For the second third issue in a row, The NW Examiner is taking a hard look [PDF] at ESCO, which produces steel in a neighborhood better known for boutiques and expensive housing. (ESCO has also long operated a dump for its foundry waste on Sauvie Island).

The Examiner hired freelancer Paul Koberstein, a veteran environmental reporter who has written for The Oregonian, WW and other publications, to examine ESCO’s emissions, which have been a major point of contention in the neighborhood. This month’s issue also includes a back-and-forth between Koberstein and ESCO’s environmental manager, Carter Webb, over last month’s piece.

Full disclosure, WW’s office is in NW Portland, so we breathe the neighborhood’s often not-very-pleasant air.

Read The Examiner’s September and October reports on Esco here.

Illustration courtesy of Esco

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Putting your money under your mattress may seem more attractive after reading a report OSPIRG released last week on all the ways Oregon banks nickel and dime consumers.

Here are two alarming facts the consumer protection group discovered in a survey of 10 banks and eight credit unions offering “low cost” checking accounts in Portland, Eugene and Ashland:

An overdraft of $20 paid back in two weeks amounts to a loan with an Annual Percentage Rate of 3889%, more than 7 times higher than what was common in the payday lending industry before Oregon established effective regulations in that market.

and

A typical customer who incurs a modest number of the different fees outlined above could pay an average of $166.24 in fees every year simply to maintain a regular checking account. This ranged from an average of $132.95/year for the credit unions surveyed to an average of $184.24/year for the banks surveyed.

“If you think you’ve got a free or low cost checking account, you might be surprised to learn that you are subject to a long list of poorly disclosed, sometimes outright deceptive fees and policies that can really add up,” says OSPIRG Consumer Advocate Matt Wallace, who wrote the report.

OSPIRG is working with U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) to support federal legislation that would establish a new agency to protect consumers against predatory financial practices.

“We need a full time cop on the beat to protect consumers in a dangerous financial world,” Wallace says. ” The proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency being debated in Congress right now could not only protect consumers from the kinds of tricks and traps outlined in [OSPIRG's] report, it would have the authority and flexibility to protect consumers from the tricks and traps the big banks haven’t invented yet.”

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We gathered in the airy, chi-chi industrial environs of Leftbank Café—before Stumptown’s first-ever Producers Panel—for a coffee tasting. Hundreds of us did, and it occurred to me that even 10 years ago this would have been unthinkable, or at least absurd: fodder for a Seinfeld episode.

“Coffee and what?”
“Just coffee.”
“Just coffee?”
“It was a coffee tasting. We. Tasted. Coffee.”
“Coffee. Huh.”

Except, of course, in the intervening years, long past Starbucks’ original overcooked push into the bourgeois consciousness, coffee has become something akin to wine or beer, with its own tasting vocabulary, its own politics, its own host of wonky geeks with thoughts on everything from climate to drying process to proper roasting temp, and its own vehemently opinionated (if not always informed) populace of drinkers. Thus, it makes sense that a literally standing-room-only crowd, bursting into the wings of a cavernous space, is here to hear a panel consisting of exporters and growers of coffee from Kenya, Columbia, and Costa Rica. It was their coffee we’d been tasting, before the panel.

The contingents from each of the three countries described a somewhat similar narrative of their recent years, though the timelines and the nomenclature varied among the countries. Used to be, the coffee growers had no control over the price of their product, were not rewarded for quality (indeed, they had no idea how to assess it), and had the majority of their potential income stripped away by agents and middle-men and price-fixers. However, through newer, long-term, direct-trade relationships immediately linking gourmet coffee roasters and growers (called “2nd window” in Kenya, Las Mingas in Colombia), growers are not only learning how better to make their product—thus serving Stumptown’s need for consistency—but are also able to charge higher prices based on this quality, and so also gain access to healthcare, send their kids to university, etc. Which is pretty good.

Although, if this sounds utopian, it isn’t; only a small portion of growers are hooked up with gourmet coffee roasters with policies as nice as Stumptown’s. The rest are still stuck with subsistence-level farming subject to the whims of auctioneers and the NY commodities market. In this particular crowd, though, what we saw were some growers whose livelihoods had changed remarkably in the past decade or so, and so it was a largely feel-good affair, punctuated by deafeningly loud bursts of applause from the largely left-leaning people who show up to things like coffee symposium. In particular, when Costa Rican coffee farmer Juan Ramon Alvarado described the environmental benefits of his own process of machine-washing, which included near-full reuse of coffee byproducts for fields and livestock, one audience member was so excited she clapped after almost every sentence he spoke. Rightly so, really—it was kind of impressive.

I suppose as Stumptown’s popularity has reached hysterical levels nationwide, one gets tired of hearing nice things about their business practices—at some points, the goodwill and fellow-feeling almost cloyed, it’s true—but until anybody hears anything different, we in the press are stuck being largely congratulatory. Sorry, people.

A couple of the more fun moments in the panel came from the competing pride of the different growers in the panel. When Ngatia Kattyoge, a farmer from the slopes of Mt. Kenya, described his coffee as the “best in the world”—a statement this particular Kenyan-coffee-loving reporter is fairly sympathetic to—Francisco Mena, an exporter from Costa Rica, couldn’t contain his shit-eating grin. Likewise, when Alvarado enthusiastically extolled the ecological benefits of machine washing, Alejandro Cadena of Colombia was quick to jump in to explain how economies of scale make this process impossible to implement for most of Columbia’s small growers.

At one point during the audience Q&A, it was also interesting to hear the different countries’ takes on the burdens or benefits of organic certification—which is often unthinkingly, and fallaciously, taken by greenie coffee drinkers as a certification of quality. The Kenyans flat-out said it was impossible where they are, because no known organic pesticide can stop coffee berry disease, which causes a crop loss of precisely 100%, while for the Colombian producers the problem was the exorbitant cost levied for organic certification, which they have been working to pass on to the consumers rather than having it penalize the growers.

In any case, the one thing I kept wondering during Stumptown’s symposium was: at what point will we truly have a wine parallel? That is, as the growers become more connected to the market and more associated with the coffee’s quality in the mininds of the consumer, at what point does the grower’s reputation start to rival that of the coffee roastery? Or, heck, when are we going to see Kenyan-or Colombian-owned roasteries (with complete and exclusive control of their own coffee berries) cropping up in downtown Portland or Los Angeles or New York? It’s a long way coming, if it ever does, but no matter how good Stumptown is in both practice and execution, it’s hard not to root for it—even though it would be Stumptown’s own nice-kid actions that helped set it in motion.

Photo courtesy of Stumptown Coffee. We’ll update this post with photos from the event once they are available.

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One of the biggest players in the current battle over two 2009 income tax hikes is the Oregon Business Association. Some members of the moderate business group’s board pushed for it to oppose the permanent tax increases that appear headed for referral to the January ballot.

But sources familiar with the internal OBA debate say that Intel, Oregon’s largest private sector employer and an OBA member, pushed hard for the group to remain neutral (The OBA ultimately did stay neutral.)

It’s interesting then, to see two of the latest contributors to Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes, the group that opposes the permanent tax hikes. Those contributors to OAJKT are two men who used to run Intel’s Oregon operations: Frank Gill ($4,000) and Keith Thomson ($3,000).

OAJKT, which has raised more than $1.2 million and spent about $900,000, turned in more than twice the number of required signatures to refer each measure. The signatures have not yet been certified. But when that happens, tax proponents will be allowed to file their political action committee and we’ll begin tracking the sources of their money.

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It’s time for another installment in what is becoming a semi-regular feature: Where in the world is Portland’s mayor this week?

New York City is today’s answer. Mayor Sam Adams left Wednesday morning (in the middle of City Council’s weekly session no less) and returns to work Friday.

Adams is in the Big Apple to talk about “economic development,” according to his calendar. But he’s also there to talk to officials at one business in particular. A prize for the best guess. Please respond in the comments below.

P.S. Said “prize” may include the knowledge you were right and/or public praise.

Photo by Mike Perrault

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BOLI responded Aug. 6 with a warning letter mailed to McMenamins, and then closed the case. (To conduct an investigation, the state agency would need more than one complaint, a spokesman for BOLI says.)

Lisa Kinsley, general manager of human resources for McMenamins, has not returned a phone call from last week or this morning. The employee who complained also has not returned phone calls, but a second source at the pub says the manager who was allegedly changing workers’ time sheets oversaw Edgefield’s Black Rabbit House, a pub.

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Two years later, Rebecca Roth, 50, remains behind bars in Guadalajara. But Roth and members of her family say she has been unjustly jailed — that she was never connected to the Ponzi scheme that Mexican authorities pinned to her. A Canadian man, the architect of the scheme, is in federal prison in the United States. He, too, says Roth — who moved to Mexico several years before the arrest — had nothing to do with the fraud. Roth did work for him, but her work was confined to taking care of his household matters, they say.

Meantime, a Canadian woman who was also in prison with Roth, facing similar charges, was released under pressure from Canadian officials. As a result, Roth’s family continues to try to fight for Roth’s release. And now they’re employing a particularly Portland product to help them in their campaign.

Captured by Porches Brewing Co., which is owned by Roth’s niece Suzanne Goldsmith, has created a new beer in Roth’s honor. Goldsmith writes:

The beer that I am dedicating to Aunt Bec is called “Rebecca’s Divine Wit.”  It is a lovely, sparkling summer wheat ale made with coriander and Valencia orange peel. We want her to know that we are thinking of her and raising a pint in her honor. We want people to know that she is a very important person to us – and we plan to continue talking about her from here on out – and whatever press I can gather for her cause using our brewing company, I will do it.

According to Captured by Porches’ website, the new beer will be released soon. However, samples are available now at Kruger’s Farms and the Shangri La.

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What’s Longoria Parker doing building green malls in Portland? It turns out Klein knows her from working as a TV actor, and Klein knows Larsen from their time at the University of Southern California and their partnership in a green remodeling firm, and figured the two shared some interests. And there you have it.

The team haven’t yet broken ground on any project—they’ve just moved into their offices—but several people I spoke to, including Ten 01 owner Adam Berger, expressed great confidence in Larsen’s ability as a developer.

The firm’s launch party last night at Leftbank, the preachiest building in town, was an odd affair. Parker was there with her business partners. So were a posse of models with severely straight hair, a quintet of ice seals, a viking, a very anxious news team from Channel 7 (which channel 7 I was unable to ascertain) and Mayor Sam Adams, who told the assembled crowd, “The Greenville Project doesn’t just bring ideas, they bring money. And we need money!”

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The Widmer Brothers are not the only businessmen in Portland criticizing a rule from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that will require costly upgrades to Portland’s drinking-water system.

Some of the city’s commercial launderers — the businesses that clean the tablecloths, napkins, hotel-room sheets, uniforms, bath towels and bar towels that Portlanders and their visitors use daily — are also upset about LT2. That’s the EPA rule that City Council will discuss Wednesday morning as part of its consideration of a resolution to begin plans on a filtration plant that will keep Portland in compliance with federal drinking-water guidelines.

Dan Bourbonais, general manager of Alsco-American Linen in Portland, says his chief concern is cost. His company uses 1.8 million to 2 million gallons of water a month at a cost of $30,000 (including sewer service) and he doesn’t want to see Portland’s water rates continue to climb. For one thing, the restaurants that depend on his services are already facing increased costs elsewhere.

Bourbonais has joined several other businesses and environmental groups in signing a letter [PDF] to City Council opposing the plan.

We’ll see tomorrow what effect it has. Wednesday’s debate is likely to rehash a lot of the same topics from 2002, when a citizen’s taskforce recommended a filtration plant like the one now under consideration again and business leaders lashed out at city officials because of cost. “Frankly, in a city that is trying to speak to being more business friendly, this approach is the exact opposite,” Fred Sawyers, manager of the Hilton Portland and Executive Tower, said in December 2002, according to The Oregonian. “Why is it we feel we need to go out and buy this Cadillac?”

Photo from the Portland Water Bureau

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Check out what happens two minutes into this video below of Mayor Sam Adams at the Oregon Brewers Festival.

(Photo above of Adams taken from our Best of Portland party last week)

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