No news is good news when it comes to casino development, you say? Perhaps, if you’re talking about the mega-casino proposed by the Cowlitz Tribe for the Interstate 5 interchange near La Center. For months now, we haven’t heard much about that project.
Good. The multiple reasons to oppose that casino (impacts that would lower the local quality of life) have been documented in detail and assailed in dozens of Columbian editorials. So we’ll take no news from the casino promoters as good news for now. Call it a silver lining in the massive cloud known as the Great Recession.
Elsewhere in the Northwest, though, there are plenty of reasons to be alarmed about the profusion of gambling and its worrisome growth. In one case, that growth extends into one of the most cherished areas in this corner of the country. We’ll let U.S. Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., open the discussion in a pull-no-punches style: “A gambling casino does not belong in any of America’s uniquely spectacular natural landscapes, and it is utterly absurd that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has recommended siting a casino in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge.” We couldn’t agree more, with the reminder that it’s also Washington’s Columbia River Gorge.
Wu’s rage is rooted in a ruling earlier this month by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, which released its final environmental impact statement that identified an industrial park in the Gorge town of Cascade Locks as its preferred site for a casino. The proposal by the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs calls for a 90,000-square-foot casino, a 241-room hotel and a 26,000-square-foot convention center. There’s no denying the economic boost this could provide to Cascade Locks, but there’s also no denying there must be umpteen other places to build a casino outside the Gorge, one of this region’s most beautiful natural treasures. This casino dispute is a matter of place and propriety, and the incursion of gambling into the Gorge would violate the marriage of those two concepts.
