12 CapitalPress.com
October 7, 2016
Upstream
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Wasserman said he planned an
“edgy” advertising campaign and re-
minded McLerran that the EPA already
had spent $500,000 developing it.
A conciliatory McLerran asked
Wasserman to work with agriculture,
but emphasized that the agency consid-
ered the matter a “policy issue, and not
a legal issue.”
No EPA lawyer was at the meeting,
a fact that worried the agency’s Puget
Sound intergovernmental coordinator
Lisa Chang, who had raised the issue
of What’s Upstream’s legality.
“It seems to be a vulnerable posi-
tion for EPA to be in to be speaking
to Swinomish counsel without EPA
counsel on hand,” Chang wrote short-
ly before the meeting in an email to
EPA Puget Sound program manager
Angela Bonifaci, who took the notes
of the meeting.
According to Bonifaci’s notes,
Wasserman said he didn’t intend to
reach out to farm groups, but he did
agree to meet with EPA oficials to
discuss the campaign’s content.
Five months later, the tribe and
several environmental groups re-
launched whatsupstream.com, disre-
garding some of EPA’s concerns about
the website’s accuracy and tone, but
delivering on Wasserman’s promise to
wage a hard-hitting campaign to per-
suade state legislators to pass stricter
regulations on agriculture.
Gerald Baron, the director of Save
Family Farming, which formed this
year to counter What’s Upstream,
said the meeting notes show that
McLerran allowed the project to pro-
ceed.
“We interpreted from the docu-
ments that we had earlier that McLer-
ran green-lighted the campaign and
now it’s very clear he green-lighted
the campaign,” Baron said.
The EPA issued a statement say-
ing the records, mostly internal
emails, show the agency tried to alter
the campaign’s tone.
“What these and previously re-
leased documents demonstrate is that
the EPA consistently requested that
the content of the ‘What’s Upstream’
project should be more factual and
collaborative in nature to be consistent
with National Estuary Program goals
and intent,” according to the EPA.
“At all levels of the agency, from
staff to the regional administrator,
EPA expressed concerns — within
the limits of our legal authorities as
we understood them — that the lan-
guage, imagery and goals of the pro-
gram should be adjusted.
“While the tribe did not ultimately
make all of the changes requested by
EPA, they removed billboards and al-
tered some web content.”
The EPA asked the tribe to remove
What’s Upstream billboards in Olym-
pia and Bellingham in late March af-
ter U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas,
said the billboards were “disturbing”
and “malicious” and typiied the
EPA’s antipathy toward farmers.
The tribe later also removed a
“Take Action” link from the website
that allowed people to send form let-
ters to state legislators asking them to
impose mandatory 100-foot buffers
between farm ields and waterways.
The website remains up.
The EPA has said its lawyers de-
termined What’s Upstream was not
engaged in lobbying. The EPA with-
held some emails from disclosure,
citing attorney-client privilege.
The EPA also said in its statement
that the Swinomish tribe is no lon-
ger requesting funds for What’s Up-
stream. The EPA did not respond to a
request for clariication on how much
it spent. Previously released emails
show the tribe planned to spend more
than $655,000.
Efforts to contact Wasserman
were unsuccessful.
The EPA recognized that the cam-
paign, which charged farmers with
being unregulated polluters, would
be controversial. In mid-December
2015, EPA staff members anticipat-
ed McLerran would be asked about
What’s Upstream at a meeting of
state and federal agencies hosted by
the state Department of Ecology.
The staff provided McLerran with
“talking points.” The points includ-
ed the EPA’s position that What’s
Upstream was “consistent with the
goals” of a multi-agency plan to
clean up Puget Sound.
Into 2016, What’s Upstream orga-
nizers continued to develop advertis-
ing to draw attention to their website.
Strategies 360, a Seattle lobbying
irm, developed ads that Chang of the
EPA called “click bait.”
“I have signiicant concerns with
the ads,” Chang wrote in a Jan. 14
email to EPA colleagues. “The im-
ages and text are designed to be
provocative (click bait), to convey a
message in a glance and provide no
supporting context/background.”
Several months later, the tribe was
seeking EPA’s permission to expand
the campaign’s social media presence
when federal lawmakers learned of
the Northwest campaign, causing
EPA to discontinue the project.
Photos by Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Steve Marlega of Northwest Reclaimed Lumber, left, and Danuta Burris of Salem Salvage examine the lumber of a grain elevator in Suver, Ore. Old wood from
barns and other farm buildings is popular among woodworkers and home renovators.
Wood
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However, deconstruction also
reduces the trauma of removing a
structure with which people have
developed a nostalgic connection,
said Michelle Ratcliffe, a landown-
er near Hubbard, Ore., who worked
with Salem Salvage to dismantle a
barn earlier this year.
Ratcliffe thought of her old barn
as “the world’s greatest lawn orna-
ment,” while neighbors considered
it a local attraction.
“People loved the barn,” she said.
“It is really emotional for the people
involved and the community.”
Unfortunately, the leaning struc-
ture had become dangerous. Reno-
vating it would have been prohibi-
tively expensive.
The deconstruction process,
meanwhile, yielded salvageable
wood that can be used as loor-
boards or other elements, as well as
“trinkets and treasures,” such as an
old hay trolley, Ratcliffe said.
“This is a valuable resource and
it doesn’t need to go up in lames,”
she said.
Old windows, boards and other re-
claimed components of deconstructed
buildings are on display at the yard
of Salem Salvage in Salem, Ore. Old
wood from barns and other farm build-
ings is popular among woodworkers
and home renovators.
Terms vary
The terms of each deconstruction
project are different, and in some
cases, buildings have decayed too
much for the process to be worth-
while, said Marlega.
As a rule of thumb, the value of
reclaimed lumber offsets the cost
of deconstruction to the landowner,
who also saves money by having
less waste material to dump at the
landill, he said.
Salem Salvage earns roughly
half its revenues by wholesaling
the lumber to builders and wood-
workers, and the other half by turn-
ing the wood into furniture, Burris
said. The company also restores old
barns as a supplementary seasonal
business.
“I love wood and I love being
creative, so it’s fun for me,” she
said.
It’s critical for the company to
keep track of the lumber’s origin,
she said. “My guys in the yard
know where each piece of wood
came from.”
Such details are valuable for fur-
niture-building companies such as
The Shaker Craftsman in Yakima,
Wash., which buys lumber from Sa-
lem Salvage.
Shaker Craftsman uses old-
school joinery methods to make
Wheat
CONTINUED from Page 1
Farmers and researchers are try-
ing to igure out why so much dam-
age occurred this year.
Some farmers told Sullivan it was
“the best-looking wheat” they’d seen
in years.
“The unfortunate thing is that
prices are not cooperating, and hav-
ing that much wheat on the market
can sometimes have a negative im-
pact,” she said.
At Portland on Monday soft white
wheat traded for $4.50 to $4.76
per bushel. Hard red winter wheat
ranged from $4.02 to $4.83 per bush-
el and dark northern spring wheat
was $5.63 to $5.93 per bushel.
The prices are down signiicantly
Danuta Burris of Salem Salvage, top, stands near a partially dismantled grain el-
evator with Dustin Stephenson, left, Steve Marlega, center, and Darell Braman,
right, of Northwest Reclaimed Wood, as well as their dog, Cooper.
furniture from lumber that comes
entirely from a single building, said
Rhonda Cornwell, the company’s
co-owner.
“They know I need that informa-
tion,” she said. “If you provide that
history, our customers really like
that.”
Cornwell said she buys several
species of reclaimed lumber from
all over the U.S., but relies on Salem
Salvage for old-growth Douglas ir.
Television shows, magazines and
social media devoted to home ren-
ovation have increased the popu-
larity of reclaimed lumber, driving
up both competition and prices, she
said.
“People are wanting it more,”
Cornwell said. “A lot of people are
getting more aware of it.”
Aside from its age, reclaimed
lumber intrigues people due to its
texture.
“The coolest thing about it is
the wood is amazing before you do
anything to it,” said Terry Edwards,
Burris’ husband and co-owner of
Salem Salvage.
Unusual textures often develop
from how a piece of wood is used
over decades, he said.
For instance, the old Pacif-
ic Seed grain elevator contained
wooden chutes that grain passed
through.
Over time, the grain wore away
the softer wood, leaving ripples
similar to those created when water
passes over sand, Edwards said.
Edwards plans to use the wood
from the chutes to build a confer-
ence table for Wilbur-Ellis.
“We’re going to knock their
socks off,” he said.
Another unique texture was
created when generations of cows
stomped on the loor boards of a
barn, causing the softer wood to
wear away faster than the knots,
which then appeared elevated.
Edwards and Burris turned that
lumber into a bench that a wife
gave to her husband, a former cow-
hand.
“It told the story of how the
cows had worked that wood just by
walking on it and gave it a shape
that a machine never could,” Ed-
wards said.
from last October, when soft white
wheat prices ranged from $5.41 to
$5.50 a bushel.
Wheat with low falling number
also brings a lower price. As of Sept.
13, 42 percent of soft white wheat
samples collected by Washington
State Grain Inspection showed a fall-
ing number of 300 or lower.
In Idaho, winter wheat produc-
tion was 66.7 million bushels, up 15
percent from last year. Spring wheat
production was 34.4 million bush-
els, up 13 percent.
In Oregon, winter wheat produc-
tion was 35.5 million bushels, up 3
percent from last year. Spring wheat
production was 4.4 million bushels,
down 5 percent.
Oregon Wheat CEO Blake Rowe
said his organization believes the
NASS numbers for his state are a
little low, and are more likely in the
low to mid-40 million bushel range
for “more of an average yield year.”
Low prices remain a concern, he
said.
There is “nothing I can point to
that will drive prices higher other
than hope,” Rowe said.
Wheat acreage varied across the
region, according to NASS.
Idaho farmers harvested 710,000
acres of winter wheat, the same as
in 2015. Spring wheat dropped 9.2
percent to 395,000 acres.
Winter wheat yields increased
from 82 to 94 bushels per acre and
spring wheat yields rose from 70 to
87 bushels per acre.
The harvested Oregon winter
wheat acreage was 710,000 acres, a
decrease of 3.4 percent. Harvested
spring wheat acreage dropped 6.5
percent 87,000 acres.
Winter wheat yields increased
from 47 to 50 bushels per acre.
Spring wheat yields were 51 bush-
els per acre, up 1 bushel from 2015’s
yields.
Washington farmers harvested
1.67 million winter wheat acres,
up 21.6 percent from 2015. They
harvested 530,000 acres of spring
wheat, a drop of 16.5 percent from
2015.
Winter wheat yields rose from 56
to 78 bushels per acre. Spring wheat
yields were 51 bushels per acre, up
from 36 in 2015.
Nationwide, total wheat produc-
tion increased 12 percent from 2.06
billion bushels in 2015 to 2.3 billion
bushels this year. The average yield
increased from 43.6 to 52.6 bushels
per acre.
Growing popularity
Workers from Northwest Reclaimed
Wood, a deconstruction company, dis-
mantle a grain elevator in Suver, Ore.
Old wood from barns and other farm
buildings is popular among woodwork-
ers and home renovators.