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CapitalPress.com
January 22, 2016
Wet end to hot year bodes well for Washington
Mild winter still
in the forecast
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
legal-4-2-4/#4
tion report released Jan. 13
confirmed 2015 was Wash-
ington’s warmest in the past
121 years. Temperatures were
particularly high in February,
March, May, June, July and
October.
The year ended, however,
with the fourth wettest De-
cember on record, while tem-
peratures were near normal.
The precipitation started
snowpacks, which hardly ma-
terialized last winter. Basin
snowpacks throughout the
state ranged between 125 and
75 percent of normal, accord-
ing to the Natural Resources
and Conservation Service.
Washington’s
overall
snowpack was only 27 per-
cent of normal in mid-March
last year when Gov. Jay Inslee
declared a drought emergency
in parts of the state. Inslee de-
clared a statewide emergency
in May as conditions wors-
ened.
For months, climatolo-
gists have expected El Nino, a
warming of the Pacific Ocean,
to produce a warm and dry
Northwest winter, raising
concerns that Washington
will suffer a second straight
drought year.
attributed to factors other than
climate change, but he added
that baseline temperatures are
rising.
“It wasn’t due to global
warming, but it’s going to be
what global warming feels
like,” he said. “We are warm-
ing, and that’s going to accel-
erate.”
Oregon also set a year-
long heat record, with an av-
erage temperature of 50.4, 3.9
degrees above the 20th centu-
ry average.
Idaho and California had
their second-hottest years on
record.
The average temperature
in the continental United
States was the second-warm-
est on record, surpassed only
by 2012.
The U.S. had its third-wet-
test year ever. The total
amount of the country in
drought shrank during the
year by 10 percent, according
to NOAA.
Nurseries growing new Washington apple
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
QUINCY, Wash. — A sea
of 2-foot-tall trees, brown
leaves still hanging on, ride
above a blanket of snow.
They look normal enough
but it’s rootstock growth,
in a field owned by Gold
Crown Nursery. In another
month they will be cut off
six to eight inches above the
ground, just above single
buds that were grafted into
the stems last August.
In spring, the buds will
burst forth, growing new
nursery trees through sum-
mer. They’ll be ready for
digging in November, placed
in cold storage through win-
ter and shipped for planting
in the spring of 2017.
What makes these trees
special are that they will be
the first commercial planting
of Cosmic Crisp, the first ap-
ple variety bred in Washing-
ton to be exclusively grown
by any and all Washington
growers that the industry
hopes will become the new
“Washington” apple. The
first apples will be harvested
and sold in stores in the fall
of 2020.
Initially known by its
breeding name, WA 38, the
apple was bred from En-
terprise and Honeycrisp in
1997 by Bruce Barritt, who
was then the apple breeder at
Washington State University
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
A sea of rootstock trees stands in a blanket of snow near Quincy,
Wash. They will become Cosmic Crisp apple trees this year.
Tree Fruit Research and Ex-
tension Center in Wenatchee.
Cosmic Crisp has a sweet,
tangy flavor and ranks high
in taste, texture and beauty
and has many qualities of
the popular Honeycrisp with
fewer horticultural challeng-
es, says Kate Evans, who
succeeded Barritt after his
retirement.
Twenty-four
growers
were chosen by drawing to
plant the first 300,000 to
400,000 commercial Cos-
mic Crisp trees in 2017. But
propagation is going well
enough that 600,000 will
be ready so a second set of
24 growers also will receive
trees, said Bill Howell, man-
aging director of Northwest
Nursery Improvement Insti-
tute, Prosser. NNII is man-
aging tree production by
seven nurseries. Growers are
evenly split into two classi-
fications: smaller growers
wanting 3,000 to 5,000 trees
and larger ones receiving up
to 20,000.
In 2018, nurseries will
have enough Cosmic Crisp
that the drawing won’t be
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
This bud was grafted into this
half-inch-diameter rootstock last
August and will grow into a new
Cosmic Crisp apple tree this
year after the rootstock above it
is cut off in February.
used and any Washington
grower will be able to buy
them at nurseries.
“We have orders for well
over 1 million trees for
2018 and orders are coming
now pretty aggressively for
2019,” said Lynnell Brandt,
president of Proprietary Va-
riety Management in Yakima
that is coordinating the com-
mercialization of Cosmic
Crisp for WSU.
Aerial applicator’s license suspension unwarranted, judge says
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
An administrative law
judge has found that Oregon’s
farm regulators weren’t justi-
fied in yanking the license of
an aerial pesticide applicator
accused of endangering the
public.
In September 2015, the Or-
egon Department of Agricul-
ture suspended the pesticide
applicator’s license of Apple-
bee Aviation of Banks, Ore.,
and fined the company $1,100
for allegedly spraying chemi-
cals in a negligent manner.
Over the following months,
the agency revoked the com-
pany’s license for five years
and increased the penalties
to $160,000 — with another
$20,000 in fines tacked on for
its owner, Mike Applebee —
as it learned the company re-
peatedly conducted spray op-
erations even after its license
was invalidated.
However, the “preponder-
ance of the evidence” doesn’t
substantiate ODA’s allegation
that Applebee Aviation posed
a “serious danger to the public
health or safety,” as is required
to suspend a license without a
hearing, according to Senior
Administrative Law Judge
Monica Whitaker of Oregon’s
Office of Administrative Hear-
ings.
Emergency license suspen-
sions are an “extreme remedy,”
but ODA’s findings of miscon-
duct — such as workers han-
dling pesticides without proper
protective equipment — were
largely based on the claims
of only one former employee,
Darryl Ivy, Whitaker said.
The administrative law
judge said the agency’s heavy
reliance on Ivy’s accusations
was “inherently problematic.”
Ivy quit his job with Ap-
plebee Aviation in April 2015
and claimed he was exposed to
herbicide spraying that caused
mouth blisters and a swollen
airway, triggering an investi-
gation by ODA and the Ore-
gon Occupational Safety and
Health Division.
While an ODA investiga-
tor cited photos taken by Ivy
to support the agency’s con-
clusions, “the photos were not
authenticated” and Ivy wasn’t
called as a witness to the evi-
dence, Whitaker said.
For example, photos of
residue on a truck windshield,
which ODA accepted to be a
pesticide spray mixture could
have been “soap residue” be-
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cause the substance was never
tested, she said.
The former employee’s
“mere assertions” aren’t suf-
ficient to establish the al-
legations against Applebee
Aviation without further veri-
fication, Whitaker said.
Whitaker has issued an or-
der proposing that the original
license suspension and civil
penalty against the compa-
ny be reversed, though those
sanctions remain in place until
ODA makes a final decision.
At this point, the adminis-
trative law judge’s proposed
order is a recommendation to
the ODA. The agency’s direc-
tor, Katy Coba, will issue the
final order, which Applebee
Aviation can challenge.
“As we speak, we’re mull-
ing over the options,” said
Bruce Pokarney, communica-
tions director for ODA, noting
that the agency can’t com-
ment on the proposed order’s
findings.
LEGAL
SAGE Fact #125
Port of Morrow tenants have access to ample
clean, clear water from seven wells in the
Boardman Industrial Park, and from the
City of Boardman’s municipal water system.
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LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 98
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold, for
cash to the highest bidder, on 2/1/
2016. The sale will be held at
10:00am by
B.C. TOWING
1834 BEACH AVE NE SALEM, OR
2015 JEEP RENEGADE UT
VIN = ZACCJBATIFPB48417
Amount due on lien $4,545.00
Reputed owner(s)
LILLY A WEBER
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Plants wither during Washington’s record-warm 2015. The state’s climatologist sees an improved
water outlook in 2016.
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Washington’s year of re-
cord-breaking heat was capped
by a wet and only slightly
warm December that should
help make the 2016 snow-
pack much improved over last
winter, even if El Nino props
up temperatures for the rest of
the season, State Climatologist
Nick Bond says.
“Overall, it looks like
we’re going to be in pretty
decent shape in regard to the
water supply,” Bond said. “In
light of the kind of warm and
probably wet conditions we’ll
have, (the snowpack) prob-
ably will be a little less than
usual, but three times what we
had last year.”
A National Oceanic and
Atmospheric
Administra-
In some El Nino years,
however, winter storms move
in as usual, Bond said. “There
are plenty of exceptions and
this may be one of those.”
Bond said he still expects a
mild winter, but the precipita-
tion so far has a built cushion.
“We can all appreciate De-
cember. It put us in a good
way,” he said.
Washington’s
average
temperature in 2015 was 50
degrees, 3.9 degrees warmer
than the 20th century average,
according to NOAA’s Nation-
al Centers for Environmental
Information.
Bond said a warm strip
of water off the West Coast,
nicknamed “The Blob,” influ-
enced temperatures. The Blob
is now cooling, he said.
“It’s definitely moderated.
I’m OK with saying The Blob
is more or less out of the pic-
ture,” Bond said.
Bond said Washington’s
record-breaking year can be
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PUBLIC NOTICE
The Oregon Soil and Water
Conservation
Commission
(SWCC) will hold its regular
quarterly
meeting
on
Thursday, February 11, 2016,
from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
and Friday, February 12, 2016,
from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
at the Willow Lake Water
Pollution Control Facility
located at 5915 Windsor
Island Road N., Keizer, OR
97303. The meeting agenda
covers SWCC reports, advisor
reports, Soil and Water
Conservation District pro-
grams
and
funding,
Agriculture Water Quality
Management
Program
updates, and other agenda
items.
The Oregon Department of
Agriculture complies with the
Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA). If you need special
accommodations to partici-
pate in this meeting, please
contact Sandi Hiatt at (503)
986-4704, at least 72 hours
prior to the meeting.
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