Lane County voters did not approve Measure 20-373, the “Lane County Watersheds Bill of Rights,” a ballot initiative that would have established legal rights for local watersheds and recognized residents’ rights to clean water.

While the outcome is disappointing to supporters and environmental advocates, the campaign brought significant attention to concerns about harmful corporate activities that pollute the local water, compromise the health of residents, and put the future of the community at risk.

Proponents of Measure 20-373 campaigned against large-scale industrial activities such as clearcut logging and aerial pesticide spraying that have been harming local ecosystems, polluting the water, and causing health and other harms to local residents for decades. More than 14,000 county residents signed a petition to qualify the measure for this primary election.

Large corporate polluters and industrial interests flexed their financial power to win the election, dramatically outspending the all-volunteer grassroots campaign in support of the measure. Supporters raised roughly $35,000, while opponents raised over $434,000. Opponents included large timber interests, industrial agriculture, the oil and gas lobby, the chemical lobby, and even the Koch brothers, represented by Koch Government Affairs.

“Opponents outspent us at least 12 to 1, and waged a campaign of misinformation unlike anything that our team had ever seen or expected,” said Rob Dickinson, one of the organizers on the campaign. “Opposition messaging was on TV, radio, social media, and in numerous full- size mailers that blanketed the county. They were spreading really egregious false claims about the measure and its impacts on the County. We did our best to counter the fear-mongering, but ultimately, the disinformation campaign carried the day.”

Despite widespread support for enacting stronger legal protections for watersheds and water, the opposition focused on creating fears that the law would lead to unintended consequences. Opposition messaging focused on three main false claims that they distributed broadly within the community including: (1) that neighbors could sue neighbors for harms to the watersheds, (2) that the measure would lead to excessive lawsuits and litigation, and (3) that firefighting activities would face legal risk.

The first false claim, that neighbors would be suing neighbors (over their personal landscaping practices), was baseless since the law only applied to corporations, governments, and business entities, and individuals were at no risk from the law. But this scare tactic was very effective in persuading homeowners to vote no.

The second claim, that there would be excessive lawsuits, was largely speculative and not supported by historical evidence from other environmental laws. The Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act all have citizen-suit provisions and none of them have led to widespread abuse of that provision. Similar arguments were raised by business interests against the Americans With Disabilities Act when it was proposed – that it would lead to widespread litigation and result in major harms to small business – and a Commission on Civil Rights studied the issue and found no evidence to support the claim. And a very similar law in Pittsburgh, PA to the Lane County Watersheds Bill of Rights has been on the books for 16 years and has not resulted in a single lawsuit.

Claims that firefighting activities would be impacted have become common in political campaigns and can be highly effective given the public’s respect for firefighters. In addition to the protections of Measure 20-373 itself, there are at least four levels of additional legal protections that would shield firefighting activities from any legal jeopardy. But it is much harder to counter such claims than it is to make them, so it was effective.

“Opponents were shouting from the rooftops that there would be a ‘tidal wave of lawsuits,’ but in the end all we saw was a ‘tsunami of misinformation,” said Dickinson. “Voters were inundated by these false claims, and unfortunately, a lot of it worked. The opposition also said that no scientific evidence or proof would be required in lawsuits, which is completely untrue. The legal standard under Measure 20-373 would have been the same as in any other legal case.”

“For far too long, large corporations have had the legal right to pollute our water, poison our communities, and increase our climate risk,” says chief petitioner Michelle Holman, a resident of

Lane County who is part of the group that advanced the measure. “Unfortunately, dark money and dirty tactics have allowed corporate power to maintain the status quo. And the people of Lane County and our ecosystems will continue to pay the price for their profits. But the fight isn’t over.”

“We are so incredibly proud of our dedicated team that have spent years working on this initiative, as we are all unpaid volunteers doing this just because it is right.”, says Eron King, another Lane County resident and one of the organizers behind Protect Lane County Watersheds, the community group advancing Measure 20-373. “We may have lost this one election, but we’re not going away. Ultimately, people and planet will prevail.”

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