FRIDAY, APRIL 28, 2017
VOLUME 90, NUMBER 17
WWW.CAPITALPRESS.COM
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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.