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4 CapitalPress.com January 29, 2016 California’s Water Project boosts allocations Capital Press SACRAMENTO — With the state’s reservoirs filling rapidly amid recent storms, the State Water Project now predicts it will deliver at least 15 percent of requested sup- plies to its 29 contractors. The state Department of Water Resources announced it expects to deliver 631,115 acre-feet of the nearly 4.2 million acre-feet requested by local agencies, up from the 10 percent of normal deliveries initially allocated in Decem- ber. DWR director Mark Cow- in said in a statement that the allocation is still low despite all the rain and snow because the drought isn’t over. “Our modest increase un- derscores the fact that we still have a critical water shortage that we don’t know when will end,” he said. “One look at our low reservoirs tells us that we need a lot more wet weath- er before summer.” State and federal officials have said California would need 150 percent of normal levels of rain and snow this winter to significantly ease drought conditions. Cali- fornia’s snow water content statewide was 115 percent of normal as of Jan. 26, the data center reported. Nonetheless, the state water allocation could be increased further if storms continue to build rainfall and snowpack totals, officials said. Last winter’s allocation started at 10 percent and was eventually raised to 20 per- cent. Last year’s allocation was the state’s second lowest since 1991, when agricultural cus- tomers got a zero allocation and municipal customers re- ceived 30 percent of requests. In 2014, SWP deliveries were 5 percent for all customers. Contractors haven’t received their full allocations since 2006. After a break this week, more rain and snow is expect- ed in California this weekend, according to the National Weather Service. Above-aver- age precipitation is anticipated for Northern California over the next two weeks, with El Nino still expected to produce above-average rainfall for the entire state over the next three months, the federal Climate Prediction Center reports. The State Water Project serves about 25 million Cali- fornians and just under 1 mil- lion acres of irrigated farm- land, according to the DWR. Die-offs fluster beekeepers on eve of almond blossom Cancellation of grass-fed standard worries farm group USDA’s marketing division drops labeling program By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press PALO CEDRO, Calif. — As almond blossom in Cali- fornia is about to begin, bee- keepers have endured another tough winter in terms of honey bee die-offs, producers and re- searchers say. A variety of factors are be- ing blamed, including signs that the varroa mite believed to cause many of the deaths is de- veloping a resistance to treat- ments against it, University of California-Davis bee expert Elina Nino said. While there’s been no orga- nized survey to discover how widespread the losses have been this year, some beekeep- ers have reported significant losses, and some deaths oc- curred even before the winter began, she said. “They’ve been having is- sues keeping bees alive for most of the year,” said Nino, an extension apiculturist at the UC’s Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Fa- cility. “Especially they’ve had a lot of issues with the varroa mite, maybe more than before. They’ve had to treat more of- ten. … It doesn’t sound great.” Bee breeder Glenda Woo- ten, co-owner of Wooten’s Golden Queens in Palo Cedro, said the operation lost a small percentage of bees this winter but she knows of other bee- keepers who suffered deeper losses. She, too, blamed much of the carnage on varroa mites, a virus-transmitting parasite of honey bees. By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File In this file photo, steaks and other beef products are displayed for sale at a grocery store in McLean, Va. The USDA Agricultural Market- ing Service is dropping its “grass-fed” label program, but the Food Safety Inspection Service is now handling it. “It is a different system and will bear careful watch- ing,” said Ferd Hoefner, the coalition’s policy director. Hoefner said he wor- ries the revocation of AMS grass-fed labeling standards was actually motivated by pressure from large meat companies that want to use the claim without following the protocols. “They’d prefer not to live up to the standard,” he said. The reason that AMS cre- ated its grass-fed standards was due to the lack of a com- mon definition in the live- stock industry, Hoefner said. The division will resur- rect its previous system of verifying producer “grass- fed” claims that don’t adhere to a common understanding of the term, he said. “They’re going back to a multiplicity of meanings, rather than a single mean- ing,” Hoefner said. “It helps the consumer not one iota.” Although the FSIS will check documentation to en- sure grass-fed labels are not misleading, Hoefner is con- cerned that its process won’t be as thorough. Auditors from AMS conducted yearly on-site reviews, while the FSIS approves a label based on documentation only once instead of routinely, he said. Courtesy of Kathy Keatley Garvey/UC-Davis Retired University of California-Davis bee breeder and geneticist Kim Fondrk prepares bees to be deployed in an almond orchard in Dixon, Calif. As the almond blossom is about to begin, beekeepers have had another rough winter in terms of die-offs. “It’s getting that our treat- ments don’t work on the var- roa mite as much as they used to,” Wooten said. “Then when they go back and the hives are dead, they say, ‘What hap- pened? I treated.’ “But it took a lot of food this summer to keep them go- ing” as the drought limited for- age for bees, she said. “We had to supplement feed with sugar syrup a lot this summer.” The shortage of forage af- ter last year’s almond blossom prompted some bee suppliers across the country to decide to pass on this year’s bloom, Wooten said. “A lot of guys aren’t going to come back to California,” she said. “Once they came out here, their hives didn’t do well the rest of the summer for them.” The tighter supply of bees and California’s ever-ex- panding bearing acreage of almonds — it was 870,000 in 2014, according to the USDA — has pushed growers’ polli- nation costs to roughly $200 a hive, Wooten said. That’s up from about $150 per hive three seasons ago. To trim transportation costs, some beekeepers in Florida are shipping bees one- way to California and leaving it up to almond growers to dispose of them when they’re finished. Growers have had no trouble finding beekeepers in California to purchase them, Wooten said. “I know several beekeepers who want to buy those hives,” Wooten said. “They’re a very good product … I’ll bet if you tried to buy some now you’d find out they’re already sold.” Federal judge rejects glyphosate labeling lawsuit Monsanto was accused of misleading claims about herbicide By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit that accused Monsanto of labeling its “Roundup” glyphosate herbi- cide to mislead people about health impacts. Last year, several Los An- geles residents filed a lawsuit alleging that the biotech and pesticide company false- ly claimed the weed-killing chemical “targets an enzyme found in plants but not in peo- ple or pets.” The lawsuit sought class action status that would allow other Roundup buyers to join the litigation, as well as finan- cial compensation for damages and an injunction prohibiting Monsanto from advertising that Roundup doesn’t affect people or animals. According to the plaintiffs, glyphosate disrupts an enzyme known as EPSP synthase, which affects not only plants but also microbes, including those found in the digestive systems of people and animals. Their complaint contended that glyphosate kills gut bacte- ria just as it does weeds, which harms “digestion, metabolism, and vital immune system func- tions” when people eat crops sprayed with the chemical. Monsanto responded that the allegation was an “absurd misinterpretation” of its claim because the enzyme is not produced by human or animal cells and the labels make no mention of “gut bacteria.” The company also said the plaintiff’s accusations about glyphosate’s use in commer- cial food production are irrel- evant to consumers applying the chemical to weeds in their lawn or garden. U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson has agreed with Monsanto’s request to dismiss the lawsuit, ruling that its la- beling claims were approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and thus the complaint is pre-empted by federal regulation. The Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, or FIFRA, aims in part to create uniformity in label- ing and packaging for pesti- cides, so lawsuits that seek to alter such claims based on state false advertising laws are barred, Pregerson said. T. Matthew Phillips, the at- torney representing the plain- tiffs, said he plans to appeal. “The judge never deter- mined whether the label state- ment is true or false,” he said. “Apparently the truth doesn’t matter to the courts nor Mon- santo.” LEGAL PURSUANT TO ORS CHAPTER 87 Notice is hereby given that the following vehicle will be sold, for cash to the highest bidder, on 2/9/2016. The sale will be held at 10:00 am by NORTHWET WATERCRAFT 580 19TH ST SE #B, SALEM, OR 2003 YAMAHA VX CRUISER SKI VIN = YAMA2556E303 Amount due on lien $2,143.57 Reputed owner(s) Universal Auto Sales Brandon Boatwright Legal-5-2-1/#4 LEGAL 5-7/#4x The USDA’s marketing division has dropped its standards for grass-fed meat, which the agency says won’t impact ranchers or consum- ers but has a sustainable farming group worried. The agency’s Agricultur- al Marketing Service recent- ly withdrew its voluntary standards for livestock pro- ducers who want to market their livestock’s meat as grass-fed, which the AMS had verified through an an- nual audit program since 2007. After a routine review, AMS decided the verifi- cation program doesn’t fit within its “statutory man- date” because the division doesn’t actually regulate food labels, which fall under the purview of the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. While AMS does not have the authority to define its own labeling standards for “grass-fed” meat, the di- vision can still verify ranch- ers are following their own grass-fed production stan- dards or those developed by other programs, the agency said. Labeling claims must ultimately be approved by FSIS, which reviews docu- mentation from producers to establish they don’t feed their livestock grain and pro- vide continuous access to pasture during the growing season, said Sam Jones-El- lard, public affairs specialist for AMS. “It is a house-cleaning exercise more than anything else,” he said in an email. The agency’s explanation isn’t particularly reassuring for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which supports grass-fed meat pro- duction and is concerned about the rationale for the change. As of Jan. 25, Lake Oro- ville — the State Water Proj- ect’s main reservoir — was at 39 percent of capacity and 60 percent of average for this time of year, according to the DWR’s California Data Ex- change Center. However, with 10,212 cu- bic feet per second flowing into the lake, the surface is rising. It was at 714.19 feet above sea level on Jan. 25, up from its low point of 649.5 feet above sea level on Dec. 9, according to the DWR. 5-1/#18 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 legal-4-2-4/#4 By TIM HEARDEN