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8 CapitalPress.com March 24, 2017 Washington Little Goose Cause of Edwall grain elevator collapse unknown navigation hire companies to salvage but nothing more extensive, Electricity, industry what they can, Gordon said. Vowels said. lock repairs track affected He expected cleanup to begin A railroad track was dam- by March 20. aged by the collapse and delayed Gordon said farmer-mem- will be repaired, said Gus bers of the company are not Melonas, spokesman for the impacted by the collapse. The BNSF Railway. The mainline another week EDWALL, Wash. — The company owns the wheat, he and siding were not affected By MATTHEW WEAVER Capital Press By MATTHEW WEAVER Capital Press Reopening of the naviga- tion lock at Little Goose Dam has been pushed back for an additional week. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers evaluated remaining lock work under contract at the Snake River dam, located near Starbuck, Wash. The corps is making critical repairs, routine maintenance and other im- provements during an extended lock closure on the Snake and Columbia river system, orig- inally slated to last 14 weeks, from Dec. 12 through March 20. All other locks in the sys- tem were set to reopen March 20 as previously scheduled, ac- cording to the corps. The corps decided the best course of action to reduce risk and bring the lock back to oper- ational capability was to award a new contract for the com- pletion of the remaining work, according to the corps website. The corps awarded the new contract March 10 to Knight Construction & Supply Inc., of Deer Park, Wash. The new contractor reassessed the navi- gation lock’s maintenance and repair status and estimated the remaining work required to return the lock to service will delay reopening the lock until 11:59 p.m. April 2. The corps previously an- nounced reopening of the Little Goose lock, originally slated for March 20, would be de- layed by at least a week due to weather, on-site efficiency and unforeseen crack repair requirements on the south nav- igation lock gate. “As long they get it right,” said Randy Olstad, general manager of Columbia Grain in Clarkston, Wash. Olstad had hoped to be shipping grain by March 27, but he said a delay of an addi- tional week won’t hinder busi- ness too much. “A week – no one likes it, but we’ll deal with it,” he said. Any longer than that, Ol- stad said, and his company would have to make some ad- justments. It would also affect expectations for wheat getting to market, he said. Olstad praised the corps for keeping industry members in- formed of the process. “They have a big job ahead of them, they saw some unfore- seen things coming,” he said. “I wish they would have seen it earlier, but you can’t cry over spilled milk. We just need to get it done, get it done right and get on with our business.” insurer for a Eastern Washing- ton grain company is investi- gating why a grain elevator collapsed. The collapse occurred about 1 a.m. March 15 in Ed- wall, Wash. “We really don’t know why,” said Brian Gordon, CEO of Ritzville Warehouse Co. “We’re just happy it happened when no one was around and no one got hurt.” Edwall fire personnel and utility authorities responded, said Lincoln County Sheriff Wade Magers. Magers said the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office is Matthew Weaver/Capital Press A crew works March 16 on a collapsed grain elevator at the Ritzville Warehouse Co. site in Edwall, Wash. The elevator held 170,000 to 175,000 bushels of wheat, CEO Brian Gordon said. not investigating the collapse. He has no reason to suspect a person did something to the elevator, he told the Capital Press, saying the cause is like- ly to be a structural issue, such as metal fatigue, or caused by weather. Gordon doesn’t yet have a total estimated cost of the damages. The company has turned the matter over to its insur- ance company, which will said. The elevator held 170,000 to 175,000 bushels of wheat and was “basically full,” Gor- don said. Portland prices for wheat are $4.75 to $4.80 per bushel, he said. Gordon hopes to re- build the elevator, although the company doesn’t have enough details yet to say for sure, he said. Avista Utilities has shut off power to the site, said David Vowels, communications spe- cialist for the company. The towns of Edwall and Reardan may have experi- enced a flickering of lights, and are in service. The rail- road is determining owner- ship of the affected track. Ritzville Warehouse has hired a security company to keep people from entering the site, Gordon said. Magers said the security company is strictly to keep people from getting too close. A second grain bin is poten- tially compromised, he said. “We want to make sure everybody’s safe,” he said. “Thank God that happened when it did, in the morning hours. If that would have been a different time, we could have had a tragedy.” WAFLA moves H-2A workers to PNW by air By DAN WHEAT Capital Press OLYMPIA — The farm labor association WAFLA has transported H-2A-visa foreign guestworkers from Mexico to the Pacific Northwest by air for the first time. A group of 18 workers re- cruited by WAFLA flew from Durango to Tijuana, Mexico, on March 12 where they re- ceived their visas at the U.S. Consulate and spent the night. The next day they crossed the border on a charter bus and went to San Diego Internation- al Airport where they boarded a flight to Seattle. They flew to Boise and then were on a char- ter bus for 30 miles to reach a farm in Treasure Valley where they are working. WAFLA, formerly the Washington Farm Labor Asso- ciation, has been transporting workers from Mexico to the Northwest by bus for six years. “This is another way in which WAFLA is making the legal worker program work better for employers in the Pa- Courtesy of WAFLA Eighteen farmworkers pose at Durango, Mexico airport on March 12, before boarding a flight to Tijua- na. They received H-2A foreign guestworker visas there before flying to Seattle and then Boise to work at a Treasure Valley farm. They were the first H-2A workers flown to the Pacific Northwest by WAFLA instead of coming by bus. cific Northwest,” the associa- tion said in a statement. Flights cut travel time from five days to two, are safer than buses, the cost is comparable and workers prefer it, the state- ment said. The flights were a test run for plans to transport up to 100 workers per day by air starting in May, said George Zanatta, WAFLA chief operating offi- cer. While the trip went well it’s still being analyzed to deter- mine how heavy to go forward with flights, he said. “The challenge is the size of the group and locations and co- ordinating everything. You may have 75 workers and buses for 52. We have to bus at the border and the arrival point,” Zanatta said. There are a lot of variables so it might make more sense to fly some groups from and to some locations more than others, he said. “It’s a learning curve. We save on food and lodging ex- penses of busing people the whole way but air will actual- ly cost a little more. The sav- ings is on time,” he said. WAFLA has an April 21 deadline for growers to place orders for workers for this year. Summer and fall har- vests and harvest preparations are peak times. WAFLA brought 10,527 workers from Mexico in 2016 and will have brought 3,000 in so far this year by the end of March, Dan Fazio, WAF- LA director, has said. He expects to reach 12,000 by year’s end. Zanatta said much less than half will come by air. The prospect of using air- lines was talked about at WA- FLA’s Workforce Summit in Ellensburg, Jan. 26, where a representative of Volaris Air- lines spoke. Senate’s ‘use it or lose it’ water bill heads to House Lawmaker: Let’s encourage conservation By DON JENKINS Capital Press OLYMPIA — The House next week may take up a bill to ensure conservation doesn’t erode agricultural water rights. Senate Bill 5010 would allow irrigation districts and farmers to retain their full wa- ter rights, even if they cut back on use for an extended period. The bill’s prime sponsor, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Judy Warnick, said farmers should be encour- aged to save water, without fear of having to relinquish a portion of their water rights. “There’s kind of a feeling, if you don’t use it, you’re go- ing to lose it,” she said during a hearing this session on the bill. Under certain circumstanc- es, the Department of Ecolo- gy can withdraw water rights that haven’t been used for five straight years. The law cites nearly two dozen exceptions. For exam- ple, farmers who irrigate less because of drought, an abun- dance of rainfall or crop rota- tions aren’t in danger of losing water rights. SB 5010 would add conser- vation to the list. Washington Farm Bureau associate direc- tor of governmental relations Evan Sheffels said it leaves more water in streams by re- moving an incentive to occa- sionally plant water-intensive crops to keep a water right. “It will result in better out- comes all around,” he said. Environmental groups and tribes don’t embrace that ar- gument. The Republican-led Senate passed the bill, though most Democrats voted no. “Agriculture already has over 70 percent of the wa- ter rights. This would lead to hoarding of water,” said Sen. John McCoy, D-Tulalip Mike Schwisow, a lobbyist for an association of irriga- tion districts, said conserva- tion-minded irrigators don’t want to lose water rights need- 12-4/#17 ed in dry years or to expand acreage. He said he didn’t know of any irrigation district that has lost a water right for not using it, but he called Warnick’s bill a “common-sense protection.” “The prudent way of doing business is to be protective of your water rights,” he said. Environmental groups and tribes say unused water rights should be temporarily or per- manently placed in a state-run trust for other beneficial uses. “The tribe is concerned that it’s inefficient and wasteful to allow users to monopolize water rights when they’re not actually needing them or using them,” Muckleshoot Indian Tribe attorney Ann Tweedy told the Senate Agriculture Committee. Sheffels said the trust is a good program, if a farmer can afford a good lawyer. “You don’t want to do anything with your water right without a good counsel, and that costs money,” he said. The bill does not have the backing of Ecology. The de- partment’s water resources manager, Dave Christensen, said the current exceptions and the trust allow farmers to conserve water without losing water rights. “Our central concern is that this bill would reduce water availability for new landown- ers.” he said. Christensen said that there are too many water rights for Ecology to monitor wheth- er they are being fully used. The issue, however, can come up when a water-right holder seeks to change the place and purpose of the right. “That’s when that wa- ter-right holder might find out some of their water right is relinquished if they can’t doc- ument they’ve been using it,” he said. SB 5010 has been referred to the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Commit- tee.