Friday, March 8, 2019
3
CapitalPress.com
National monument expansion challenged as illegal
Trump administration defends
Cascade-Siskiyou’s enlargement
Bob Wick/BLM
A large basaltic spire known as Pilot Rock is in the distance in this photo taken in Cascade-Siskiyou National
Monument near Ashland, Ore. Oral arguments over the monument’s expansion were held March 5 in Medford, Ore.
fear the expanded designa-
tion may lead to restrictions
on livestock grazing.
“What the president has
done here is vacate the pur-
pose of those lands that Con-
gress designated them for,”
Haglund said.
Since 2017, the size of
three timber sales has been
reduced due to the expan-
sion, he said. The Murphy
Co. also fears that roads
leading to its private inhold-
ings within the monument
will be decommissioned.
“Your access to your own
land is impaired,” he said.
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
OLYMPIA — Washing-
ton lawmakers and the state
Department of Agriculture
are taking down barriers to
growing hemp in time for
spring planting, though how
much farmers will pay in the
future for the privilege has
not yet been decided.
The House Appropri-
ations Committee unani-
mously endorsed a bill Feb.
26 that lifts a ban on moving
harvested hemp across state
lines. The bill also would
allow hemp to be grown for
CBD, an oil extract mar-
keted for a wide range of
ailments.
Meanwhile, the agricul-
ture department plans to
abolish two rules by April
23. One rule prohibits hemp
from being grown within
4 miles of marijuana. The
other rule requires farmers
to get permission from the
federal Drug Enforcement
Administration to import
hemp seeds. The House bill
agrees with those steps.
“It makes sense to assist
farmers to get seeds in the
ground this season,” agricul-
ture department spokesman
Hector Castro said.
The legislation and
department rule changes
would bring Washington’s
hemp regulations in line with
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Mayor David Condon talks about the opportunities
Spokane offers for agricultural companies and
support industries Feb. 28 in his City Hall office.
ture capital or various
services. It can also help
when agricultural produc-
tion, energy use and health
intersect, Condon said.
“The urban center is
key to the agricultural
industry, and vice versa,”
he said. “We can’t live
without the Ritzvilles,
Spangles and Colfaxes of
the world.”
The city is analyzing its
strengths and weaknesses
to gain a better idea of
the industry’s needs and
what’s already being done
in the support and research
sectors, Condon said.
“Where are the busi-
ness cluster networking
opportunities for what’s
happening specifically in
the ag world?” he said.
Washington snowpack holding
CONTRACT GROWERS
should be OK in most areas.
We want normal tempera-
tures and normal runoff. The
rate of runoff is critical,” he
said.
A sudden warming could
quickly reduce snowpack,
especially without more
snowfall.
Low-elevation
snowpack melts first. The
longer it holds the better, but
higher snowpack feeding
storage reservoirs is crucial.
A Feb. 27 snowfall didn’t
deliver a lot and recent
Broiler Farm Partnerships
for New Independent
Contract Growers
the 2018 Farm Bill. Cur-
rently, the state’s hemp pro-
gram sticks to the more-re-
strictive 2014 Farm Bill.
Other states didn’t wait
for Congress to liberalize the
rules and have a head start in
developing hemp as a com-
mercial crop. Washington’s
entire 2018 hemp harvest
was 141 acres grown by the
Confederated Colville tribes
in northeast Washington.
“We’re definitely moving
things through. I’m excited
about it. It’s not a done deal
yet,” Industrial Hemp Asso-
ciation of Washington lob-
byist Bonny Jo Peterson said
Wednesday.
While policies are on
a path to be changed, it’s
uncertain how much farmers
will pay for a hemp license
under the new program. It
could be more than under
the current program, even
though there are fewer rules
to enforce.
Even under the new Farm
Bill, states must still license
hemp growers, screen out
drug felons, test plants
for THC, inspect fields
and report regularly to the
USDA.
In an analysis of House
Bill 1401, the agriculture
department estimated run-
ning a hemp program under
the new federal regulations
will cost $206,300 a year.
Before approving HB
1401, the Appropriations
Committee removed a pro-
vision allocating $300,000
over two years in general
taxes to support hemp over-
sight. It was a procedural
matter.
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10-4/110
MOUNT
VERNON,
Wash. — While up to 2 feet
or more of snow blanketed
most of Washington in Feb-
ruary, no records were set and
statewide snowpack declined
slightly from 91% on Feb. 25
to 87 percent on March 4.
“We definitely will have
more snow. The question
is how much,” said Scott
Pattee, state water supply
specialist for the Natural
Resources Conservation Ser-
vice in Mount Vernon.
Pattee said he hopes snow-
pack builds but that it might
not because the weather out-
look calls for cold and dry
in the short term, a cooler
than normal March and then
above normal temperatures
with equal chances of precip-
itation for April and May.
The state is at 74 per-
cent of its median peak in
snow-water content, so it
is “behind the eight-ball,”
he said, noting March 30
is the median peak date of
snow-water content.
“If we can hold onto what
(snowpack) we have, we
storms have not produced
much more snow at higher
elevations, Pattee said.
Recent storms have done
more for the Oregon Cas-
cades and California Sierras
than they have for the Wash-
ington Cascades, he said. The
slight increase in the lower
Snake and lower Colum-
bia reflect better snows in
southern reaches of Wash-
ington, extending into Ore-
gon and California, Pattee
said.
10-4/108
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
Howell said.
The Cascade-Siskiyou’s
original original boundar-
ies in 2000 included O&C
Lands but nonetheless Con-
gress enacted new pro-
tections in 2009, such as
expiring grazing leases and
creating a new wilderness
area within the monument,
he said.
These actions don’t indi-
cate Congress was “out-
raged” by the inclusion of
O&C Lands as suggested
by the Murphy Co., Howell
said. “If that was true, Con-
gress could have acted.”
10-1/100
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
ing happening? Where
are the wineries, brewer-
ies, cideries, distilleries in
that area? They’re in the
urban centers,” Condon
said. “Maybe not in Spo-
kane, but in smaller com-
munities where you see
the food processors. ...
Those are clearly in urban
environments.”
Condon also points
to property management
companies, legal services,
financing, research and
technology.
Spokane has a unique
potential to be a hub for
commodities,
Condon
said.
Spokane could appeal
to companies dealing
with intellectual prop-
erty development, ven-
Coby Howell, an attorney
for the federal government.
“Not every tree on every
acre of O&C Lands needs
to be cut,” Howell said. “If
not every tree needs to be
cut, why can’t the presi-
dent set aside those 48,000
acres?”
The presidential proc-
lamation expanding the
national monument doesn’t
“repurpose” those acres,
which are still O&C Lands
— rather, the property has a
dual status, he said.
“You have the overlay
of a national monument,”
Washington legislators
remake hemp program
Spokane mayor looks to
bolster, recruit ag businesses
SPOKANE — Spokane
is a good place to locate
agricultural
businesses
and support services, the
city’s mayor says.
The city is folding agri-
culture into its Choose
Spokane initiative to bol-
ster existing agricultural
and forestry businesses
and attract new ones,
Mayor David Condon told
the Capital Press.
“Ag has been a huge
piece of who we are,”
Condon said. “Companies
could come here and tap
into something that’s been
foundational for us for a
couple hundred years.”
Business sectors and
industries typically have
four levels, Condon said.
The primary level is grow-
ing or mining a product.
The second level is the
manufacturing or process-
ing of that product. The
third level is support ser-
vices. The fourth level is
knowledge,
innovation
and technology.
When it comes to agri-
culture, Condon says,
many people think of the
primary level, based in
rural Eastern Washington.
He sees great potential for
Spokane to host the other
three levels.
“Where is the process-
While the President Don-
ald Trump has reduced the
size of other controversial
national monuments des-
ignated or enlarged under
his predecessor, he hasn’t
acted on the Cascade-Siski-
you National Monument and
his administration is defend-
ing its expansion in federal
court.
Contrary to the Mur-
phy Co.’s claims, there is
no “irreconcilable conflict”
between the monument des-
ignation and the O&C Lands
Act, which permits multi-
ple uses of such lands, said
9-4-2/103
MEDFORD, Ore. —
Just as federal prisons
and military bases can’t
be designated as national
monuments, Oregon’s Cas-
cade-Siskiyou
National
Monument can’t spread onto
land dedicated to logging,
opponents claim.
An Oregon timber com-
pany is arguing the Obama
administration’s
2017
expansion of the monument
must be struck down in fed-
eral court because much of
the new acreage consists of
former Oregon & California
Railroad lands reconveyed
to the government and spe-
cifically devoted to timber
harvest by Congress.
“The president has no
authority to repurpose
40,000 acres of O&C Lands
within the national monu-
ment,” said Mike Haglund,
attorney for the Murphy Co.,
during a March 5 court hear-
ing in Medford, Ore.
The Murphy Co.’s law-
suit is the first of three com-
plaints challenging the
expansion’s legality to have
oral arguments heard before
a federal judge. The other
two cases are pending in
federal court in Washington,
D.C.
The original 53,000-acre
Cascade-Siskiyou National
Monument was estab-
lished in 2000 by Presi-
dent Bill Clinton and 13,000
acres were later added to it
through purchases of private
property.
Shortly before leaving
office in 2017, President
Barack Obama enlarged the
monument’s boundaries by
48,000 acres.
Roughly four-fifths of
those acres consisted of
O&C Lands, which total
more than 2.1 million acres
of federal property in West-
ern Oregon that Congress in
1937 committed to “perma-
nent forest production.”
“The O&C Act is a dom-
inant-use statute and that
dominant use is timber pro-
duction,” said Haglund.
Timber companies are
upset about the prohibi-
tion against most commer-
cial logging within the Cas-
cade-Siskiyou
National
monument, while ranchers
10-4/106
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press