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THURSDAY • March 4, 2021
• $1.50
Good day to our valued subscriber Janelle Marx of Cove
Oregon
Every
county to
get 1-shot
vaccine
this week
By GARY A. WARNER
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — Every Oregon
county will receive 100 doses
this week of the new Johnson &
Johnson single-shot COVID-19
vaccine that President Joe Biden
said Tuesday, March 2, is a key
part of vaccinating all Americans
before summer.
“We’re now on track to have
enough vaccine supply for every
adult in America by the end of
May,” Biden said at a press confer-
ence in Washington, D.C.
Biden likened the effort to
ramp up vaccine production to the
efforts of manufacturers to join
together during World War II.
The key to cutting the time-
line for inoculating the public is
the introduction of the Johnson &
Johnson one-shot vaccine. Biden
announced a deal with pharma-
ceutical giant Merck to commit
two of its manufacturing facilities
to making the vaccine. Biden said
he will invoke the Defense Pro-
duction Act to help ready Merck’s
facilities and to ensure it gets the
raw ingredients for making the
vaccine.
Along with increased orders of
the approved two-shot Moderna
and Pfi zer vaccines, enough doses
will be available to suppress the
virus, which has killed more than
515,000 Americans over the past
year, including more than 2,200 in
Oregon.
Scientists with the U.S. Cen-
ters for Disease Control and Pre-
vention have said suppressing the
virus as quickly as possible will
limit the continued mutations of
COVID-19, some of which have
proven to be more contagious and
virulent than the original virus.
In early February, the time-
lines for inoculating all American
adults was as long as early 2022
in some estimates. Recently, the
increase in Moderna and Pfi zer
vaccines shortened estimates to
the end of summer.
Oregon will receive 34,000
doses of the Johnson & Johnson
vaccine. Every county will ini-
tially receive 100 doses to famil-
iarize health offi cials with the vac-
cine, the fi rst new vaccine since
December.
Alex Wittwer/The Observer
A train passes Tuesday, March 2, 2021, off Interstate 84 near Perry, the site of a proposed 250-acre quarry that would ship out 2,000 tons of
material per day. Locals are taking steps to oppose the project.
ROCK FIGHT
Proposal for quarry
at popular scenic
site has locals
expressing alarms
By PHIL WRIGHT
States. The Union County Plan-
ning Commission is holding a
public hearing Monday, March
8, starting at 7 p.m. via telecon-
ference to consider approving the
application.
Moyal said he plans on calling
in and will speak against the
project, which he did back in 2018
the fi rst time the planning com-
mission considered the plan. The
commission at that time deemed
the application to be incomplete.
This time, as Moyal put it,
the application is more robust —
stacking up to about 400 pages.
He said he was not aware the
project had come back for recon-
sideration until Feb. 1 when he
received a notice that the plan-
ning commission would con-
sider the new application plan for
the quarry in seven days. But the
county postponed the meeting
until March 8. That gave Moyal a
month to prepare.
“So I thought, if I’m going to
do anything with that, I’m going
to have to do grassroots orga-
nizing,” he said.
The Observer
U
NION COUNTY —
Locals are lining up
against a proposal for a
massive rock quarry near Perry
and La Grande.
David Moyal of La Grande is
leading the charge to block the
250-plus-acre Ponderosa Quarry
Project that would operate on
more than 4,700 acres where
Robbs Hill Road meets Interstate
84 near the community of Perry.
Locals know Robbs Hill Road
as a place to pick huckleberries,
Moyal said, ride bikes or just go
for a beautiful drive. The quarry
would end that, he said, and the
effect on Perry would be drastic.
“With the dust, and noise and
the pollution — it’s unenviable,”
he said.
But the downside as Moyal
painted it does not stop at Perry.
Interstate 84 from Pendleton
to the Grande Ronde Valley is
special, he said, and designated
as a scenic corridor. Plunking
this large mining site with a
crushing facility and railroad
access near the interstate and in
full view of the entrance to the
Grande Ronde Valley, he said, “is
just an objectionable idea” with
Alex Wittwer/The Observer
The site for the proposed Ponderosa Quarry refl ects in the sunglass-
es of David Moyal on Tuesday, March 2, 2021. Moyal is a vocal oppo-
nent to the project that would sit less than a mile from the community
of Perry. “With the dust, and noise and the pollution — it’s unenvi-
able,” he said.
“absolutely no justifi cation for
doing it beyond profi t.”
Application
makes a comeback
James A. Smejkal of Banks
submitted the application to the
county on Sept. 18, 2020, then
provided a pair of updates before
the end of the year. According
to the site plan application, the
project would create the quarry
approximately 2.5 miles west of
La Grande and about a mile from
Perry and involve rock crushing,
screening, washing and stock-
piling. The project would build
a railroad spur to ship aggre-
gate across the western United
Raising awareness
Moyal drafted fl yers to raise
See, Quarry/Page 5A
See, Vaccine/Page 3A
Lostine Canyon project passes halfway point
By BILL BRADSHAW
A forwarder
unloads logs
to the roadside
Thursday, Feb.
25, 2021, to await
loading onto log
trucks in Lostine
Canyon. The
forwarder brings
the cut logs from
where they were
felled to the
roadside.
Wallowa County Chieftain
LOSTINE CANYON
— Despite past controversy,
hard work and uncertain
weather, the Lostine Cor-
ridor Public Safety Project is
well underway, just past the
halfway point in efforts to
remove hazard and diseased
trees, improve public safety
and improve forest resources
in the area.
“It’ll be completely depen-
dent on what the weather
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa
County Chieftain
INDEX
Business ....... 1B
Classified ...... 4B
Comics .......... 7B
Crossword .... 4B
Dear Abby .... 8B
WEATHER
Horoscope .... 4B
Letter ............. 4A
Lottery........... 3A
Obituaries ..... 3A
Opinion ......... 4A
THURSDAY
Spiritual ........ 6A
Sports ........... 7A
State .............. 8A
Sudoku ......... 7B
Weather ........ 8B
Full forecast on the back of B section
Tonight
Friday
43 LOW
51/36
Mainly clear
Partly sunny
DEFUNDING EOU RADIO
does for us,” said David
Schmidt, owner of Integrated
Biomass Resources in Wal-
lowa, which successfully bid
on the timber harvest portion
of the stewardship contract in
September 2018.
The harvest is slated to
conclude Feb. 28, 2023, he
said, though it could qualify
for an extension.
But the logging must
be done under “winter
See, Canyon/Page 5A
CONTACT US
541-963-3161
Issue 27
3 sections, 24 pages
La Grande, Oregon
Email story ideas
to news@lagrande
observer.com.
More contact info
on Page 4A.
Online at lagrandeobserver.com