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12 CapitalPress.com March 10, 2017 Damaged onions will be buried in area landfill ONIONS from Page 1 Onion Country, USA production either collapsed or sustained major damage, according to Stuart Reitz, an Oregon State University Extension crop- ping systems agent in Mal- heur County. Owyhee Produce in Nyssa, Ore., lost four storage sheds, which had a combined capac- ity of about 33 million pounds of onions. The company’s packing facility was damaged but is still operating. The shipper lost 22 million pounds of onions, and gener- al manager Shay Myers esti- mates the company sustained about $10 million in damage to the buildings. He said at least three other shippers sustained the same degree of damage. Demolition of damaged buildings is occurring now and the rebuilding is under- way. Though Owyhee Produce, which had insurance coverage on its buildings, will experi- ence signifi cant fi nancial pain in rebuilding, it will emerge stronger, as will the entire in- dustry, Myers predicted. “It’s forced us to make some changes that, frankly, otherwise we would have tak- en longer to do,” he said. That includes updates in technology in storage sheds and additional automation in packing facilities. “I don’t mean it’s a posi- tive thing that this happened but the end result will be positive for the industry as a whole because it forces up- dates that otherwise wouldn’t have happened,” he said. According to Jay Breiden- bach, a National Weather Service meteorologist, the areas where most of the dam- age occurred were blanketed by unprecedented amounts of snow. No offi cial records exist for snow accumulation in Nyssa, but total accumula- tion in nearby Ontario, Ore., (Onions harvested, billions of pounds, dry summer storage) 1.53 billion: Up 20.3% from 2015 1.66 1.52 1.48 1.43 1.54 1.54 1.42 1.17 Sean Ellis/Capital Press Owhyee Produce General Manager Shay Myers points out the damage done when this large onion storage shed in Nyssa, Ore., collapsed under the weight of snow and ice. About 60 onion storage sheds and packing facilities in the region collapsed this winter, and the industry is trying to recover in time for the 2017 harvest. peaked at 48 inches on Jan 19. “That looks like the most snow they have ever had on the ground,” he said. Big question The big question is whether the rebuilding will be fi nished in time for the 2017 harvest, which will start in earnest in September and wrap up by mid-October. Snake River Produce in Nyssa lost three of its stor- age sheds, three others that it leased and about 25,000 50-pound bags of onions, said general manager Kay Riley. The shipper had good in- surance coverage and should be fi ne fi nancially, Riley said, but a lot of the storage sheds that were lost were owned by individual farmers, some of them retired. It’s unknown how many of those structures had adequate insurance and how many will be rebuilt. “I don’t know if building an onion storage is a good re- tirement scheme or not,” Ri- ley said. He agrees with Myers that the industry will be stronger in the long term because of the modernization that will occur with rebuilding. Short-term worries Moving time? “But in the short-term I’m very ... concerned because I don’t think there’s enough contractors, time, money and insurance claims to get all of this put back together by this fall,” Riley said. Reitz said it’s a major question mark whether there will be enough storage in the region. “People have to be careful about that,” he said. “They have to make sure they have a place to put their crop at the end of the year.” Almost all of the region’s lost onion packing capacity will be replaced by this fall, Myers predicted. “I don’t think there are long-term ramifi cations from a produc- tion standpoint. Where there may still be some is on the storage side.” John Wong, owner of Champion Produce in Parma, Idaho, which lost one storage shed and part of another, said he has heard that most people plan to be rebuilt in time for this year’s harvest. “I think a lot of people in the industry wonder how likely that is to occur,” he said. “But I wouldn’t bet against the American farm- er.” Another unknown is how many Oregon shippers that suffered major damage will move to Idaho. Several industry leaders have told Capital Press in the past year that some shippers are seriously considering re- locating in Idaho because of Oregon’s much higher mini- mum wage. Oregon’s current non-urban rate of $9.50 an hour will increase to $12.50 by 2022. Idaho’s minimum wage is $7.25. Myers said this winter’s ca- tastrophe could well push his company and others to move. Owyhee Produce and several other onion shippers are a few hundred yards from Idaho. The Snake River separates the two states. “There’s a high probabili- ty we’ll be across the river in a new place,” Myers said. He said he knows of at least three other companies that are also seriously considering moving to Idaho. Burying the debris The onions that froze or have debris mixed in with them — worth between $7 million and $10 million — are no longer good and will be buried in area landfi lls. 1.31 1.28 *Preliminary, total production 2006 ’08 ’10 Source: USDA NASS ’12 ’14 2016* Alan Kenaga/Capital Press That’s to protect the re- gion’s reputation for quality, Riley said. The area, which calls itself “Onion Country, USA,” is under a federal mar- keting order and promotes and markets its onions as a region, he said. “We have a good reputation for quality and if somebody sent something out that had problems it would refl ect on all of us,” said Riley, the mar- keting order chairman. In the meantime, the rest of the region’s onion industry, which produces about 25 per- cent of the nation’s big bulb storage onions, wants custom- ers to know plenty of onions are still available. “We still have plenty of onions to ship,” said Grant Kitamura, general manager of Murakami Produce in On- tario, which did not sustain any weather-related damage. “Most of the onion sheds have their normal supply of onions.” Disaster area With the region declared a federal disaster area, many businesses are eligible for low-interest loans, which will help the rebuilding process. Myers and others said Or- egon and Idaho offi cials have done a good job of helping to speed up the recovery by cut- ting through red tape where possible. That includes making ex- ceptions that allowed more landfi lls in the area to accept onions and building debris, and relaxing restrictions that otherwise would have slowed the recovery. For example, buildings usually can’t be burned during demolition but exceptions have been made, Myers said. “The bureaucracy was bypassed as much as possi- ble, where possible, to allow things to happen in the way that they needed to to make sure that we’re in business next year,” he said. Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, a Republican, and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Demo- crat, toured the region on a National Guard Black Hawk helicopter and saw the dam- age fi rst-hand. Oregon farmer Paul Skeen, president of the Malheur County Onion Growers Asso- ciation, was on the helicopter with them and made sure they understood the magnitude of the damage. “There’s no question they saw the devastation because I was pointing it out to them,” he said. “They understand it fuller now. They’re seeing our plight.” Port expects to ‘hit the ground running with a new strategy’ in early 2018 PORT from Page 1 “We want to take the time to study what our future in the container business is,” Leavitt said. The port expects to “hit the ground running with a new strategy” in early 2018 after conferring with shippers and other stakeholders, he said. The undertaking comes at a time of upheaval in the ship- ping industry, adding another layer of diffi culty to the situa- tion, he said. “We have to fi nd our mar- ket niche. It’s changing and it’s more narrow than it’s ever Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press The Port of Portland’s commission voted March 8 to sever ties with ICTSI Oregon, a company that leased its container terminal. The decision opens the way for the port to restart operations at the facility, which has been inactive because of labor confl icts since last year. been,” Leavitt said. Getting the container ter- minal up and running will only be part of the solution for agricultural shippers, he said. Even at full capacity, Ter- minal 6 was only serving about 55-60 percent of the po- tential regional market of im- porters and exporters, Leavitt said. In the future, the port will need to take a comprehensive approach by helping shippers get products to ocean carriers in the Puget Sound as well as restarting its own terminal, he said. One idea could be to send containers to ports in Seattle and Tacoma on barges, though the economic viability of this concept is questionable due to the added travel time in- volved, he said. Terminal 6 also has a rail yard that’s been underutilized, Leavitt said. “We’ve never re- ally consistently activated it.” It’s not an option for the port to operate the terminal because that has proven un- profi table in the past, said Bill Wyatt, the port’s executive director. “We were losing boatloads of money in the course of that,” Wyatt said. “We were subsidizing the operation of Terminal 6 by selling land and we were running out of land.” This unsustainable posi- tion led the port to lease its container terminal to ICTSI for 25 years in 2011. While the arrangement initially seemed productive, a dispute broke out in 2012 over whether the ILWU had jurisdiction over plugging in and unplugging refrigerated containers. Since then, ICTSI has been locked in a labor battle with the longshoremen’s union that has involved several lawsuits. The confl ict resulted in slowed productivity that prompted ocean carriers to abandon Terminal 6 in 2015 and 2016. “It could take a few years before there is light at the end of the litigation tunnel,” said Leavitt. Courtesy of Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Snake River pack captured by a remote camera photo taken Feb. 1 in Hells Canyon National Recreation Area. Wildlife offi cials say the state has eight breeding pair and has moved into a new phase of wolf management. Wolf plan does not allow a general hunting season WOLVES from Page 1 Wild spokesman, said the group worries the policy will be used to kill wolves. He said more deer are lost to poachers than to wolves. ODFW spokesman Rick Hargrave said the wolf plan does not allow a general hunt- ing season on wolves. “This policy differentiates Oregon from other states like Idaho and Montana which currently allow general season hunt- ing of wolves,” he said in an email. Hargrave said ODFW has no immediate plans to pro- pose controlled take of any wolves in Oregon. The fi ve- year update to the Wolf Man- agement Plan will provide clarity regarding this issue. In a prepared statement, ODFW wolf biologist Russ Morgan said the state will continue to prioritize “non-le- thal solutions to wolf con- fl icts.” “Take (killing) of wolves can only be considered as a management response in very specifi c situations and there are no plans for controlled take at this time,” Morgan said in the statement. Oregon’s wolf population has grown steadily in the de- cade since the fi rst wolves mi- grated from Idaho into North- east Oregon. The state had a minimum of 110 wolves at the end of 2015, and the 2016 count, due to be reported at the April ODFW Commission meeting, is expected to top that number. ODFW offi cials have de- scribed Oregon’s wolf popu- lation growth as a biological success story, and the state commission took wolves off the state endangered species list in 2015. They remain pro- tected under the federal En- dangered Species Act in areas west of U.S. highways 395, 78 and 95.
