Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Day: March 18, 2006”

Stay of execution

March 18, 2006

Wonder if this will get as much attention?

A few months back, Idaho Senator Larry Craig inserted language into a bill which aimed to de-fund the Fish Passage Center at Portland, it being the organization that actually counts the number of fish (of certain types) passing through the Columbia River system. Craig said the small agency duplicated efforts elsewhere; advocates said that was not true, and the real issue was that the FPC was collecting data inconvenient to Craig's position on salmon recovery. Most directly, the Center has been paid for by the Bonneville Power Administration.

That story was the last most Northwesterners heard of the situation. Quietly, however, Indian tribes and environmental groups challenged the action legally, and on Friday their efforts paid off. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the measure into which Craig inserted his de-funding language was not actually a bill which was made into law - that technically, it amounted to a statement of intent and nothing more. And ordered the Center re-funded.

Next move?

A growth in Hillsboro

March 18, 2006

Oregon officials have been debating for some time whether they will practically be able - as Seattle has started to do - to get in on the next generation of high-tech activity: biotechnology. The signs have looked good, but the results haven't been there.

Till Friday. That was when the California biotech firm Genentech said it would set up a substantial shop at Hillsboro, eventually hiring 200 to 300 people to staff it. Specifically, the company "announced its decision to acquire land in Hillsboro, Oregon for the construction and development of a biotherapeutic fill/finish manufacturing facility, which is expected to be licensed and operational in 2010."

Those jobs, which likely will pay well, are significant, but much the smaller part of the importance of this. (Though Fortune mangazine has named Genetech number 1 on its list of best American companies to work for.) The Beaverton-Hillsoboro area already has many of the components you'd need to make biotech go: It has Intel, loads of other tech development, and major medial research and provision organizations (notably the Oregon Health & Sciences University) in the immediate vicinity, and all the big-city resources that could be needed right over the mountain in Portland.

Now, with the arrival of a major corporate biotech presence - and Genetech is a major operator in the field - the engine may have what it needed to start turning.