3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2016
Former lumber town rides digital wave to a comeback
The digital
revolution gives
Prineville a
second chance
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
PRINEVILLE — It was
not long ago that Crook
County had ive major lumber
mills. Timber was king, and
the rural Oregon county was
the nation’s top producer of
ponderosa lumber.
But amid restrictions
on harvesting from federal
lands, logging started to free-
fall around 1990. The coun-
ty’s mills began closing. The
global recession hit a few years
later. Unemployment soared to
around 20 percent, the highest
in Oregon.
“We had the sawmills close,
and then the bottom dropped
out of the economy. So, kick
us when we’re down,” said
Donna Barnes, Ochoco Lum-
ber Co. accounting manager.
Now, the digital revolution
is providing Crook County and
its main town, Prineville, with
a second chance.
Fifteen years ago, Face-
book came looking for a site
for its irst wholly owned data
center. The executives liked
that the chilly night air at 3,200
feet above sea level could cool
the servers, cheaply and in an
eco-friendly way. They liked
the 15-year abatement on
property taxes, and the fact
there was room to grow.
The
California-based
company
completed
a
300,000-square-foot data cen-
ter in 2011. Within months, it
began building a second. Face-
book is now building a third on a
bluff 400 feet above Prineville.
Apple followed suit, and ofi-
cials recently announced it will
also build its third data center in
the town of about 9,000.
The future looks sunnier.
Unemployment is down to 6.8
percent.
AP Photo/Andrew Selsky
Prineville Assistant City Engineer Mike Kasberger sur-
veys progress on construction of a wetlands and waste-
water treatment facility being built in Prineville.
AP Photo/Andrew Selsky
Ochoco Lumber Co. employee Debbie Noland looks at an undated aerial photo of the
lumber mill, which closed in 2001, in Prineville.
‘Pendulum swings’
“We were overlogging in
the ‘60s, and now we’ve been
curbed,” Prineville Mayor
Betty Roppe said. “The pen-
dulum swings the other way.
And so we’re trying to diver-
sify jobs.”
Logging is ingrained in
Oregon’s culture. A statue of
an ax-wielding pioneer tops
the state Capitol. Oregonians’
favorite local novel is Ken
Kesey’s “Sometimes a Great
Notion,” about a logging fam-
ily. Oregon’s professional soc-
cer team is the Portland Tim-
bers, its logo a double-bladed
ax over a forest-green
background.
But the timber troubles
that hit Crook County also
affected much of Oregon and
the West.
By September 2014, the
pendulum had swung so far
that Oregon’s high-tech indus-
try accounted for the same
number of workers and share
of wages as the forest sec-
tor did in the 1970s, the state
Ofice of Economic Analysis
noted in a report. Most of Ore-
gon’s nearly 100,000 high-
tech jobs are clustered in the
“Silicon Forest” around Port-
land, said Joshua Lehner, an
economist with the ofice.
That makes Prineville all
the more remarkable. The
town is a three-hour drive
from Portland and light years
from its liberal, hipster cul-
ture. Locals often wear cow-
boy hats and boots, not bean-
ies and Birkenstocks.
Other former mill towns
also have sought economic
alternatives, with varying suc-
cess. To create a high-tech
outpost in the high desert,
Prineville and Crook County
leaders showed a willingness
to cut through red tape.
“Our staff here are really
good at bending over back-
ward to help get things per-
mitted,” Roppe said.
The data centers spent
about $6 million for land
that was owned by the town
and county. In June, the town
announced Apple’s plans for a
new 330,000-square-foot data
center and 70,000-square-foot
logistics building, declaring
on Twitter: “We love Apple!”
‘We love Apple!’
So many construction
workers are here that motels
and RV spaces are usually
illed up. Once the data cen-
ters are built, those work-
ers will move on. But locals
also are among those building
the data centers, and they’re
being hired to operate, clean
and guard them.
The tech giants agreed to
pay 150 percent of customary
wages in the county, Roppe
said. Facebook initially
employed around 35 people,
and that number has swelled.
“Instead of 35 people, now
there are 165 people,” County
Commissioner Ken Fahlgren
said in an interview in the cen-
tury-old, ivy-covered Crook
County courthouse. “Every
time they build a new build-
ing, they add another group of
folks that work for them. We
hope that they live here, buy
homes here, bring their kids to
school here, and we develop
an economy around that.”
Highlighting Prineville’s
resurgence, a wetlands is
being built on the town’s west-
ern edge that will increase its
wastewater treatment capac-
ity. Some of the water will be
iltered and used by Apple to
cool its servers.
On the other end of town,
Ochoco Lumber is selling
the land its mill once stood
on, billed as prime real estate
along Ochoco Creek. The mill
closed in 2001. Only a small
building is left that Barnes,
the accountant, uses to man-
age the books of the compa-
ny’s operations elsewhere.
On the walls are photos of the
mill in full swing, depicting a
bygone era.
“The data centers on the
hill have been key to our rede-
velopment, so things look a
lot more positive,” Barnes
said.
Prineville’s metamorpho-
sis is rare for a small town
with an extractive-indus-
try-based economy, said John
M. Findlay, an American his-
tory professor at the Univer-
sity of Washington.
He cited as examples The
Dalles, which hosts a Goo-
gle data center, and Quincy,
Washington, which hosts
Microsoft, Yahoo and others.
Climate change may be turning gulls into cannibals
On island, a shift
to angry birds
By TRISTAN BAURICK
Kitsap Sun
PROTECTION ISLAND,
Wash. — Jim Hayward slips
on a hard hat and pops open an
umbrella before stepping into a
storm of angry gulls.
Hayward, a seabird biolo-
gist based on Protection Island
in the Strait of Juan de Fuca,
is making his evening rounds
through the largest gull nest-
ing colony in the Puget Sound
region. He’s been monitoring
this site since 1987, so he’s used
to the shrieking, the dive-bomb-
ing, the frequent splatterings of
gull poop, and the pecking at his
head, hands and feet.
What he’s not accustomed
to is the cannibalism, reported
the Kitsap Sun. It’s hard to
watch: A luffy chick straying a
few yards from its nest is sud-
denly snatched up by its neck.
Another hungry gull swoops in
and bites at the chick’s leg. The
mother intervenes but is out-
numbered. Her baby disappears
under a frenzy of lapping and
pecking.
Over the last decade, the
gulls have shown a growing
taste for their neighbors’ eggs
and chicks. The trend appears
linked to climate change.
“It doesn’t seem like a lot,
but a one-tenth of a degree
change in seawater tempera-
ture correlates to a 10 percent
increase in (the odds of) canni-
balism,” said Hayward, a pro-
fessor at Andrews University in
Michigan.
Over the past 60 years,
ocean temperatures have
increased about 15 times faster
than any other time over the
past 10,000 years. As tem-
peratures rise, plankton drops
into deeper, colder water. Fish
that feed on the plankton also
drop lower. The surface-feed-
ing gulls, which depend almost
entirely on ish while nesting
on Protection Island, can’t ind
enough to eat.
“So they resort to feeding
on their neighbors,” Hayward
said.
Bird paradise
Protection Island is a high-
cliffed and nearly treeless swath
of land near the mouth of Dis-
covery Bay about 5 miles west
of Port Townsend.
More than 70 percent of the
region’s seabirds nest on Protec-
tion — a fact that led to its sta-
tus as a national wildlife refuge
in 1982. The 380-acre island is
home to the third largest col-
ony of rhinoceros auklet sea-
birds in North America and one
of the last two breeding sites in
the Salish Sea for tufted pufins,
which nest in holes burrowed
into sandy cliffs.
The island’s ecological value
and the fragility of its habitat
make it off-limits to the public.
Protection’s only full-time
resident is a caretaker employed
by the U.S. Department of Fish
and Wildlife. Hayward and his
wife, mathematician Shandelle
Henson, also of Andrews Uni-
versity, spend two months each
summer studying the vast glau-
cous-winged gull population.
High temps,
high cannibalism
It was Henson who answered
the cannibalism question.
Taking decades of Hay-
ward’s data, she fed it into a
computer model loaded with a
range of climate and other envi-
ronmental factors.
“We found that, over the last
eight years, there’s a 100 per-
cent correlation between hot
years and high cannibalism,”
she said.
She also found that gulls
are beginning to synchronize
egg-laying, possibly in response
to cannibalism.
“On one day, we’ll see a ton
of eggs. The next day — hardly
any,” Hayward said.
Henson’s hypothesis: “If
there’s a lot of eggs available
all at once, there’s less chance
your own eggs will be taken,”
she said.
Gulls aren’t picky eaters.
They’ll pluck a meal from a
dumpster just as readily as a
beach at low tide. But during
nesting, their range is greatly
reduced. They can’t be gone for
long from their nests and must
rely on whatever the immediate
area provides. Increasingly, the
region’s marine waters simply
aren’t providing.
Forage ish such as herring
and sand lance — key food
sources for salmon, birds and
other marine animals — are
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“These successes take
some imagination — commu-
nities have to be able to see
past declining industries and
envision new ones,” Findlay
said. They also require infra-
structure and political support,
such as tax breaks, he noted.
Other
timber-dependent
towns like Bend and Hood
River have capitalized on out-
door recreation and craft brew-
eries, and attracting retirees.
Trickle down
In Prineville, trickle-down
beneits of the data-center
boom are noted in the Taqueria
Mi Tiendita, where customers
include construction workers.
“We bought this shop eight
years ago,” said Lety Toledo,
who co-owns the cafe with her
husband. “Those were tough
times, but we hung on. Now, it
is better.”
Lehner, the economist, cau-
tions that the total number of
jobs in the county is the same
as in the 1990s. Some people
left; others gave up looking for
work, driving down the unem-
ployment rate.
Still, he believes the labor
force is poised to grow in com-
ing years.
“The outlook is fairly bright
for Crook County, particularly
relative to much of rural Amer-
ica,” he said.
Seaside ire
impacts
residents,
kills cats
The Daily Astorian
Tristan Baurick/Kitsap Sun
Biologist Jim Hayward shields himself with an umbrella
while visiting a large gull nesting colony on Protection Is-
land, a wildlife refuge in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, near Port
Townsend, Wash. Hayward’s research has found that climate
change is triggering cannibalism among nesting gulls.
in decline. Fish accustomed to
warmer water are moving in,
but they pack less of a nutri-
tional punch.
“Essentially, they’re getting
junk food,” said Scott Pearson,
an avian ecologist with the state
Department of Fish and Wildlife.
B O N N E V I L L E
P O W E R
SEASIDE — A ire at a
Seaside apartment complex
Friday afternoon impacted
nine adults and a child and
left six cats dead, author-
ities said. Another 20 cats
were rescued.
Fire crews responded at
about 4:30 p.m. and found
smoke coming from the
back of the six-unit com-
plex in the 300 block of S.
Edgewood Street.
Authorities said the
cause of the ire is under
investigation.
The American Red
Cross Cascades Region
assisted residents, who
were unharmed, on Friday
evening.
A D M I N I S T R A T I O N
You are Invited to Attend
a Public Meeting
The Bonneville Power Administration invites you to attend a meeting to learn more
about and discuss the proposed Wallacut Conl uence Restoration Project in Pacii c County,
Washington.
Aug. 4, 2016, 6 – 8 pm
Ilwaco Community Building
158 1st Ave N
Ilwaco, WA 98624
NEWS TALK FOR THE COAST
Pro viding live a nd lo ca l new s co vera ge every da y
Y ou could see it ton igh t, rea d a bout
it tom orrow or h ea r it live N O W !
Earlier this year, BPA conducted project scoping and asked for public input on the proposed
project. A number of concerns were raised over how modifying an existing levee might af ect
l ood risk to adjacent properties including the Vandalia neighborhood.
As part of the project design, hydraulic modeling was commissioned to determine changes in
water depth and l ow associated with the proposed project. We would like to share the results of
this modeling with you and discuss any other issues that may be of interest or concern.
Please attend the meeting to talk with BPA representatives, project staf and the engineers
who conducted the modeling. To read more about the proposed project online, visit: www.bpa.
gov/goto/WallacutRiverConl uenceEstuary.
For Americans with Disabilities Act accommodations please call BPA toll-free at 800-622-
4519.