CORVALLIS - Oregon State University will host a Tom McCall Forum on May 5 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the former governor's landmark signing of Senate Bill 100, which created the Land Conservation and Development Commission.

The forum will begin at 7 p.m. at LaSells Stewart Center. It is free and open to the public.

Sponsored by OSU's College of Liberal Arts, the Tom McCall Forum seeks to bring before the public a variety of issues relating to the governor's legacy. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, McCall gained a national reputation for signing into law a series of precedent-setting environmental measures.

Among the more prominent: establishment of the Department of Environmental Quality as part of a comprehensive program to curb air and water pollution, 1969; the passage of the Oregon Bottle Bill, 1971; and the creation of the LCDC, 1973.

The OSU forum will commemorate the LCDC measure and look at the governor's political and environmental legacy, according to Bill Robbins, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts at OSU.

Among the issues that will be discussed are increasing population, urban and suburban sprawl, challenges to Oregon's land-use legislation, efforts to restore endangered anadromous fish in coastal streams, and the appearance of disfigured and deformed fish in the Willamette River.

Panelists for the McCall Forum include Carl Abbott, professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University, and a recognized expert on American cities; William Lang, director of the Center for Columbia River History and a professor of history at PSU, who has written several books on the northern West; and Roberta Ulrich, a journalist who has spent the last 11 years at The Oregonian after a 25-year stint with United Press International.

Moderator of the panel will be William Lunch, an OSU political science professor who serves as political analyst for Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Source: 

Bill Robbins, 541-737-4582

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