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CapitalPress.com
Friday, September 24, 2021
Water from NE Oregon data centers reused for farms
Amazon has two campuses
built, two more on the way
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
UMATILLA, Ore. — The tiny
city of Umatilla, Ore., and the
internet giant Amazon have come
up with a unique use for the cool-
ing water from the company’s
massive server farms.
They are using it irrigate the
region’s other farms — the kind
that grow crops.
Perched along the Columbia
River in northeast Oregon, Uma-
tilla is a haven for irrigated agri-
culture where farmers grow every-
thing from hay and wheat to
high-value potatoes, onions, car-
rots and melons.
In 2009, Amazon broke ground
on its first campus of data centers
in Umatilla. Data centers are large
warehouses filled with computer
servers. All the information gath-
ered by websites like Amazon and
Facebook is stored in the server
farms.
Amazon was attracted to the
Columbia Basin, in part, by the
availability of clean water that
could be used in cooling systems
The cooling water from Ama-
zon is piped to an irrigation canal
run by the West Extension Irriga-
tion District, which serves 10,400
acres of farmland.
The project broke ground in
2019, with roughly 7 miles of
pipe that run from the data center
campuses to a new headworks on
the district’s canal at the northeast
end of the city.
From there, the water flows
about 1,200 feet allowing it to
mix with the district’s water
Wikimedia pumped directly from the Colum-
Umatilla, Ore., and Amazon have built a system for using cooling bia River, diluting any excess
water from the internet giant’s server farms to irrigate the region’s salts and reaching a suitable pH
farms.
level before it can be used for
irrigation.
for all those servers. A single data
Stockdale said the infrastruc-
Both the city and Amazon
center consumes between 250,000 began pondering ways they could ture cost a little more than $5 mil-
and 1 million gallons of water per reuse the water, adding benefit for lion. So far, Amazon is the only
customer on the new system,
day in the warmer summer months, the community.
when outside temperatures can top
The answer, they decided, was though that could change with
100 degrees.
to deliver the water to the same future developments.
Water deliveries began in 2020.
That water is still mostly clean farmers that have powered Umatil-
This year, Stockdale estimated they
once it comes out the other end, la’s economy for decades.
“To take this new age technol- provided enough water for farmers
said Umatilla city manager Dave
ogy and sort of marry it to our tra- to grow an additional 1,000 acres of
Stockdale.
With two data center campuses ditional roots, especially in Uma- crops, all with existing water rights.
“Technically, it’s the city’s
now online and another two being tilla which has always been an
built, Stockdale said it didn’t make agricultural community ... in real- water in the irrigation district’s
sense, nor was there capacity, to ity, they actually worked out in canal,” Stockdale said. “If a farmer
treat all that mostly clean water at a great symbiotic relationship,” wants access to additional water,
Stockdale said.
they have additional water capac-
the city’s sewer plant.
ity available to them through this
system.”
The value of agriculture in arid
Eastern Oregon grows exponen-
tially with water.
Dryland wheat grown without
irrigation yields roughly $100 per
acre. Adding 1 acre-foot of water
increases the crop’s value to $500
per acre. Add 3 acre-feet of water,
and farms can earn up to $5,000 per
acre growing higher value specialty
crops.
An acre-foot covers an area
about the size of a football field
with 1 foot of water, or about
325,851 gallons.
As more data centers come
online in the coming years, Stock-
dale said the city is examining
other potential uses for the water
in addition to irrigation, such as
repairing wetlands in the area for
wildlife.
“We continue to look at ways
to be good environmental stew-
ards of our resources,” Stockdale
said.
A spokesperson for Ama-
zon Web Services said the proj-
ect is the first of its kind in Ore-
gon and for the company, and the
goal is to increase water reuse at
its northeast Oregon data centers
to 100%.
WDFW quits search for
cattle-attacking wolf pack
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
The Washington Depart-
ment of Fish and Wild-
life has stopped searching
for wolves attacking cattle
in the Kettle River Range,
the fourth time the depart-
ment has failed to cull the
Togo pack after saying it
would try.
Two Fish and Wildlife
biologists, aided by one
working radio collar in the
pack, spent parts of three
days looking for wolves.
On the second day, one
employee shot at a wolf,
but missed.
Fish
and
Wildlife
spokeswoman Staci Leh-
man said Sept. 15 that the
pack went to a different
area. Although the depart-
ment can’t be certain,
wolves may have moved
in response to the search,
she said.
The department has
not confirmed any depre-
dations by the pack since
Aug. 17, two weeks prior
to the department call-
ing off the search. “At this
point, we’re not actively
going out,” Lehman said.
State Rep. Joel Kretz,
who represents north-
east Washington, called
the department’s fail-
ure “another broken
promise.”
“I’m seeing the same
things from the same peo-
ple and I’m seeing the
same results,” he said
Thursday.
Ferry County sheriff’s
wildlife deputy Jeff Flood
said that Fish and Wild-
life didn’t set traps or use
a helicopter and quit too
soon.
Flood said the depart-
ment’s
“half-hearted”
operation belied prom-
ises the department made
to step up its efforts if
ranchers stepped up theirs
to break the cycle of
wolf-livestock conflicts
in the Kettle River Range.
“There’s tremendous
distrust up here, and frus-
tration,” Flood said. “All
the time, the ranchers are
told to do more and more.
When it comes time for
the department to do
something, they don’t do
it.”
Flood said the wolves
have not moved away
from cattle. The pack —
five adults and four pups
— continues to harass
cattle, scattering and sep-
arating cow-calf pairs, he
said.
“How can the depart-
ment pull off this magic
trick — shoot their gun
once and the wolves run
away?” Flood asked.
“How can they have such
great luck doing that, but
our range riders chas-
ing them like jack rabbits
don’t?”
Lehman
said
the
department won’t talk
about its tactics.
The Togo pack started
a pattern of attacking cat-
tle in the fall of 2017,
according to Fish and
Wildlife. The department
killed one wolf in 2018,
but otherwise has been
unsuccessful in four other
tries.
The department desig-
nates the Togo pack ter-
ritory a “special focus
area,” the only one in
the state, because of the
number of attacks on
livestock. The designa-
tion raised expectations
on ranchers to use more
range riders and try other
non-lethal ways to pre-
vent depredations.
The Togo pack again
crossed the threshold for
lethal control Aug. 17
by attacking a third calf
in 30 days. The attacks
occurred on private and
public lands and to cattle
belonging to three differ-
ent ranchers.
Fish and Wildlife
said all three employed
non-lethal deterrents, and
Director Kelly Susew-
ind authorized the depart-
ment on Aug. 26 to kill
one wolf or two wolves.
The department said
the order was in place
until Sept. 26 or until
wolves
were
killed,
whichever came first.
By Aug. 31, the depart-
ment had stopped trying
to remove wolves.
Scott Nielsen of the
Cattle Producers of Wash-
ington said the depart-
ment’s decision was
“outrageous.”
“It definitely looks
to us like a very limited
effort,” said Nielsen, who
organizes the cattlemen’s
state-funded program to
prevent conflicts between
wolves and livestock.
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Nate Kazemier, whose family owns a dairy farm, started the Rickreall Meat Co. to sell
ground beef.
Oregon dairy diversifies into
direct marketing ground beef
RICKREALL, Ore. —
Lackluster demand at live-
stock auctions has convinced
the owners of an Oregon
dairy farm to directly sell the
ground beef from its culled
cows to the public.
Last month, Nate Kaze-
mier, whose family owns
Rickreall Dairy, started the
Rickreall Meat Co. and has
already sold 500 pounds of
ground beef to visitors.
Culled cows are sent to
a slaughter facility a half-
hour away in Carlton, Ore.,
and the meat is sold at the
dairy, though Kazemier
plans to find wholesale gro-
cery and restaurant buyers as
well.
“It makes great ground
beef because we (use) the
whole cow,” he said. “All
the steaks and stuff are in it,
and that makes it really lean
and flavorful.”
The dairy usually gets
about 20-30 cents a pound
for culled cows, while
direct-marketing the ground
beef fetches about 80 cents
per pound after expenses,
Kazemeir said. “More than
doubling our margin on cer-
tain animals is worth the
effort.”
The company charges
$6 apiece for one-pound
packages, which are vacu-
um-sealed and frozen. Kaze-
mier is considering includ-
ing them in a food box
delivery program that spe-
cializes in blemished or mis-
shapen food items.
“This fits that mold pretty
well because it’s old dairy
cows,” he said.
So far, the company
has relied on buzz gener-
ated on social media and
from motorists who drive
by advertisements near the
dairy.
“We’re off to a pretty
good start for just putting
two signs on the highway,”
said Louie Kazemier, Nate’s
father.
A culled dairy cow typ-
ically yields about 300
pounds of ground beef and
the dairy sells up to 700
cows per year at auction, so
the meat operation has room
to grow.
Ground beef from the
dairy’s cows already proved
popular last year, when the
company celebrated its 30th
anniversary by giving away
food to 450 families early in
the coronavirus epidemic.
Eventually,
Rickreall
Meat Co. would like to build
its own slaughter facility
on-site, which would face
a lower regulatory burden
because the dairy is already
permitted to process solid
and liquid waste, Nate Kaze-
mier said.
At this point, construct-
ing such a plant would be
prohibitively expensive but
the company is hopeful that
state and federal programs
may reduce that cost or pro-
vide financial assistance, he
said.
For now, the company is
focused on exposing cus-
tomers to its ground beef,
Kazemier said. “The goal
is to put out a good quality
product to get our name out
there.”
The dairy is currently
getting paid about $15 per
hundredweight for its milk,
which is about $2 below the
cost of production due to
high feed costs, said Louie
Kazemier.
“This is all about trying
to stay in business because
milk marketing isn’t doing
us any favors,” he said.
“This is one other way we’re
looking to diversify.”
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
09/27/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2019 HYUN ELANTRA 4DR
VIN = 5NPD74LF7KH452621
Amount due on lien $1435.00
Reputed owner(s)
BRENDA L GONZALES
HYUNDAI MOTOR FINANCE CORP
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
09/27/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2017 HONDA CIVIC 4DR
VIN = SHHFK7H2XHU403692
Amount due on lien $1435.00
Reputed owner(s)
S NARANJO-PEREZ & A KLUTZ
JPMORGAN CHASE BANK NA
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
09/27/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2014 TOYOTA SIENNA VAN
VIN = 5TDYK3DC1ES524085
Amount due on lien $1435.00
Reputed owner(s)
TIFFANY & JOSHUA FLANAGAN
TOYOTA MOTOR CREDIT CORP
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
10/04/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2017 HONDA CIVIC 4DR
VIN = 2HGFC2F78HH545678
Amount due on lien $1535.00
Reputed owner(s)
EDUARDO PANCHO MARTINEZ
WELLS FARGO AUTO
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
10/04/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2011 NISSAN LEAF 4DR
VIN = JN1AZ0CP8BT004224
Amount due on lien $1555.00
Reputed owner(s)
UNITED AUTO SALES LLC
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
10/04/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2012 ACURA TSX 4D
VIN = JH4CU2F65CC021033
Amount due on lien $1655.00
Reputed owner(s)
SHELLY JOYCE AVERILL
CENTRAL WILLAMETTE COMMUNITY C U
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
10/04/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2007 TOYOTA PRIUS 4DR
VIN = JTDKB20U677632276
Amount due on lien $1515.00
Reputed owner(s)
AUTOS OF PORTLAND
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
10/04/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2018 DODGE GRA 4D
VIN = 2C4RDGCGXJR253573
Amount due on lien $1535.00
Reputed owner(s)
HANNA ALLEN & BRANDEN WALTERS
MECHANICS BANK
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
10/04/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2013 INFINITI JX35 LL
VIN = 5N1AL0MM5DC320567
Amount due on lien $1535.00
Reputed owner(s)
CASEY DIXON & JUAN MANZO
TOYOTA MOTOR CREDIT CORP
S261535-1
S261536-1
S261537-1
S261136-1
S261538-1
S261137-1
S261539-1
S261534-1
S261540-1
S261128-1
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
09/27/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2014 DODGE CHARGER 4DR
VIN = 2C3CDXCT2EH338054
Amount due on lien $1415.00
Reputed owner(s)
JOSE & JOSE LEIVA
TD AUTO FINANCE LLC
S261130-1
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
09/27/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2020 TOYOTA COROLLA 4DR
VIN = JTDDPRAE2LJ043829
Amount due on lien $1415.00
Reputed owner(s)
GEICO
S261133-1
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
10/04/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2018 HYUNDAI ELANTRA 4DR
VIN = 5NPD74LF0JH327426
Amount due on lien $1535.00
Reputed owner(s)
WILLIAM A CARR
MARY SAADIQ
S261125-1
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
09/27/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2001 UTIL REEFER TRL
VIN = 1UYVS35321U250405
Amount due on lien $1575.00
Reputed owner(s)
UTILITY TRAILER SALES OF OREGON
LLC
S261126-1
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
09/27/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2019 JEEP CHEROKEE 4DR
VIN = 1C4PJMCB9KD141225
Amount due on lien $1535.00
Reputed owner(s)
IOSIA F OFOIA
NAVY FEDERAL C.U.
S261127-1
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder, on
09/27/2021. The sale will be held
at 10:00am by
COPART OF WASHINGTON INC
2885 NATIONAL WAY WOODBURN, OR
2017 AUDI Q3 4DR
VIN = WA1GCCFSXHR009063
Amount due on lien $1535.00
Reputed owner(s)
LARRY H MILLER TOYOTA PEORIA
