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About Capital press. (Salem, OR) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 27, 2019)
EMPOWERING PRODUCERS OF FOOD & FIBER Friday, December 27, 2019 Volume 92, Number 52 CapitalPress.com $2.00 By BRAD CARLSON Capital Press Bureau of Land Management orothy Finaldi watched as aircraft swooped across the landscape, dropping load after load of fire retar- dant near a new housing development north of Boise, Idaho. “It was definitely a wait-and-see what would hap- pen with the hillside because of cheatgrass,” said Finaldi, a Central Foothills Neighborhood Association board member. “Our home was not immediately at risk,” Finaldi said of the wildfire that swept through the hillsides a couple of years ago, “but if we had not had the wildland fire crews, it could have been much worse.” Development near fast-growing cities such as Boise not only takes agricultural land out of production, it can create a problem for the new residents, who want to live in open areas and forests but find them- selves exposed to a heightened threat of wildfires. This year alone in Califor- Brad Carlson/Capital Press nia, insurance companies esti- Dorothy Finaldi, Central Foot- mate wildfires caused more than hills Neighborhood Association $25 billion in damage — mainly board member, at her home to homes built on or near ag and north of Boise, Idaho. forest land. In other swaths of the West a growing number of hous- ing developments border wildfire-prone forests and grassland. In those areas, homeowners, firefighters and insurance companies are seeking ways to keep wildfires at bay. D An airtanker drops retardant to help stop the spread of the Eyrie Fire in southern Idaho in 2015. Fastest-growing use “Wildland-urban interface is the fastest-growing land-use type in the U.S., and as it grows, more people mean more fire starts and more potential for loss of property and life,” said Jared Jablonski, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Boise District fire informa- tion officer. KEEPING WILDFIRES AT BAY HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS ON FORMER AG LAND WITHIN THE WILDLAND-URBAN INTERFACE ARE VULNERABLE TO INCREASINGLY SEVERE BLAZES See Wildfires, Page 12 Farmers skeptical about being made ‘whole’ if dams breached By DON JENKINS Capital Press U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Ice Harbor Dam on the Lower Snake River holds back Lake Sacajawea, a source of irrigation water for 47,000 acres of farmland. Eastern Washington farmers doubt that public subsidies would offset higher transportation and irrigation costs caused by breaching four Lower Snake River dams, according to a preliminary study released Dec. 20 by the governor’s office. Without the dams, the river would be too shallow to barge wheat and other farm goods the roughly 100 miles between Lewiston, Idaho, and the Tri-Cities. Lake Sacajawea, a reservoir created by Ice Harbor Dam, irrigates 47,000 acres. Farmers are worried about being “at the mercy of railroads” and “skeptical” about switching to crops that use less water, according to the study. Washington Grain Commission CEO Glen Squires, one of nearly 100 people interviewed for the study, said he appre- ciated that the report’s writers captured different views on breaching the dams. See Dams, Page 12 SNAKE RIVER DAM WORKSHOPS • Jan. 7: 6-9 p.m., Quality Inn & Suites and Quay Convention Center, 700 Port Drive, Clarkston. • Jan. 9: 6-9 p.m., Washington State University Vancouver-Dengerink Ad- ministration Building (VDEN), 14204 NE Salmon Creek Ave., Vancouver • Jan. 13: Tri Cities, 6-9 p.m., Red Lion Hotel & Conference Center, 2525 N. 20th Ave., Pasco $49 million deal struck to buy NORPAC’s Oregon facilities Processing planned to continue at Brooks plant By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press The bankrupt NORPAC cooperative has struck a deal to sell its Oregon processing facilities for $49 million to Lineage Logistics, a Michi- gan-based cold storage firm. While the processing plants in Brooks, Salem and Stayton are included in the asset purchase agreement between NORPAC and Lin- eage Logistics, it’s unclear whether the latter two facil- ities will continue to be used for food processing. Agribusiness entrepre- neur Frank Tiegs said he’s planning to lease and oper- Capital Press File Frozen peas head to the bagging machines at NORPAC Foods in Salem. ate the Salem facility tem- porarily, but plans to even- tually buy the Brooks plant from Lineage and consoli- date processing operations there. “Our plan is to only oper- ate Brooks,” said Tiegs, who owns 15 processing plants and farms more than 100,000 acres in the Northwest. Tiegs said he’s also plan- ning to buy the Stayton facil- ity to “gut the plant out” by re-using or selling the equip- ment within it, and may potentially tear down the structure. Lineage Logistics would retain the corporate offices in Stayton, as well as the cold storage facility in Brooks, he said. As for Lineage Logistics’ long-term plan for the Salem facility, Tiegs said he’s unsure what the company wants to do with it. Several representatives of Lineage Logistics did not reply to requests for comment as of press time. At this point, the asset purchase agreement is only tentative, as it must still be approved by a bankruptcy judge and the Oregon facil- ities may still be subject to competing bids. When NORPAC declared bankruptcy in August, Tiegs had intended to buy all of its facilities in Oregon as well as its plant in Quincy, Wash., for $155 million, but later backed out of the deal. He recently ended up agreeing to buy the Quincy plant for up to $107 million after prevailing in a bidding war against the J.R. Simplot Co., a major agribusiness company. The series of transactions with Lineage made sense to Tiegs because he didn’t want to own all of NORPAC’s assets, he said. “They made it so the numbers worked for me.” The continued operation of NORPAC’s Oregon facil- ities for food processing is important for farmers in the Willamette Valley, who have long sold vegetable crops to the cooperative. Also at stake are the fate of 1,400 people who worked at the Oregon facil- ities and were issued lay-off notices during NORPAC’s bankruptcy.
