June 22, 2018
CapitalPress.com
Appeals court rules firebreak lawful
‘Community
protection line’
created in response
to Wolverine fire
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
André-Denis Wright, the new
dean of Washington State Uni-
versity’s College of Agricultural,
Human and Natural Resource
Sciences, speaks to farmers
June 14 during the field day at
WSU’s dryland research station
in Lind, Wash.
New WSU ag
dean: ‘I hope
this is my
forever home’
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
LIND, Wash. — Eastern
Washington farmers heard
from the new dean of Wash-
ington State University’s ag-
riculture college for the first
time as he spoke at the univer-
sity’s dryland research station
field day June 14.
André-Denis Wright took
over June 1 as dean of WSU’s
College of Agricultural, Hu-
man and Natural Resource
Sciences.
“The university and espe-
cially ... CAHNRS is an envy
to most agricultural colleges
across this country,” he said.
WSU is the number-one
college funded by USDA,
Wright said.
“The stakeholders, you folks
are amazing,” he told farmers.
“You’re the envy of the rest of
the country.”
The National Science Foun-
dation’s Higher Education
Research and Development
Survey in March found WSU
researchers received $42.8
million in USDA research and
development funding in the
2016 fiscal year, leading the
list of 350 universities nation-
wide.
“Not to say they weren’t
supportive in the other plac-
es I’ve been, but there’s a lot
more opportunity here, and I
think people here really under-
stand and appreciate the value
and importance of agriculture,”
Wright said. “That’s something
I think a lot of people across the
country have lost sight of.”
Wright was born and raised
in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a prov-
ince known for lobsters and
fishing. It was also the blueber-
ry and apple capital of Canada
at the time.
Visiting earlier in the week
with farmers and researchers
about the various crops Wash-
ington produces and seeing
apple orchards and blueberries,
Wright said he felt as though he
was back home.
Wright worked nearly 20
years to increase the efficien-
cy of nutrient utilization in
livestock and raise the level of
sustainable food production.
Much of his effort focused on
reducing the enteric methane
produced by cattle as they di-
gest feed.
He spent 12 years in Aus-
tralia, working for the govern-
ment as a research scientist.
That’s where he met his wife-
to-be and they married and had
a daughter.
He became head of the
Department of Animal and
Veterinary Sciences at the
University of Vermont, a posi-
tion he held for five years, and
then was approached to lead a
new school, as director of the
School of Animal and Com-
parative Biomedical Sciences
at the University of Arizona in
Tucson. He held the position
for three years.
Wright joked that he’d got-
ten rid of his University of Ar-
izona clothing. His daughter
asked if she could still wear
Arizona apparel when UA’s
Wildcats play WSU’s Cou-
gars in November. He told her
“No,” he said with a smile as
the audience laughed.
Wright said he hopes to
have his wife and daughter in
attendance at the Lind Field
Day next year.
“I am very happy to be
here,” he said. “I hope this is
my forever home. We’ll raise
our daughter here and become
part of the community.”
Capital Press
An environmental group
has failed to convince a fed-
eral appeals court that forest
managers unlawfully created
a firebreak in Washington’s
Okanogan-Wenatchee Nation-
al Forest.
The 20-mile-long “com-
munity protection line” was
created by the U.S. Forest Ser-
vice in 2015 in response to the
Wolverine Fire, which burned
roughly 65,000 acres near
Lake Chelan.
Forest Service Employ-
ees for Environmental Ethics,
a nonprofit environmental
U.S. Forest Service
The Wolverine Fire in 2015 burned some 65,000 acres near Lake Chelan in Central Washington. An
environmental group’s lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service for building a fire line to protect rural
hamlets has been thrown out.
group, filed a lawsuit claiming
the agency acted unlawfully
by cutting the 300-foot-wide
swath and allegedly removing
100 acres of northern spotted
owl habitat.
A federal judge dismissed
the complaint last year, ruling
that Forest Service managers
acted according to emergen-
cy regulations in creating the
firebreak, but the plaintiff chal-
lenged that decision before the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Ap-
peals. The 9th Circuit has now
found the judge didn’t abuse
his discretion by throwing out
the lawsuit because the For-
est Service properly used its
“emergency rule” even though
wildfires are a regular occur-
rence in the West.
“While it is true that fires
happen every year, it defies
plain language and common
sense to conclude that no in-
dividual fire — or its course,
intensity, or duration — could
be unforeseeable,” the 9th Cir-
cuit said. “It is unreasonable to
9
argue that forest fires can never
present emergency situations
when viewed at the time the
fire is raging.”
The environmental group
had argued the firebreak was
“simply an improperly imple-
mented timber sale, and serves
no fire suppression purpose,”
as evidenced by the fire never
coming within six miles of the
line.
Establishing the firebreak
was “indistinguishable from
commercial logging,” creat-
ed the same soil disturbance
and other negative effects that
should have been reviewed un-
der the National Environmen-
tal Policy Act, the complaint
said. The lawsuit sought to
require the Forest Service to
conduct an environmental
analysis of the firebreak, mit-
igative adverse impacts and
enjoin the agency from using
the emergency regulations
until the review was finished.
Idaho tax commission weighs hops equipment exemption
By BRAD CARLSON
Capital Press
The Idaho State Tax
Commission is considering
the impact of a new state law
that guarantees hop grow-
ers won’t have to pay local
property tax on production
equipment.
The commission’s Prop-
erty Tax Rules Committee
on June 12 stopped short
of initiating a rule-making
process tied to the new law
for now, and instead formed
a separate committee to
study the law as it relates
not only to hops, but also
to the definition of “produc-
tion” in other types of agri-
culture.
Hops equipment taxa-
tion emerged as an issue
in the 2018 Idaho Legisla-
ture after some growers re-
ceived assessments. Since
2000 the state has exempt-
ed from property tax any
equipment used in agricul-
tural production. But sev-
eral counties want to tax
dryers and other types of
equipment that isn’t used
in the hop yards.
The Legislature on
March 22 passed House
Bill 594, which amends the
property tax law to ensure
the agricultural equipment
exemption from property tax
includes hops equipment.
The law will expire after
two years, giving the prop-
erty committee time to sort
out the issue.
For growers of hops and
some other crops, the first
“sellable unit” is often cre-
ated off the field. Hops, for
example, require drying be-
fore they can be sold.
Alan Dornfest, the com-
mission’s property tax bu-
reau chief, said more work
needs to be done to clarify
the meaning and application
of “production” in applying
the state’s exemption on
property tax for agriculture
equipment. That’s what the
new committee, headed by
commission Tax Policy Spe-
cialist Rick Anderson, will
aim to do.
“Where does ‘produc-
tion’ stop?” Dornfest said in
an interview. “Now we say
it’s only in the field, but that
is not in rule — it’s only an
interpretation.”
He said the new law’s
reference to “production”
should be clarified given that
a food processing plant may
argue its equipment should
be exempt from property tax
because it is needed to make
the first sellable product.
Canyon County Chief
Deputy Assessor Joe Cox
said the southwest Ida-
ho county early this year
sent assessment notices to
hop farmers. Members of
the commission’s Property
Tax Rules Committee said
Boundary County, in north
Idaho, also wants to tax hops
equipment.
Cox said it’s a county as-
sessor’s responsibility to tax
all property unless it is ex-
plicitly exempted. Canyon
County traditionally viewed
the ag equipment exemption
as ending “once the crop hits
the road” for processing or
storage, he said.
Hop growers say off-
field steps such as separat-
ing the cones from vines and
cleaning and drying them
are required before ship-
ment-ready bales are pro-
duced.
Farmworkers set up strings
that will train emerging hop
plants in a field near Wilder,
Idaho. The industry requires
specialized equipment before
and after harvest, and a
state committee is trying to
determine how it fits into
the property tax exemption
for agricultural production
equipment.
Capital Press File
Competition for water
demands foresight, Idaho
House speaker says
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
SUN VALLEY — Ida-
ho leads the nation in state
economic performance, job
growth and per-capital earn-
ings, and it’s on every list of
desired travel destinations.
“It’s exciting on one
level but also presents a lot
of challenges,” Scott Bed-
ke, Idaho’s speaker of the
House, told the Idaho Water
Users water law conference.
With that growth comes
competition for scarce re-
sources. The challenge over
the next decade will be man-
aging the growth and inevi-
table conflicts over limited
resources, he said.
“Financially, the state
is in good shape. It’s going
to be on us to manage this
growth properly,” he said.
Water issues were at the
top of the list when he was
first elected to the Idaho
Legislature 18 years ago and
they continue to “dog” com-
munities, he said.
“It’s incumbent upon us
to put into place measures
we can live with into the fu-
ture,” he said.
In the last legislative ses-
sion, lawmakers reviewed
their commitment to water
projects in the state aimed
at infrastructure and aquifer
recharge.
There’s not a lot of mon-
ey in the state’s budgets, but
lawmakers continued to sup-
port long-term commitment
to those projects, he said.
This last season, the
state recharged more than
500,000 acre-feet of water
in the eastern Snake Plain
Aquifer.
Over the last three years,
it has put 1 million acre-feet
back into the ground, he
said.
Some people might ar-
gue that was due to big wa-
ter years. But there’s been
big water years before with
zero water recharged, he
said.
The state’s effort on re-
charge is working. Senti-
nel wells show significant
improvement, and aquifer
levels are beginning to im-
prove, he said.
“We’ve stopped the
drop,” he said.
The landmark agreement
between surface water and
groundwater users to reduce
consumptive use by ground-
water pumpers is no small
part of that, he said.
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