I love numbers. Mrs. Laquedem sometimes says that they dance across my fingertips, like trained fleas. One number in the Oregonian's editorial on Measure 37 struck me. Possibly taking its cue from the American Land Institute, the Oregonian said that from 1950 to 1974, the Willamette Valley "lost a third of its farmland, nearly a million acres."
How big is a million acres? One square mile is 640 acres, so 1000 square miles is 640,000 acres. A million acres is a little more than 1500 square miles.
Where did the million acres come from? The United States Geological Survey says that the Willamette Basin (the area drained by the Willamette River, sometimes incorrectly called the Willamette River watershed) includes about 12,000 square miles. The Willamette Basin includes more than the Willamette Valley, as the river drains not just its eponymous valley but also the Tualatin Valley, the west side of the Cascades from about Three Sisters northward, and the east side of the Coast Ranges from about Eugene northward. The USGS says that in 1991 (when the report I cite was written), about 70% of the basin was forested, 22% was farmed, and 8% was in other uses, mainly urban uses.
Eight percent of 12,000 square miles is about 1000 square miles. That is, the USGS thought that in 1991 the entire Willamette Basin (not just the valley itself) had only about 1000 square miles of urban uses. Yet the Oregonian blandly reports that from 1950 to 1974 the valley lost 1500 square miles of farmland, with the implication being that it fell victim to urbanization and suburban sprawl.
National Geographic says that the Willamette Valley proper is about 5800 square miles in area. Did 1500 square miles of it really become urbanized from 1950 to 1974? (That's an area more than three times the size of Multnomah County, and about 40% larger than Rhode Island.) If the Oregonian's numbers are correct, then about 30% of the entire valley (not just the farmland that the Oregonian discusses) stopped being farmed between 1950 and 1974.
I'd like to think that the Whimperer did its own analysis before publishing this editorial, but the numbers it quotes suggest that it didn't.