balanced argument if there's some reform on that front, which maybe we can, we will find out about, you know, later in the fall when the governor's task force comes back with some recommendations. I guess we'll see the update to data.

centers das was up in September. Can we have like an audio sting for all of your data center stories? I think it deserves fun. Oh, man. Well, you guys, thank you so much for hanging out with me today going through some of these deadlines. Sack, it is a pleasure to have you. It is really nice. We should next time you come on, I promise you, next time you come on, it won't be about wildfires. We'll come up with something else. Awesome. I'm going to start setting fires to really, really hold you to that, Claudia. Oh, my God. Don't do it. Don't do that. Yeah, I control the way. So. Jeez. Just kidding. All right, you guys. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate you. Thanks, Claudia. Thank you.

All right, well, that's all for today here on CityCast Portland. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show, share it with a friend, rate it, leave us a review. And don't forget, you can support this show and get great perks like ad-free listening, invites to member-only events, and sweet, sweet swag at membership.citycast.fm, hit us up. We'll be back tomorrow morning with more from around the city. Until then, see you at Slims.