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FRIDAY, APRIL 28, 2017 VOLUME 90, NUMBER 17 WWW.CAPITALPRESS.COM $2.00 A CHANGE OF Courtesy photo A Gebbers Farms truck with a Gold Digger Apples trailer. Gebbers has bought out much of the bank- rupt packing plant. FORTUNE Two companies buy portions of a bankrupt tree fruit cooperative, saving jobs and helping a small U.S.-Canadian border town 3 Northco LLC, owned by the Gebbers family, purchases Gold Digger Tonasket Apples Inc. for 20 $4.55 million. n River 97 Oka nog a Area in detail OKANOGAN NATIONAL FOREST Capital Press O Turn to GEBBERS, Page 12 Osoyoos Lake Oroville By DAN WHEAT ROVILLE, Wash. — As buds swell for a new tree fruit season, this small town on the U.S.-Canadian border is also getting a new beginning. One of the town’s main employers, Gold Digger Apples Inc., went bankrupt last year, putting 450 seasonal and year-round jobs in jeopar- dy. With a population of about 1,600, Oroville and its economy would have been devastated had the Gold Digger plant shut down permanently. But last December, Northco LLC, which is owned by the Gebbers family of Brewster, purchased the packing lines, some fruit storage and orchards from the bankruptcy court for $4.55 million. Gebbers Farms is one of the largest tree fruit companies in the state. Chelan Fruit Cooperative, also a large tree fruit business, bought a storage shed, known as Plant No. 2, for $900,000. British Columbia Wash. 3 British Columbia Wash. O KAN O G AN OKA NOGAN 97 Gebbers Farms headquarters Omak Twisp 20 Carlton 97 153 N Okanogan Omak Lake COLVILLE CONFEDERATED TRIBES Brewster 5 miles 155 Nespelem er Riv Coulee Dam 97 174 Dan Wheat/Capital Press From left, Cass Gebbers, president and CEO of Gebbers Farms; Welcome Sauer, business development manager; Greg Moser, plant manager and former Gold Digger general manager; and Bob Grandy, risk management and food safety manager, at Gebbers’ Oroville, Wash., plant, formerly Gold Digger Apples. Lake Chelan Alt 97 155 Chelan Chelan Fruit Cooperative 172 purchases Plant 97 No. 2 in Oroville for $900,000. Banks Lake 174 LINCOLN 17 GRANT 2 Alan Kenaga/Capital Press Trump: National monuments a ‘massive federal land grab’ By DARLENE SUPERVILLE and JILL COLVIN Associated Press President Donald Trump WASHINGTON — Slam- ming what he called “a massive federal land grab,” President Donald Trump signed an execu- tive order Wednesday directing his interior secretary to review the designation of dozens of national monuments on federal lands. The action could upend pro- tections put in place in Utah and other states under The Antiqui- ties Act of 1906, which authoriz- es the president to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict how the lands can be used. The order comes as the pres- ident is trying to rack up accom- plishments in his fi rst 100 days. During a signing ceremony at the Department of the interior, Trump said the order would end “another egregious abuse of fed- eral power” and “give that power back to the states and to the peo- ple where it belongs.” Trump accused the previous administration of using the act to “unilaterally put millions of acres of land and water under strict federal control” — a practice he derailed as “a massive federal land grab.” “Somewhere along the way the Act has become a tool of political advocacy rather than public interest,” said Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke ahead of the signing. “And it’s easy to see why designations in some cases are viewed negatively by those local communities that are im- pacted the most.” Former President Barack Obama infuriated Utah Republi- cans when he created the Bears Ears National Monument in late December on more than 1 mil- lion acres of land that’s sacred to Turn to TRUMP, Page 12 Confl ict brewing between oyster farm, Tillamook dairies By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press A federal judge has dis- missed a lawsuit accusing Oregon regulators of allowing dairies to contaminate Tilla- mook Bay to the detriment of an oyster company. However, the underlying confl ict isn’t going away and the case is expected to be re- vived in the near future. Last year, the Hayes Oys- ter Co. fi led a complaint argu- ing the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality insuf- fi ciently regulated fecal coli- form bacteria from dairies in the Tillamook area. Due to the low threshold of allowable bacteria levels in shellfi sh waters, DEQ’s reg- ulatory shortfall has greatly reduced harvests on Hayes’ 600 acres of oyster plats in the bay, the lawsuit said. Oyster harvesting is en- tirely prohibited on about 250 of those acres and closed for extended periods on the re- maining 350 acres, according to the complaint. Courtesy Jesse Hayes Turn to OYSTERS, Page 12 Bags of oysters are pulled from Tillamook Bay before they’re grad- ed and packaged by a worker with the Hayes Oyster Co.