August 28, 2015
CapitalPress.com
11
Washington
West Nile virus makes a comeback
Get your horse
vaccinated, state
veterinarian urges
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
A horse eyes a passerby while standing in a field Aug. 25 in
southwest Washington. State Veterinarian Joe Baker is urging
horse owners to vaccinate their animals against West Nile virus.
This summer, 18 horses in the state have been infected, the most
since 2009.
Washington State Veter-
inarian Joe Baker, a horse
owner and self-described “re-
tired horse doctor,” suspects
one reason for this summer’s
high number of equine West
Nile virus cases is compla-
cency.
“I really, really wish peo-
ple would think twice before
skipping the vaccine,” Baker
said Monday. “This is not a
disease to be taken lightly.”
West Nile virus cases are
up this summer for both hu-
mans and horses. Baker said
he suspects that the drought
has forced virus-carrying
mosquitoes to scout for wa-
ter and that they are finding it
near animals, including hors-
es. “Being survivalists, mos-
quitoes will go to wherever
the moisture is,” he said.
But he also said he thinks
some horse owners have let
their guard down.
Farmworker camp will likely remain open
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
MONITOR, Wash. — A
380-bed migrant farmworker
camp in this small town west of
Wenatchee likely will be kept
going by the state and Chelan
County for another two years.
County and state Depart-
ment of Commerce officials
say they are close to a deal for
the state to pay less than it has
in the past.
The camp has been funded
by the state and operated by the
county in a county park in Mon-
itor since 2001. In May, Janet
Masella, managing director of
the Housing Finance Unit of
the Department of Commerce,
said she informed the county a
couple of years ago that 2015
would be the last year of state
funding since the camp was
never intended to be permanent
and equipment replacement
costs would be looming.
Also in May, the Washing-
ton Growers League in Yakima
opened a new, 200-bed migrant
farmworker housing facility,
called Brender Creek, in the
neighboring town of Cashmere.
There was a question if both
facilities would be needed. It
now appears both facilities
are needed during cherry sea-
son, said Jesse Lane, Growers
League housing program man-
ager.
Brender Creek was full
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Residents of the Monitor, Wash., migrant farmworker camp are seen at late afternoon, Aug. 19. They
pick fruit at area orchards from sun up to early afternoon.
most of June during cherry
harvest, he said. The Monitor
camp was full and turned peo-
ple away, as it has in past years,
said Keith Goehner, a Chelan
County commissioner and a
Dryden pear grower.
The Monitor camp usually
is about half full during pear
and apple harvest, he said.
Brender Creek is about half full
now and probably will be 75
percent full during pears and
apples, Lane said.
The county doesn’t have
the money to fund the Monitor
camp alone but is committed to
farmworker housing, balancing
need and cost, Goehner has said.
The Monitor camp cost
$420,352 to operate in 2014
with $289,850 coming from the
state, $99,915 from nightly per-
bed fees paid by occupants or
growers and $30,587 from other
county sources, Masella said.
The plan now is for the
state to stop paying the coun-
ty $60,000 for camp manage-
ment and $108,000 to lease the
grounds annually, said Cathy
Mulhall, county administrator.
The lease fee made up for the
loss of county revenue because
the portion of the park used by
migrant workers was closed to
public campers, she said.
The plan is for the state to
pay annual operating costs up to
$200,000, minus bed-rental rev-
enues, Mulhall said.
The state offered to give the
county tents, trailers and mobile
kitchen and laundry facilities at
the end of two years, Masella
said. The county has turned that
down so far because it doesn’t
yet know if it will keep the
camp open beyond two years,
Mulhall said.
If growers still want the
camp after two years, the coun-
ty would look to partner with a
group of growers, the Growers
League or a housing authority
to keep the camp open, Goeh-
ner said.
WENATCHEE, Wash. —
Washington State University
has hired Jim McFerson as di-
rector of the university’s Tree
Fruit Research and Extension
Center in Wenatchee.
McFerson begins the job
Aug. 24 and a contract has
been written to avoid conflicts
of interest while he continues
as manager of the Washington
Tree Fruit Research Commis-
sion, also in Wenatchee, for 18
months, said Ron Mittelham-
mer, WSU interim co-provost.
McFerson, 64, has been
hired for his tree fruit knowl-
edge and because “WSU is one
of the nation’s leaders in part-
nering with industry and the
agricultural sector of the econ-
omy,” Mittelhammer said.
“This is an exciting and
unique opportunity to explore
how we can make our pub-
lic-private partnership more
productive and even stronger for
our industry and WSU,” McFer-
son told Capital Press.
Close collaboration between
WSU scientists and the tree fruit
industry is one reason WSU has
been successful in obtaining ex-
ternal funding in recent years,
McFerson said.
“I see this appointment as a
manifestation of a commitment
by both organizations. This isn’t
a common model. We’re trying
to build on what we’ve done,”
he said.
The center needs more staff
and more office, lab and field
work space, he said.
The commission is a state
agency but is governed by
industry members. It collects
about $4 million annually
in assessments from grow-
ers for tree fruit research and
awards about $1.5 million to
$2 million annually in research
grants to WSU.
The Tree Fruit Research
and Extension Center operates
with a $4 million annual bud-
get. It has 50 full-time and 20
seasonal employees and more
than 100 research and exten-
sion projects involving many
aspects of growing, harvest-
ing, storing, grading and pack-
ing tree fruit.
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Washington will increase
cougar hunting in wolf territory
as a sympathetic gesture to com-
munities concerned about the in-
creasing presence of predators,
the Fish and Wildlife Commis-
sion confirmed Friday.
The commission voted 7-1 to
reject a petition submitted by the
Humane Society of the United
States and several conservation
groups challenging the stepped-
up cougar hunts in about 29 per-
cent of the state.
They argued that shooting
cougars to shore up support for
wolf recovery was a rash move
by the commission. The groups
asserted the policy was not sub-
jected to public comment and
likely to backfire by killing old-
er cougars that keep juvenile
males away from livestock and
humans.
Commissioner Jay Kehne,
an Omak resident who works
for one of the petitioning groups,
Conservation Northwest, agreed
on most points. He said it was a
“far stretch” to link cougar hunt-
ing with wolf recovery.
The rest of the commission
stuck with its decision in April
to increase harvest limits in 14
game units that overlap with
wolf packs.
Commissioner
Miranda
Wecker, a Naselle resident,
said Friday that the commis-
sion should defend its right to
“tweak” harvest levels. She said
in an earlier interview that the
change was an empathetic sig-
nal to Eastern Washington res-
idents unhappy with a growing
wolf population. Wolves are a
state-protected species and can’t
be hunted.
Kehne said the public never
got a chance to comment on the
policy. He said public outreach
focused on extending the cougar
hunting season by one month.
“There was no discussion of in-
creasing (harvest) numbers in all
of that process,” he said.
The move will change har-
vest limits statewide by about
25 cougars. Washington De-
partment of Fish and Wildlife
officials say the state has ap-
proximately 3,600 cougars and
163 were harvested in 2014.
A southeast Washington
irrigation district has been
fined $73,530 — more than
its entire annual budget —
for reneging on a pledge to
leave more of the Touchet
River for steelhead in ex-
change for state money for
irrigation pipes, according to
the Washington Department
of Ecology.
The Touchet Eastside
Westside Irrigation District
drew 90 acre-feet of water
it wasn’t entitled to over 21
days in October 2014, said
Keith Stoffel, water resourc-
es manager for DOE’s East-
ern Regional Office.
District board member
Mike Buckley said Thurs-
day the penalty exceeds
the district’s annual budget
and that it will appeal the
fine to the Pollution Control
Hearings Board. The dis-
trict’s annual budget is about
$63,000.
Technical problems with
meters caused the district to
struggle tracking water use,
he said.
“This district is very much
pro saving of water for fish,”
he said. “We absolutely want
to be in compliance.”
The district irrigates 1,972
acres of hay, alfalfa, onions,
corn and other crops in Wal-
la Walla County. The district
has water rights dated 1882,
and it gave up some water in
2010 in exchange for $2.56
million to replace open ca-
nals with pipelines.
The district retained full
or nearly full rights for the
spring and summer. But it
agreed to reduce its with-
drawal from the river in the
fall by more than two-thirds.
“We probably were a little
too generous,” Buckley said.
The district didn’t provide
DOE with metering reports
between 2010 and 2013, St-
offel said. When the district
in early 2015 submitted re-
cords for 2014, DOE discov-
ered the district withdrew too
much water during a three-
week period in October,
sometimes up to 50 percent
more, Stoffel said.
DOE says the district
failed to pay attention to the
limits and that the fine shows
the agency is serious about
protecting fish and other wa-
ter users.
In setting the penalty, the
agency calculated the public
had spent $817 on pipelines
for every acre-foot illegally
diverted.
Buckley said the water-ef-
ficiency project has worked
well for the district, but the
struggle to accurately meter
water has been frustrating.
The district had hoped to
make amends and settle with
DOE by being warned in-
stead of fined.
“We told them, ‘Gosh, it’s
going to break us,’” Buckley
said. “We were asking for
a good hand-slapping and
maybe more help.”
The irrigation district’s
board chairman, Stephen
Ames, said meter readings
remain a problem and ac-
knowledged that the district
failed to track its water use.
Nevertheless, the district
hopes to show the hearings
board it has been meeting its
overall obligation to forgo
about 3,100 acre-feet of wa-
ter each year, he said. “We
made a mistake, and we are
correcting it.”
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years,” Baker said. “I think
that’s playing some role in
what we’re seeing.”
Baker, who spent a decade
early in his career exclusive-
ly treating horses, urged own-
ers to vaccinate their horses
yearly against the virus.
A horse given its first shot
this month will need a second
dose in about four weeks to
bolster the immunity, he said.
Vaccinations given now will
guard a horse through most
of next year’s mosquito sea-
son, Baker said.
A dose of vaccine costs
$25 to $30, he said.
S.E. Washington irrigation
district to fight state fine
Fine worth more
than annual budget
of tiny district
McFerson hired to run Commission sticks with linking
WSU tree fruit center cougar hunts to wolf recovery
By DAN WHEAT
The state Department of
Agriculture has confirmed 18
horses with West Nile virus
so far this summer. WSDA
confirmed only eight cases in
the previous five years com-
bined.
Horse owners may have
forgotten the 41 cases in
2008 and the 73 cases 2009,
Baker said.
None of the horses that
contracted the virus this year
were up to date with vaccina-
tions against the disease, he
said.
“Animal owners tend to
have amnesia after a few
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