Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 5, 2016)
8A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 5, 2016 Dinner: Event will return next year Continued from Page 1A local potatoes and sour cream and barbecue carrots. Ball said part of the purpose was to vary preparation, incorporating baked, smoked, grilled, pick- led and conit dishes. For des- sert was a mixed berry custard cup with hazelnuts — Oregon leads the production of these nuts — along with marionber- ries, boysenberries and black raspberries. Get cooking Graphic courtesy of Columbia Memorial Hospital Patients at the Knight Cancer Collaborative will receive infusion chemotherapy on the second floor, with views of the Columbia River. Cancer center: Construction is estimated to cost $16.5 million Continued from Page 1A to centers in the region. “Nobody took any consid- eration of building a cancer center here” in Astoria, he said, until Mark O’Halloran, director of clinical outreach at OHSU, offered to come out. “It’s hard to believe that in 2010 we started with a two-day (-a-week) clinic,” Thorsen said, about the hospi- tal’s partnership with OHSU, that serves an estimated 300 patients per month. John Warren Field had been coveted by the hospital for decades, he said, but the stars aligned in the last several years. The hospital paid for the construction of the Astoria Sports Complex and CMH Field. In exchange, the Astoria School District vacated John Warren Field. The sports com- plex also helped the city of Astoria cap and decommission a long-unused landill with a multisport turf ield. Timing is everything World events also aligned to provide historically low interest rates that saved the hospital an estimated $1.8 mil- lion over the 30-year life of the $18.8 million worth of bonds to inance the cancer center and a renovation of the emer- gency department. The hospital sold the bonds to investors June 22, one day before the British voted to leave the European Union and a day after Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen gave a monetary policy speech to Congress stressing a slower recovery and a cautious approach to changing mone- tary policy. When the hospital irst started discussing the bond in October, he said, the esti- mated municipal market data for 30-year bond was 3.04 per- cent. By the time the hospi- tal sold the bonds to investors in June, the interest rate had dipped to 2.19 percent, saving the hospital millions. Thorsen said the exact effect of the Brexit vote is uncertain, but certainly con- tributed to the historically low interest rates at the time of the bond sale. He said the hospital was also helped by high investor demand for tax-exempt revenue bonds, issued by the Hospital Facil- ities Authority of the city of Astoria to help nonproits get inancing. The hospital’s bonds have different matur- ities, with nearly $7.5 million due in 25 years, $2.1 million in 26 years and the inal $9.2 million in 30 years. Of the total bonds, $13 mil- lion will go toward the con- struction of the cancer cen- ter, estimated to cost $16.5 million. The hospital is also looking at a $5 million to $7 million renovation of its emer- gency department. Along with the bonds, the hospital has raised more than $2 million of a $3 million goal, with signiicant contri- butions from a host of locally prominent families, including the Armingtons, Nygaards, Rubidouxs, Teevins, Lums, Pohlads, Leinassars, Van Dus- ens, Parks, Phillips, Autios, Henningsgaards, Waisan- ens, Hellbergs, Englunds, Schnitzers, Allens, Johnsons, Ficks and others. Tax plan: ‘If passed, this tax increase would greatly raise the cost of living in Oregon’ Continued from Page 1A The tax would pour an estimated $3 billion a year into state coffers but slow job growth and bump up con- sumer prices, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Revenue Ofice. “Our state cannot move forward and meet Oregon’s growing needs over the next decade without a stable rev- enue base,” Brown said Thursday. “Measure 97 is an important step forward, and I will make sure the funds the measure yields go towards schools, health care, and seniors, as the voters expect. “State leaders before me have repeatedly tried and failed to solve the problem of adequate and stable fund- ing for schools and other state services. Every solution has had strengths and weak- nesses in terms of fairness and economic impact. None has succeeded in bringing the business community, indi- vidual and family taxpayers, service providers, and advo- cates together.” Bud Pierce, Brown’s Republican challenger in November’s governor’s race, said he was disap- pointed that Brown is sup- porting what would be the largest sales tax increase in Oregon’s history. “If passed, this tax increase would greatly raise the cost of living in Ore- gon,” Pierce said in a state- ment. “Everyone, including low-income families would be paying on average more than $1,800 (sic) per family more for goods and services. A tax increase like this will not help anyone. It will hurt low-income families in Ore- gon the most.” The Legislative Revenue Ofice estimated that the tax would cause price increases that would cost a family earning median income more than $600 more per year in the form of increased prices on daily needs, such as food, fuel and electricity. Brown said that state lead- ers have repeatedly failed to come up with another solu- tion to Oregon’s unstable funding system for schools and other state services. “Every solution has had strengths and weaknesses in terms of fairness and eco- nomic impact,” she said. Ginger Edwards, who founded R-evolution Gardens eight years ago in the Nehalem Valley at the southern tip of Clat- sop County, said the key to mar- keting specialty crops is in show- ing people how to use them. “It’s just a few skills that are missing” from previous generations, she said. “We’ve been really invested in getting people back into the kitchen and cooking again.” Edwards gets most of her business from farmers mar- kets and community-sup- ported agriculture, a farmer’s Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian Laurel Berblinger, center, sells garlic to a customer at the Gales Meadow Farm stand at the Crop Up Dinner Series on Thursday. More photos online at DailyAstorian.com choice delivery of vegetables to enrolled members weekly. She also works with the Rine- hart Clinic in Wheeler, provid- ing low-income patients with cooking skills and local pro- duce. Along with running her farm, Edwards is the execu- tive director of North Fork 53, a farm-to-table bed and break- fast teaching people how to cook, can and otherwise pre- serve their produce to last through the winter. Fish in school More than 300 specialty crop producers this year have reached Oregon’s students through the state Depart- ment of Agriculture’s Farm to School program. Chief among those was Bornstein Seafoods, a proces- sor based in Bellingham, Wash- ington, with a plant in Astoria. The company on Thursday won the Oregon State Schools Pro- ducer of the Year Award. Christa Svensson, an export and marketing manager at Bornstein, said that when the company’s efforts to get sea- food into schools started, the average amount spent per stu- dent was $1 per lunch, about one-ifth of it going to milk, and with no state support. In 2011, the state passed a law providing state money for schools to buy food from Ore- gon producers. This past school year, Born- stein Seafoods provided seafood to six school districts, including Seaside. Svensson said the com- pany hopes to expand the pro- gram to six more school districts in the coming year. Turner said the crop-up market and dinner will return next year, hopefully in con- junction with the River Peo- ple Farmers Market, which offers local produce from 3 to 7 p.m. Thursdays at 12th and Exchange streets. Shrimp: Nisbet employs 95 Paciic County workers Continued from Page 1A “We’ve got a bed up there at Cedar River, actually at this time it’s our best fattening bed,” said Nisbet, 65. “There’s a lot of infestation all around that bed in the Tokeland area … So we’re abandoning. We’re in the process of mov- ing all the oysters off the bed. It’s 80 acres, so it’s a big bed and it’s going to be a big hit.” Collectively known as bur- rowing shrimp, the bay har- bors two native species — ghost shrimp and blue mud shrimp. Although they’ve been trying to expand their range for decades, they are especially proliic this year, thriving in unusually warm 70-degree bay water. The shrimp aren’t edible by humans. In contrast, oys- ters generate an annual total of about $35 million for the Paciic County economy. Nisbet employs 95 Paciic County workers, who are paid $2.7 million a year. These workers put 100 kids in schools in the South Bend, Naselle and Raymond districts. Loss of the Cedar River bed will cost his farm hundreds of thousands of dollars this year alone, resulting in Nisbet’s business shrinking. Scene of the disaster Traveling by boat across the Bay Center Channel of Wil- lapa Bay, headed north from Nisbet’s Goose Point Oysters, farm manager Francisco Meli- ton pilots his skiff slowly. The way can be tricky, especially when the tide is out. The route is shallow in parts and he lets off the throttle. After a few min- utes the boat speeds up again and the houses that line the sea wall in Tokeland come into view as the boat approaches the port. At its entry, located on top of a navigational beacon, a pair of gulls have made a nest with babies inside. Meliton makes bird calls as he approaches, the adult birds chirping back. As the boat pulls up to the shore of an expansive oys- ter bed, Goose Point biolo- gist Brian Kingzett warns that when walking on the tidal lats it’s best not to plant your heels when you walk, in order to avoid having your leg swal- lowed by the mud in the areas infested by burrowing shrimp. The mud on the eastern side still has a fair amount of eel- grass, which creates a support system of roots under the sur- face that allows oysters to sit above the mud during high tide. However, the western portion of this particular plot looks more like the surface of the moon, porous and devoid of eelgrass, leaving oysters to sink in to the mud and die. Meliton has to make his rounds, inspecting the stock throughout this bed. As he ventures into the shrimp-in- fested area he goes from slid- ing his feet along the surface to sinking up to his knees, as if he were caught in quick sand. Meliton comes back with a handful of seven or eight shrimp, with their oversized, mutant-looking claws sticking out in front of their tiny bodies. You wouldn’t think that something so small could do so much damage. But look- Damian Mulinix/For EO Media Group Burrowing shrimp continue to plague the oyster beds of Willapa Bay, as each hole that riddles the quick sand-like ground represents at least one of the creatures. ing at the land where he found them — riddled with thou- sands of holes, no eelgrass or living oysters to be seen — it is very obvious that these tiny menaces are continuing to gain a claw-hold on the oyster mecca that is Willapa Bay. How we got here Last year, oyster and clam growers in Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor planned to spray up to 2,000 acres of tidelands with imidacloprid, a neon- icotinoid pesticide, to con- trol the shrimp. The Washing- ton Department of Ecology issued a permit April 16, 2015, but Puget Sound-based Tay- lor Shellish Farms said May 1 it would not spray its Willapa Bay beds following a negative reaction to spraying, largely generated by Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat. Two days later, the Wil- lapa-Grays Harbor Oyster Growers Association told DOE it was suspending the permit. Later, growers learned DOE considered the action to be an outright surrender and cancel- lation of the permit, meaning the process had to start from scratch this year, with a goal of obtaining a new permit for shrimp control in 2017. The alternative oyster growers eventually proposed is Imidacloprid. It is widely used on land crops, including Wash- ington hops. The U.S. Envi- ronmental Protection Agency and Washington State Depart- ment of Agriculture approved using it speciically in the bay and harbor, even though it is controversial in other settings, being sometimes blamed for honeybee die-offs. “The sad thing about this is that I don’t think the public really understands that it was designed for aquatic use and is so benign that a good applica- tion doesn’t even kill them, it just puts them to sleep,” Nis- bet said regarding Imidacloprid. After the shrimp are anesthe- tized, they stop iltering the sur- rounding sediment. Tidal action collapses their burrows on them and the chemical disappears. Going back to carbaryl isn’t an option. The EPA no longer registers it as an aquatic pesti- cide, and DOE has closed off any chance growers could revive their permit, DOE spokesman Chase Gallagher said. A shrinking farm Fattening beds like those off Cedar River are in short sup- ply around Willapa Bay. Usu- ally in places with lots of ocean tidal inluence and other spe- cial characteristics, they bathe oysters in nutrients, allowing them to plump up and become delicious. It has now been at least three years since there was any type of shrimp control on Nisbet’s Cedar River fattening bed, and shrimp are popping up everywhere like dandelions in a neglected yard. The oysters are being moved to less nutritious beds Nisbet owns elsewhere in the bay. (Washington is somewhat unique in conferring private ownership rights on tidelands that are periodically underwater.) Unless DOE re-grants the permit for Imidacloprid so it can be applied with hand-held spray wands in time for next year, “Those 80 acres will be a dead loss, there’s nothing we can do with it,” Nisbet said. Ecological impacts Beyond damage to their own business, Nisbet and Moncy said they fear con- sequences of out-of-control shrimp populations on the ecology of the bay. Most Willapa oystermen raise oysters in a way that somewhat mimics the natural oyster beds that were found here when people irst arrived. Moncy said the explosion in shrimp numbers resem- bles the former takeover of the bay by invasive spartina grass, except that the shrimp are unnoticed from shore. The continuing loss of oys- ter lands will result in a bio- logically poorer place, Moncy said. The public doesn’t “real- ize the devastation that’s hap- pening out there on such a large scale,” she said. Like spartina, which was eventually eliminated thanks to a concerted chemical con- trol program, Moncy said the shrimp can be kept within rea- sonable bounds if farmers and agencies cooperate. There is no intention to try to eradicate the shrimp. “This is a short-term issue that we actually have a solu- tion for, and as oyster farm- ers we’re never going to stop looking for other alterna- tives and other solutions for this issue, because this is our home,” she said. — Damian Mulinix and Don Jenkins contributed to this story. S a ve the date! T h e Cla tsop Coun ty H istorica l Society, w ith th e gen erous spon sorsh ip of City L um ber Com pa n y is proud to presen t a specia l tour of the “O ther” Fla vel Ho u se, the Ca p t. Geo rg e Co n ra d Fla vel ho m e a t 627 15th S treet o n R egatta Sunday AU G U ST 14 10AM -4 PM e st h e h ous rsh ip ! e b r t he be T ickets a re a va ila ble n ow , on ly a t th e T to tou e m Ca rria ge H ouse Visitor Cen ter, m 714 E xch a n ge Street, Astoria . way g e t a Tickets a re $10 for Cla tsop Cou n ty H istorica l is to Society m em bers a n d $25 for n on -m em bers M em bersh ips sta rt a t ju st $35 fo r in d ivid u a ls a n d $5 5 fo r a fa m ily C C HS Cla tsop Cou n ty H istorica l Society