A4 The SpokeSman • TueSday, november 8, 2022
YourBusiness
A sweet business opportunity
Redmond welcomes new
owners of the Chocolate
Company
BY NICK ROSENBERGER
Redmond Spokesman
T
he smell of warm
chocolate, sugar and
caramel wafted out of
The Chocolate Company
on Nov. 4 as the Redmond
Chamber of Commerce and
members of the commu-
nity welcomed new owners
nick rosenberger/Spokesman
Stephani Falcone and Steph-
Candy, sweets and chocolate fill the inside of The Chocolate Company
anie Hinkle to the city’s
located at 895 SW Rimrock Way in Redmond.
business community.
Falcone, a former personal
trainer and fitness instruc-
Lounge and said she had a
Falcone said she feels like
tor, said she and Hinkle were
hankering to get back into the the community has taken
looking to buy a restaurant or food industry. And chocolate
them in as one of their own.
cafe. Instead, they found The
fit her just find.
“I’ve been really thank-
ful and surprised,” she said.
Chocolate
“I have
“We’ve been floored with how
Company
a big time
“We’ve been floored
after it went
sweet tooth,” much we love Redmond.”
Hinkle said she likes it bet-
on the mar-
Falcone said.
with how much we love
ket in May
ter down here and the small-
The duo
Redmond.”
and thought
town feel.
moved from
about how
“We just see the same peo-
the outskirts
— Stephani Falcone, co-owner
ple everywhere,” she said.
fun it would
of Portland
of The Chocolate Company in
Aside from creams from a
be to run a
for Red-
Redmond
mond’s choc- local distributor, nearly every-
confectionary
thing in the store is made from
olate com-
shop.
pany and its sunshine. They
scratch, Falcone said, adding
Falcone’s family was in-
volved in restaurants grow-
said it was a smooth transition that they use all-natural ingre-
dients and no chemicals.
ing up in Newberg. Her fam-
with the help of the previous
“The ganache is this perfect
ily owned J’s Restaurant and
owners.
nick rosenberger/Spokesman
Community members and the Redmond Chamber of Commerce welcomed new Chocolate Company own-
ers Stephanie Hinkle (holding scissors) and Stephani Falcone (right) at 895 SW Rimrock Way on Nov. 4 with
a ribbon cutting.
moist (inside) of the harder
chocolate shell,” she said. “The
perfect softness.”
Falcone said their truffles
are fantastic and that all their
caramels are made in-house
as well, boasting that they
have the best caramel apples
around.
The gooey, warm and but-
tery chocolate chip cookies are
Hinkle’s mother’s recipe and
are baked fresh every Friday.
Falcone said it’s been a lot
of fun since they took over the
business last month. They’ve
been eating a lot of chocolate,
since they have to taste test new
recipes. She added that mess-
ups are tough — that means
they have to eat them, too.
“I’m just excited to do this,”
Falcone said.
The store is located at 895
SW Rimrock Way in Red-
mond and is open 10 a.m. to
6 p.m. Monday through Sat-
urday.
█
Reporter: nrosenberger@
redmondspokesman.com
Piping project delivers water savings amid drought
BY GEORGE PLAVEN
CO Media Group
A $30 million pipeline be-
tween Redmond and Smith
Rock has succeeded in sav-
ing water for fish and wildlife,
though not as much as originally
anticipated this year due to in-
tense drought in the region.
After five years of planning
and construction, the Central
Oregon Irrigation District fin-
ished piping 7.9 miles of open
laterals and canals north of Red-
mond in April.
Funding was provided by the
USDA Natural Resources Con-
servation Service to make more
efficient use of water from the
Deschutes River, minimizing
leaks, seepage or evaporation
losses normally seen in open
canals.
COID has agreed to deliver
conserved water from the pipe-
line to the neighboring North
Unit Irrigation District in Ma-
dras. In exchange, NUID will
forego an equal amount of
stored water each year from
Wickiup Reservoir, which can
then be kept in-stream to im-
prove habitat for vulnerable fish
and the Oregon spotted frog.
This season, the districts ex-
pected 30 cubic feet per second
of saved water, adding up to be-
tween 10,000 and 14,000 acre-
feet of increased storage avail-
able in the reservoir.
An acre-foot is 325,851 gal-
lons, or the amount of water it
dean Guernsey/The bulletin
FILE — Craig Horrell, General Manager of Central Oregon Irrigation District in a section of canal pipe in Bend
in 2021.
would take to cover an acre of
land — about the size of a foot-
ball field — one foot deep.
Instead, the pipeline deliv-
ered 21 cubic feet per second, or
roughly 8,000 acre-feet of sav-
ings. This is because COID was
forced to curtail water use from
the Deschutes River amid ex-
treme drought, said Craig Hor-
rell, the district manager.
Despite this, and working
through several other kinks in
the system — including an early
season canal breach — Horrell
said the project worked as in-
tended.
“We accomplished what we
set out to do by converting ca-
nals to pipes,” he said. “Our goal
has always been to help our
neighboring farmers, increase
winter flows in the Deschutes
(River) and enhance Oregon
spotted frog habitat.”
Dubbed the Smith Rock Proj-
Read and recycle
Find us
ONLINE
www.redmond
spokesman.com
and on
SOCIAL
MEDIA
@RedmondSpox
ect, COID spent the last two
years converting just under 5
miles of its J-Lateral to 48-inch
pipe, and 3 miles of the Pilot
Butte Canal to 8-foot steel pipe.
Both are located near Smith
Rock State Park, hence the
name.
It is the largest piping proj-
ect to date funded by the NRCS
Watershed Protection and Flood
Prevention Program, Horrell
said. Eventually, COID plans to
pipe all 25 miles of its Pilot Butte
Canal over the next 10 years.
“The frequency and intensity
of drought events highlight the
urgency to update antiquated ir-
rigation infrastructure through
water conservation projects like
the one we completed,” Horrell
said. “COID is committed to pip-
ing open canals and improving
on-farm efficiencies to build a re-
silient future for agriculture, the
river, fish and wildlife habitat.”
Drought prompted COID to
curtail water deliveries from the
Deschutes River this summer
for only the second time in the
district’s history, Horrell said. By
the end of the irrigation season,
patrons were receiving just 67%
of their normal water, he said.
While the project didn’t de-
liver as much water as hoped,
Mike Britton, NUID manager,
said farmers and ranchers in his
district did benefit.
“Every little bit of water
helps,” he said.
The Deschutes Basin Habi-
tat Conservation Plan, finalized
in 2020 with the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, calls for eight
irrigation districts and the city
of Prineville to provide more
water in the Deschutes River for
salmon, steelhead, bull trout and
the Oregon spotted frog, which
was listed as threatened under
the Endangered Species Act in
2014.
Kate Fitzpatrick, executive
director of the Deschutes River
Conservancy, said piping proj-
ects such as the COID’s are al-
ready paying off in a tangible
way.
“Even in a year of extreme
drought, one piping project in
COID generated significant wa-
ter for farmers in North Unit
and is restoring 7,029 acre-feet
to the Upper Deschutes River,”
she said. “We look forward to
continuing to support the irri-
gation districts in this coordi-
nated effort to balance water and
improve river conditions in the
basin.”