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.