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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.