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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JULY 4, 2016
‘Alumni Day’ at Warrenton ballpark
Astoria
Ford posts
three wins
in two days
The Daily Astorian
Gary Henley/The Daily Astorian
Players from Saturday’s Warrenton alumni baseball game pose for their annual team photo.
The Daily Astorian
WARRENTON — A
bunch of former Warren-
ton Warriors baseball play-
ers brought out the big bats
Saturday afternoon for the
annual Warrenton alumni
day at Huddleston Field.
Home runs by Eric
Gantenbein, Reese John-
son, Josh Biel and Thomas
McFadden highlighted a fun
day of baseball and burgers,
with 25 Warrenton graduates
mixing it up in one nine-in-
ning game. Eight others
showed up but did not play,
along with over three dozen
alums, friends and family
members.
“One thing that’s grati-
fying about it, the guys pass
the hat after the game, and
that’s what we use to pay for
a lot of our gear,” said War-
renton coach Lennie Wolfe.
“And we have two proj-
ects this year — we’re put-
ting in a new backstop and
we’re going to create a hit-
ting facility underneath (the
football bleachers).”
Still, it’s seeing his for-
mer players and their fam-
ilies that highlights the day.
“I don’t care if we don’t
make a nickel,” Wolfe said.
“It’s just so much fun get-
ting to see all the guys again,
and it’s a great time watch-
ing them play ball.”
As for the action, Wolfe
said, “the guys get after it.
They’re in different degrees
of physical condition, but
The Astoria Ford summer baseball
team scored three wins in 24 hours this
weekend at Aiken Field.
The Fishermen topped Dallas twice
Saturday, 8-0 and 7-0; and scored a
ive-inning, 4-1 victory Sunday.
Tyler Lyngstad highlighted Saturday’s
action with a complete-game three-hitter
in Game 1, adding a double at the plate.
Tristan Wallace got the win in Game
2, as he tossed three innings in relief of
Fridtjof Fremstad.
Fremstad started and pitched two
scoreless innings, and also had a single
and a double at the plate.
Kyle Strange led the offense in Sun-
day’s win, with a single, double and triple.
Ole Englund, Trey Hageman and Cal-
vin Kaul combined on the mound. Hage-
man had a double at the plate and picked
up the victory.
Astoria Ford returns to action with
two games this week: Tuesday at Tilla-
mook, and Thursday at home against the
Cheesemakers. Both contests are single
games scheduled to start at 6 p.m.
SCOREBOARD
Gary Henley/The Daily Astorian
SPORTS SCHEDULE
Dan McFadden enjoys
a moment in the on-
deck circle in Saturday’s
alumni baseball game at
Warrenton.
they compete. It’s an awful
lot of fun.”
Warrenton’s
current
players — the Junior State
summer team — is sched-
uled to host a doubleheader
with Clatskanie Thursday.
Gary Henley/The Daily Astorian
Catcher Eric Gantenbein, right, stares down a
charging Josh Biel in Saturday’s alumni baseball
contest at Warrenton.
Erosion threatens beach
home, signals battles to come
TUESDAY
Junior State Baseball — Astoria Ford at Til-
lamook, 6 p.m.
THURSDAY
Junior State Baseball — Tillamook at Astoria
Ford, 6 p.m.; Clatskanie at Warrenton (2), 4 p.m.
FRIDAY
Junior State Baseball — Madison at Astoria
Ford, 5 p.m.; West Salem at Astoria Ford, 7:30
p.m.
SATURDAY
Junior State Baseball — Madison at Astoria
Ford, 10 a.m.; West Salem at Astoria Ford, 11:30
a.m.; Madison vs. West Salem, 2 p.m.; Warren-
ton at Clatskanie (2), 1 p.m.
Federal court ponders local
authority to regulate GMOs
Associated Press
PORTLAND — The
owner of a $1 million vaca-
tion home on the Oregon
Coast says the structure is in
danger of slipping into the
ocean after waves whittled
away a protective sand dune.
Tai Dang built the ocean-
front property in Rockaway
Beach seven years ago. He
has since applied for a per-
mit to install riprap, which is
loose stone used as a founda-
tion, to stop the erosion from
eating away the land under
the home, but neighbors, the
city, the state and conserva-
tionists oppose the proposal.
Conservationists say install-
ing riprap in one location can
increase erosion elsewhere by
redirecting the low of water.
“Basic common sense
should tell you that it shouldn’t
have been built there,” Phillip
Johnson, executive director of
the Oregon Shores Conserva-
tion Coalition, told The Ore-
gonian newspaper. “We have
little sympathy for him. ... He
knew what he was doing.”
Dang said he consulted
a geologist about the land’s
stability, the city told him
exactly where to build and
then approved all the build-
ing permits. He said he’s con-
founded by the opposition to
his riprap application.
“I’m not reckless,” he said.
“I’m very conservative. ... I
looked to my left and I looked
to my right, and I didn’t see
any homes in Rockaway
Beach getting washed away.”
Historians say there aren’t
a lot of cases where Oregon
homes have actually fallen
into the ocean or been relo-
cated because riprap wasn’t
By MATEUSZ
PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Photo courtesy of Tai Dang via The Oregonian
The northwest corner of Tai Dang’s vacation home is
within 8 feet of falling down a bluff onto the sands at
Rockaway Beach. Dang believes that riprap will save the
home, but the state has denied him a permit.
allowed. The state gets a
few riprap requests each
year, though the numbers are
higher after stormy winters.
In the past decade, Oregon
has received about 30 appli-
cations, and, besides Dang’s
request, it has only denied
one other application.
Jonathan Allan, a coastal
geomorphologist with the
Oregon Department of Geol-
ogy and Mineral Industries,
said ights over riprap appli-
cations will likely increase as
climate change causes bigger
winter storms and higher sea
levels.
“I’m not aware of any-
one’s house falling into the
ocean because they weren’t
allowed to put up riprap, but
it’s coming. I think we’re
going to see more and more
of this,” said Allan, who has
taken no position on Dang’s
case.
Eleven people testiied
against Dang’s permit pro-
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posal during a hearing last
year. The riprap would cost at
least $15,000 and stretch 81
feet long, projecting 30 feet
from the base of the bluff onto
the beach.
“I hope that you do not
allow him to put riprap
(there),” neighbor Alice Pyne
said. “Because if you do,
there will be a domino effect,
and I will be sitting in front
of you next year asking you
to put riprap in front of my
house.”
Dang, who immigrated
from Vietnam at age 14, said
he worked his way through
college and relied on schol-
arships to become an electri-
cal engineer. He worked hard
to be able to afford the vaca-
tion home and sees the poten-
tial destruction as an unneces-
sary waste and unjust taking
of his property, he said.
“It’s crazy,” Dang said.
“My house, I’m on the verge
of losing it.”
If the U.S. Department of
Agriculture has only limited
authority over biotechnology,
how much power do states and
counties have to restrict geneti-
cally engineered crops?
This question arose from a
pivotal ruling issued by the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
three years ago, and the appel-
late court will probably soon
have to answer it.
In 2013, the 9th Circuit
decided that USDA only has the
power to regulate genetically
engineered crops that are poten-
tial plant pests.
Pathogens are commonly
used to alter crop genetics, so
the USDA evaluates the plants
to ensure they don’t inherit dis-
ease-causing or parasitic traits.
According to the 9th Circuit,
other concerns about poten-
tial economic or environmental
impacts cannot stop the agency
from deregulating a genetically
modiied organism, or GMO, if
it doesn’t pose a plant pest risk.
At the time, the 9th Cir-
cuit’s ruling was a serious blow
to critics of biotechnology, who
were trying to block the com-
mercialization of GMO alfalfa
due to the alleged hazards of
cross-pollination with conven-
tional and organic varieties.
Since then, however, sev-
eral counties in Hawaii have
adopted restrictions on GMOs,
attempting to address wor-
ries over which USDA lacks
authority.
The counties of Hawaii
and Maui banned most
GMOs, while Kauai County
imposed mandatory report-
ing of where such crops are
grown.
Federal judges have over-
turned all three ordinances, but
now the validity of those rul-
ings is being challenged before
the 9th Circuit, which held oral
arguments in these cases in June.
How these disputes are
resolved could affect GMO
restrictions in the nine Western
states under the 9th Circuit’s
jurisdiction, including Ore-
gon, Washington state and Cal-
ifornia, where several counties
have adopted GMO bans.
GMO critics are now try-
ing to use their previous defeat
to justify state and local regula-
tions of genetically engineered
crops.
‘Hands were tied’
Since the USDA’s “hands
were tied” by its limited power
over biotechnology, it only
makes sense for local govern-
ments to step in with their own
rules to protect organic and con-
ventional growers, said George
Kimbrell, executive director of
the Center for Food Safety, a
nonproit involved in prominent
GMO battles.
A federal judge ruled last
year that Maui’s GMO ban is
pre-empted by federal law, but
Kimbrell argued that reasoning
doesn’t make sense.
It’s implausible that the
Plant Protection Act, under
which the USDA’s authority is
restricted to plant pests, would
prevent states and counties
from addressing concerns that
the federal government cannot,
Kimbrell said.
Threats from increased
spraying of herbicide-resistant
biotech crops, for example, are
beyond the scope of USDA’s
authority but within the coun-
ty’s police power, said Bernie
Bays, an attorney representing
supporters of Maui County’s
ordinance.
“Our job is to regulate the
farms and farm practices in
Maui County,” Bays said.
The local GMO ban isn’t
pre-empted by federal law
because it doesn’t deal with
plant pests, which are solely the
province of USDA, he said.
Biotech developers counter
that GMO prohibitions are
nonetheless federally pre-
empted because the Plant Pro-
tection Act is meant to estab-
lish national uniformity for such
crops.
‘Frustrate federal
objectives’
States and counties are not
allowed to “frustrate federal
objectives” created by Con-
gress, said Richard Bress, an
attorney representing Monsanto
and other biotech developers.
The USDA has established
a “science-based scheme” to
enable commerce in plants that
are determined not to pose a
credible danger to agriculture,
Bress said.
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