October 27, 2017
CapitalPress.com
Idaho rancher’s family files
wrongful death lawsuit
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Several family members
of an Idaho rancher shot to
death by law enforcement
officers in 2015 have filed a
wrongful death lawsuit over
the killing.
Rancher Jack Yantis had
been called to euthanize a
bull that had been hit by a car
when he was shot 12 times
by two deputies from the Ad-
ams County Sheriff’s Office.
Last year, the Idaho Attor-
ney General’s Office decided
against pursuing criminal
charges against the two offi-
cers, Cody Roland and Bri-
an Wood, citing conflicting
witness accounts about the
incident.
After his bull was injured
by a car on the evening of
Nov. 1, 2015, Yantis arrived
at the scene with a rifle after
being notified of the collision
by police dispatchers.
Yantis’ wife, Donna, and
nephew, Rowdy Paradis,
claim the rancher was pre-
paring to shoot the bull in the
head when one of the depu-
ties grabbed him and then
both deputies opened fire.
According to their ac-
count, Yantis was pointing
his rifle in a direction that
didn’t endanger anyone.
The two deputies, on the
other hand, said the trajec-
tory of his rifle threatened
the safety of people near the
scene, which prompted them
to issue commands such as,
“Whoa, whoa, stop, hang
on,” and, “We’re not doing
this.”
According to their ver-
sion, Yantis swung and fired
his gun, causing them to dis-
charge their weapons.
While there were other
witnesses at the scene, Ida-
ho’s Attorney General found
their accounts “provide little,
if any, clarity regarding the
interaction.”
Donna Yantis and her
two daughters Sarah and
Lauretta have joined with
Paradis to file a federal
complaint against Adams
County, its sheriff’s office,
Sheriff Ryan Zollman, the
two deputies and unnamed
people involved in the in-
cident.
Their lawsuit alleges
livestock are routinely eu-
thanized with firearms by
their owners after being in-
jured by vehicles in Idaho,
so the situation encountered
by the deputies was “highly
foreseeable” and it would
be unreasonable to fear for
their safety.
According to the alle-
gations, both deputies were
hired by Adams County de-
spite being unfit to serve in
law enforcement.
Weak La Nina portends winter of
weather uncertainty in California
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — Much
of California could be in for
a drier winter if the building
consensus calling for a weak
La Nina pattern turns out to be
accurate, a National Weather
Service meteorologist says.
The federal Climate Predic-
tion Center issued its winter
outlook on Oct. 19, noting that
oceanic and atmospheric con-
ditions appear to favor wet-
ter-than-average conditions
across the northern U.S. and
drier weather across the South.
For California, similar
conditions early last fall led to
one of the wettest seasons on
record. But since 1950, only
10 percent of weak La Nina
winters have been wet, said
Cindy Matthews, an NWS
forecaster in Sacramento.
Sixty percent of such win-
ters turned out dry, including
2011-12, which was the first of
five years of drought.
“The main point here is,
just like last year, past events
do not guarantee a future out-
come,” Matthews said in an
email.
In a La Nina, a mixture of
atmospheric and ocean sur-
face temperatures tends to
steer storms toward the Pacific
Northwest.
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
Capital Press
An Alaska state official
who contended with the En-
vironmental Protection Agen-
cy as the manager of a city in
the Aleutian Islands has been
picked to be the agency’s new
Northwest administrator.
The selection of Alas-
ka commerce director Chris
Hladick, announced Oct. 19
by EPA Administrator Scott
Pruitt, was welcomed by the
head of a Washington farm
group critical of the previous
regional administrator, Den-
nis McLerran.
“What little we’ve heard
about (Hladick) is that he’s
a competent administrator,”
said Gerald Baron, director
of Save Family Farming. “We
have big hopes given the very
troubled relationship between
the farm community as a
whole and the Dennis McLer-
ran era.”
Hladick will oversee Se-
attle-based Region 10, which
takes in Washington, Oregon,
Idaho, Alaska and about 270
tribes. Michelle Pirzadeh, who
was deputy regional admin-
istrator under McLerran, has
been acting director since Jan-
uary.
Farm groups in Washington
were critical of the EPA under
the Obama administration, ac-
cusing it of overreaching and
favoring environmental orga-
nizations. Outrage over What’s
Calif. Dept. of Water Resources
Michelle Mead, a National Weather Service warning coordinator,
examines computer models at the State-Federal Flood Operations
Center in Sacramento. The weather service sees an equal chance
of drier- or wetter-than-normal conditions in northern and central
California as weak La Nina conditions take hold in the Pacific Ocean.
In such cases, the pros-
pects for a wet winter tend to
be better in far Northern Cal-
ifornia, where Shasta Lake
and Lake Oroville anchor the
federal Central Valley Project
and State Water Project, re-
spectively, than in the rest of
the state. And they improve
if the ocean surface tempera-
tures that drive the direction
of storms revert to neutral, as
they did last year.
As it is, the CPC’s long-
range precipitation outlook
through April shows a bet-
ter-than-average chance of a
wet winter from Salem, Ore.,
and Boise, Idaho, northward,
and a likely drier-than-normal
winter from Bakersfield, Ca-
lif., and Las Vegas south.
17 th Annual
WILLAMETTE VALLEY
3 Big Days!
Tues • Wed • Thurs
NOVEMBER
14 • 15 • 16
4 Big Buildings!
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
Members of the ATF’s National Response Team work their way
through rubble at the Underwood Fruit and Warehouse Co. in
Bingen, Wash., on Oct. 22. A fire four days earlier destroyed a pear
packing, storage and shipping building at the company. ATF was
called in due to the size and complexity of the fire. A cause and
damage estimate are not yet available.
The fire was reported about
5:45 a.m. on Oct. 18. A large
pear packing room, packed
fruit storage space and ship-
ping facilities were destroyed,
said Don Gibson, president of
Mount Adams Orchard Corp.
in Yakima, Wash., and man-
ager of Underwood Fruit and
Warehouse LLC. The packing
house is part of Mount Adams
Orchard.
The packing company was
at peak inventory with picked
fruit, but Gibson said last
week the company is insured
and growers’ losses will be
covered.
Underwood
primarily
packs pears, apples and cher-
ries for growers in the Colum-
bia River Gorge of Washing-
ton and Oregon. The company
is 100 years old this year.
EPA’s new NW boss butted heads with agency
By DON JENKINS
Elsewhere, Matthews said
people can “get the dart board
out” as winter outlooks show
equal chances of above-, near-
or below-normal precipitation
throughout much of the West.
Much of California re-
ceived its first significant
rainfall Oct. 19-20, but most
areas are off to a slower than
normal start to the water year
and much slower than in 2016,
when Northern California had
one of its wettest Octobers
ever.
But there’s more water in
reservoirs now than a year ago,
as Shasta Lake is at 72 percent
of capacity compared to 59
percent at this point in 2016,
according to the state Depart-
ment of Water Resources.
That abundance comes
after most areas finished the
2016-17 water year on Sept.
30 well above their normal
precipitation. For instance,
Redding sopped up 47.7 inch-
es of rain for the season, easi-
ly eclipsing its annual average
of 34.6 inches, according to
the National Weather Service.
By TIM HEARDEN
Federal ATF takes over the
investigation of fruit company fire
The federal Bureau of Al-
cohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives has taken over in-
vestigation of the Oct. 18 fire
that destroyed a pear packing
and shipping building at Un-
derwood Fruit and Warehouse
Co. in Bingen, Wash.
ATF spokesman Jason
Chudy of the bureau’s Seattle
field office said a national re-
sponse team of a couple dozen
fire investigators is involved.
Chudy said the work is not a
criminal investigation at this
point, but the Bingen Fire
Department, a volunteer de-
partment, requested help due
to the size and complexity of
the fire.
“It was much larger than
Bingen was able to do on
their own,” Chudy said. “It
was a very large fire, there
was a lot of equipment (in-
volved) and it consumed the
entire facility.”
Chudy did not know the
exact square footage of the
destroyed building. A cause
and damage estimate have not
yet been released.
7
Upstream, an
E PA - f u n d -
ed
lobbying
campaign by
a Puget Sound
tribe to restrict
farming near
Chris
water in Wash-
Hladick
ington, deep-
ened the rift.
Washington Farm Bureau
director of government rela-
tions Tom Davis said the or-
ganization has not met Hlad-
ick, but is optimistic that “his
appointment is in line with the
fair and balanced approach
Secretary Pruitt has brought to
EPA.”
“All that agriculture is ask-
ing for is a fair shake when it
comes to regulatory activi-
ties,” he said.
In 2012, Hladick signed a
consent decree with the EPA
on behalf of Unalaska, a city
of 4,400 people and the setting
for the Discovery Channel’s
reality show, “The Deadliest
Catch.” The city admitted no
wrongdoing, but agreed to pay
a $340,000 fine and pledge to
upgrade a sewer plant to settle
a federal lawsuit alleging the
city had polluted the bay.
At the time, Hladick issued
a written statement saying the
improved plant will have ben-
efits for years, but added that
utility rates would probably
double, and that “there is no
evidence of actual damage to
the environment or diminish-
ment of any threatened species
by our current waste water
treatment system.”
The Bristol Bay Times
reported the city spent more
than $500,000 in legal fees,
but avoided a threatened fine
by the EPA of more than $150
million.
“Chris Hladick knows first-
hand the overbearing nature of
the previous administration’s
EPA, helping lead a challenge
against them while serving as
city manager of Unalaska,”
U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Alas-
ka, said in a written statement.
“I’m optimistic Chris can be-
gin rebuilding a level of trust
and confidence in the EPA that
was steadily eroded over the
previous eight years.”
Hladick was appointed
commissioner of the Depart-
ment of Commerce, Commu-
nity and Economic Develop-
ment in early 2015. He had
been city manager of Unalas-
ka, the state’s 11th largest city,
for 14 years.
Previously, he had been
city manager of Dillingham,
Alaska, for seven years and
before that worked in the pub-
lic works department for Ga-
len, Alaska, according to the
Bristol Bay Times.
U.S. Sen Dan Sullivan,
R-Alaska, said in a writ-
ten statement that the state’s
all-Republican congressional
delegation had been “relent-
lessly pushing to have an Alas-
kan” appointed Region 10 ad-
ministrator.
CORE Pesticide Training for credits
CPR/AED Training (Register online)
Forklift Certification Classes (Register online)
Antique Farm Equipment Show
with over 70 pieces on display
180+ Vendors and Dozens of New
Exhibitors! Another 20,000 sq. ft. of
indoor heated displays!
Back by Popular Demand: Wed. Evening
Dine Around Oregon. Tickets available online.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14
Meetings: Oregon Farm Bureau Luncheon (by invitation)
Training: CORE No registration required - 2 to 4* credit hours (Repeated Thursday)
• 10:30-11:30AM • Andony Melathopoulos; Going Soft on Pollinators and Hard on Pests (1 CORE)
This session will have an easy-to-apply set of rules to help you judge how to apply pesticides with
minimal impact to pollinators.
• Lunch Break
• 11:30-12:30PM • Janet Fultus; Worker Protection; Standards Update (1 CORE)
• 1:30-3:30PM • Andy Steinkamp; Practical Sprayer Calibration (2 CORE)
Covers the importance of sprayer calibration, sprayer calibration methods and dry bait calibration
methods. It will cover step by step e xamples using basic math. There will be a best practices discussion
and time for questions. Does not cover specific controller brands and operations.
Meetings:
Training:
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15
Pennington Seed Growers Breakfast (by invitation)
• 10:30- 12:15PM • CPR/AED/ Standard First Aid Training (advanced registration required):
CPR: Participants will review and practice emergency procedures that prepare responders to act in
breathing and cardiac related emergency situations with adults and children (ages ~ 12 +); AED –
Automated External Defibrillator: Training will offer device tech info, preparation, and operation.
Participants will be trained on how to use the AED for adult and pediatric victims.
• 1:30-2:45PM • Standard First Aid: Participants will review skills to recognize and respond to
sudden illness and emergencies. Training will culminate with skills practice and testing. Certification
awarded upon completion. $30 for CPR/AED/First Aid Training; $15 for First Aid Training only
• 1:00 – 3:00PM Forklift Certification Training: Includes classroom, workbook, written knowledge
check verification with scheduled practical driving evaluation immediately following. Proof of
successful completion of course, knowledge check and practical driving evaluation provided within 7
days. Program and equipment provided/donated by Pape Material Handling and OVERTON Safety
Training. Class size limited to 50 people. Advanced registration required online at
www.wvaexpo.com.This class is free with paid admission. Class size limited to 50 people.
Dine Around Oregon - Back by popular demand!
• 5:00pm – 8:00pm: $12 Admission in advance online at www.wvaexpo.com (or at the door
while tickets last.) Ticketed progressive, hearty dinner event featuring food and products from
Oregon. 4-6 serving stations throughout the Expo. Enjoy Oregon beef, lamb and cheese, produce,
wine and brew!
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16
Training: CORE training – Repeated from Tuesday, November 15th, 2016
• 10:30-12:30PM • Andy Steinkamp; Practical Sprayer Calibration (2 CORE)
Covers the importance of sprayer calibration, sprayer calibration methods and dry bait calibration
methods. It will cover step by step e xamples using basic math. There will be a best practices
discussion and time for questions. Does not cover specific controller brands and operations.
Lunch Break
• 11:30-12:30PM • Janet Fultus; Worker Protection; Standards Update (1 CORE)
• 2:30-3:30PM • Andony Melathopoulos; Going Soft on Pollinators and Hard on Pests (1 CORE)
This session will have an easy-to-apply set of rules to help you judge how to apply pesticides with
minimal impact to pollinators.
A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR 2017 WILLAMETTE VALLEY AG EXPO SPONSORS:
• Ag Chains Plus, Partial Sponsor, Dine Around Oregon
• Ag West Supply, Partial Sponsor, Dine Around Oregon
• Boshart Trucking, Full Sponsor, FFA Transportation to the event
• Citizens Bank, Full Sponsor, Welcome Bags
• Coastal Farm, Sponsor, Dine Around Oregon
• Complete Wireless, Full Sponsor, Complimentary coffee for vendors
• Crop Production Services, Partial Sponsor, Dine Around Oregon
• Doerfler Farms, Sponsor, FFA Transportation to the event
• Farmland Tractor, Full Sponsor, Antique Farm Equipment display
• GK Machine, Partial Sponsor, Dine Around Oregon
• Les Schwab Tires, Ag Scholarship Sponsor
• Linn-Benton Tractor, Partial Sponsor, Dine Around Oregon
• NW 94 Sales, Partial Sponsor, Dine Around Oregon
• Northwest Farm Credit Service, Partial Sponsor, Dine Around Oregon
• Pacific Health & Safety Sponsor, First Aid/CPR/AED Training
• Overton Safety Training, Full Sponsor, Forklift Training
• Pape Machinery, Partial Sponsor, Dine Around Oregon
• Peterson Machinery, Full Sponsor, Dine Around Oregon Presenting Sponsor
• Sunbelt Rentals, Full Sponsor, Sunbelt Arena
• Oregonians for Food & Shelter, Full Sponsor, CORE Training
• And thank you to the following Dine Around Oregon sponsors:
• Reed Anderson Ranches • Manning Farms • NORPAC Foods
• Oregon Dairy Women • Oregon Cattleman’s Association
Linn County Fair & Expo Center
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3700 Knox Butte Rd.
I-5 @ Exit 234 • Albany, OR
CORE Pesticide
Training
www.wvaexpo.com
(20 Minutes South of Salem)
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