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May 18, 2018 CapitalPress.com PUD extends cryptocurrency power moratorium By DAN WHEAT Capital Press WENATCHEE, Wash. — A moratorium on electrical power applications for cryp- tocurrency miners has been extended to Aug. 6 by Chelan County Public Utility District commissioners. After listening to miners asking for service and to cus- tomers worried about impacts on rates and power supplies for large amounts of power re- quired by miners, commission- ers said more time is needed to study and develop the PUD’s response to new load demand. About 100 people attended the May 14 public hearing and more than two dozen spoke. Commissioners im- posed the moratorium on March 19. They will hold another public hearing on Aug. 6. The PUD has learned that the defi- nition for high-density power loads it put in place last year is not adequate to address the impacts of a rush of applications for power for cryptocurrency mining, said Steve Wright, the PUD’s gen- eral manager. Lindsey Mohns, PUD cus- tomer utilities business man- ager, outlined work so far to understand the impacts of cryptocurrency requests that could more than double the PUD’s retail electri- cal load. There are ar- eas where the PUD has trans- mission ca- pacity to serve high-density loads and areas where it does not. Staff proposed creating a specific cryptocur- rency power rate to address risks of miners’ mobility, bit- coin price swings and other issues. The PUD will continue discussing how to define such a rate class in June. On April 16, PUD commis- sioners unanimously adopted fees of up to $6,150 for unau- thorized electrical use in resi- dential areas and $11,400 in commercial or light industrial areas after staff reported dis- covering an average of two to three small rogue crypto min- ers per day. The PUD produces an av- erage peak of 1,100 to 1,500 megawatts of power annually from Rocky Reach and Rock Island dams. Local load aver- ages 200 megawatts. Currently, 22 crypto miners use 9 megawatts of an approve 13.5 megawatts, PUD officials have said. There were 19 crypto ap- plications for 16.3 more mega- watts before the moratorium was imposed on March 19. Looking three years out, the PUD estimates 220 mega- watts of crypto demand. Yakima hotel converts to farmworker housing By DAN WHEAT Capital Press YAKIMA, Wash. — A 200-room hotel in Yakima is being turned into season- al farmworker housing with beds for 800 workers. FairBridge Inn & Suites, 1507 N. First St., was pur- chased by First Street Hold- ings LLC on Dec. 28 for $3.2 million, according to the Yaki- ma County Assessor’s Office. Valicoff Fruit Co. of Wap- ato is the managing partner of First Street Holdings, which is renovating the facility and plans to open it June 1 for sea- sonal farmworkers, said Dan Fazio, director of WAFLA, formerly the Washington Farm Labor Association, in Lacey. WAFLA will assist in manage- ment of the facility. “Farmers will have access to a first-class facility for their workers at less than it will cost for them to build it themselves. We’re pleased to be part of it,” Fazio told Capital Press. “We were happy to work with WAFLA and other inves- tors to put this together. Farm- ers need workers and workers need a place to live,” said Rob Valicoff, president of Valicoff Fruit, in a news release. He could not be reached for further comment. Fazio said First Street Holdings secured a license from the state Department of Health May 8 to house 800 seasonal farmworkers at the facility. He said the city of Ya- kima tabled establishment of a new zoning category to allow seasonal farmworker housing but that the use complies with zoning. WAFLA FairBridge Inn & Suites in Yakima, Wash., is being turned into housing for up to 800 seasonal farmworkers. Joan Davenport, city com- munity development director, said Fazio is correct on both counts. She said the city coun- cil on May 1 rejected the plan- ning commission’s recommen- dation on a zoning category and wants to do its own study. First Street Investments registered with the Secre- tary of State as a corporation on May 7 and lists Fazio as the registered agent and one of four corporate governors along with Mohamed Dobashi, WAFLA’s CEO; Robert Vali- coff; and Brett Valicoff. Fazio said the listing is in error and that he is neither an agent nor one of the governors. He would not say if WAFLA is a partner in First Street Invest- ments. WAFLA has contributed “substantially” to the renova- tions in exchange for a $12 per night rate for H-2A-visa for- eign agricultural guestworkers for WAFLA members and the first right of refusal to all 800 beds, Fazio said. Other users will pay $14 per night, he said. Growers interested in secur- ing beds may contact David Guzman, WAFLA Kennewick manager, at dguzman@wafla. org or (509) 440-2826. WAFLA so far has hired 14,100 H-2A workers from Mexico, mostly for tree fruit growers in Washington and some in Oregon and will sur- pass 15,000 this season, Fazio said. It is one of the largest H-2A providers in the nation. Valicoff Fruit hires H-2A workers through WAFLA. Two queen beds per room will be replaced by four bunk beds per room. Each room has two sinks, a shower, toilet, microwave, small refrigerator and television, Fazio said. A kitchen is being renovat- ed, a cafeteria added, a restau- rant turned into a sundries store and there will be laundry facilities and a Mexican bank branch, he said. Additionally, there’s a bar, two pools and a ballroom that seats 420 people, he said. The cafeteria will provide breakfast and dinner and sack lunches for workers for $12.26 per day that will be deducted from their pay, which is al- lowed under the federal H-2A program, he said. “Management is going to place everything the workers need right at the site, and of course being in the city makes it more convenient for workers to access other services,” said Fazio. Borton Fruit of Yakima bought the hotel in October and sold it to First Street Hold- ings, he said. Borton, Valicoff, the Mar- tinez family connected with G&G Orchards in Cowiche, and a hop grower began talking to the city earlier this year about the need for farm- worker housing and talked about using hotels. WAFLA started construc- tion of its 166-bed Riverview Meadows seasonal farmwork- er housing in Okanogan in mid-March and hopes to open it Sept. 1. It recently received notice of award of a $3 million state grant to help it build another 166-bed facility in Chelan to open in spring of 2019. Bee colonies remain stable despite steep annual losses By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press Capital Press File A bee pollinates blueberry flow- ers. While beekeepers have experienced severe annual colony losses for more than a decade, they’ve managed to keep total hive numbers stable, the USDA has found. was probably caused by mar- ket factors, such as the avail- ability of alternative sweeten- ers. “Despite the elevation in honeybee colony loss rates since 2006, there is little evi- ments necessary to fight var- roa mites has mounted, Van- derpool said. “Now, it’s at a point of almost continuous treatments or manipulations.” Ag consultant stays busy with H-2A work By BRAD CARLSON Capital Press Jennifer Uranga has been helping farmers sign up guestworkers under the federal H-2A visa program since before the recent surge in demand. She kept books and over- saw safety for an onion and hop grower near Parma, Idaho, for several years. One day, her boss asked her to figure out how to bring guestworkers to the farm through H-2A. She did, and a couple of major fruit grow- ers in the area subsequently asked her to do the same. Ultimately she started Mountain West Ag Consult- ing, which acts as an H-2A agent and provides hu- man-resources and food and worker safety compliance services. She has now been working with the H-2A pro- gram for nearly five years. “This is my dream job. I love what I do and I can- not imagine doing anything else,” said Uranga, who splits time between in the Wilder, Idaho, and Yakima, Wash., areas. The Immigration and Na- tionality Act authorizes the H-2A visa program, which allows a U.S. employer to hire foreign workers tem- porarily — normally for 10 months or less — for agri- cultural work when suffi- cient numbers of U.S. work- ers are not available. Demand for H-2A work- ers is rising. An Idaho Department of Labor report on agriculture’s contribution to the state’s economy said the recently shrinking supply of workers prompted agriculture em- ployers to offer benefits, in- centives and higher wages, or use the H-2A program. The total number of cer- tified H-2A positions in Ida- ho has nearly doubled from 2013 to 2017 — from 1,539 to 2,994 — and these tempo- rary workers are “on pace to becoming a dominant share of the migrant worker demo- graphic,” the report said. Strong demand keeps Uranga busy, as does the sig- nificant paperwork the appli- cation process entails. Before the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services can approve a visa petition for H-2A workers, the employer must receive a temporary labor certification from the U.S. Department of Labor. A Department of Labor handbook says the prospec- tive employer starts by filing a job order with his or her state’s workforce agency 60 to 75 days before the work start date. The Office of Foreign Labor Cer- tification, within the federal Labor Jennifer Department’s Uranga Employment and Train- ing Admin- istration, then requires the employer to file an H-2A application with its national processing center in Chica- go at least 45 days before the work start date and sub- mit any additional required documentation by at least 30 days before the work start date. The employer recruits workers, subject to adver- tising and reporting require- ments, after receiving an acceptance notice from the processing center. “I do not recruit work- ers,” Uranga said. “Rather, in the West, usually the em- ployers contact a recruiter in Mexico or border U.S. states.” She instead focuses on the H-2A application pro- cess after exploring the employer’s operations thor- oughly. “I visit them, and we talk about their farm and their labor needs,” Uranga said. “We ask a lot of questions about their existing work force, and we vet them — their payroll records, HR systems, et cetera.” She said her clients, who pay a consulting fee, are “all over,” including Ore- gon, central Washington and southwest Idaho. “This year, I picked up some smaller farms needing a couple of workers, but I deal with 20 to 200 workers often,” Uranga said. Workers are contracted for a specified period, such as February through Novem- ber or August through Octo- ber. Uranga said it’s pos- sible for a grower to write an additional contract and ask for more workers for a known and documented date of need up to a documented end date. Recently, she and some larger clients have aimed to transfer workers from one contract to another, “which can keep workers here in the U.S. and help another grow- er,” she said. Uranga also has been in- volved in efforts to address a recent housing shortage for H-2A workers. “My phone rings every day with people inquiring about H-2A,” she said. More farmers are inquiring about the program, and “a lot are surprised by all of the rules and regulations that go with it.” YOU ARE INVITED! The 22nd Annual Sr. Marilyn Schwab Memorial Lecture “MENTAL COMPETENCE IN FINANCIAL & ESTATE PLANNING DECISIONS” A free lecture, open to all, and especially helpful for owners of small businesses, farms or property. Expert presenters include: Neuropsychologist Amy Friday, Ph.D. Neurologist Ho-Yann Jong, M.D. Estate Attorney Maria Schmidlkofer, J.D. 7:00 – 8:30 pm, May 31, 2018 Providence Benedictine Nursing Center 540 S Main St, Mt. Angel, OR 20-1/106 More than a decade since the appearance of the mys- terious “colony collapse dis- order,” beekeepers still face abnormally high levels of bee die-offs, according to USDA. Despite the greater annual mortality rate, however, bee- keepers have kept the total number of hives stable and generally haven’t sharply hiked their pollination ser- vice fees, the agency found. Losses of honeybee col- onies over winter have av- eraged nearly 29 percent since 2006, when CCD was discovered, which is rough- ly twice the historical rate, according to a new USDA report, “Economic Effects and Responses to Changes in Honey Bee Health.” Apart from that disor- der, bees have suffered from mites, diseases, pesticide exposure, poor nutrition and other stressors, the report said. While the winter loss rate has gone as high as 36 per- cent, the total number of col- onies in the U.S. has fluctu- ated between 2.3 million and 2.8 million over the past de- cade, according to the study. The data indicate bee- keepers have coped with the higher winter losses by split- ting hives and buying addi- tional ones, USDA said. The number of colonies in the U.S. hit a record of nearly 6 million in 1946, but then dropped by about half even before the introduction of varroa mites and associat- ed viruses in the 1980s, the agency found. The decline dence of disruption to agricul- tural crop or retail food mar- kets in terms of rising prices or decreasing availability,” said the USDA report, adding that “most of the adjustment has occurred at the level of the beekeeper, with less adjust- ment at downstream levels in the production and marketing chain.” The current cycle of steep hive loss and replenishment is sustainable only in the short term, but not if problems with pests and disease continue to climb, said Harry Vanderpool, president of the Oregon State Beekeepers Association. “There is no easy money in agriculture and beekeep- ing follows that saying to the word,” he said. Since the mid-1980s, for example, the number of treat- 7 PLEASE RSVP TO (503) 845-6841 Sponsored by: Roberts, Ring & Fischer Wealth Management, Inc. This lecture is a program of Providence Benedictine Nursing Rabo Agrifinance, Leave A Legacy Mid-Willamette Valley, Center and Benedictine Sisters of Mt. 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