The daily Astorian., March 14, 2017, Image 1

DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 2017
144TH YEAR, NO. 183
ONE DOLLAR
Anglers
petition
for local’s
removal
Buckmaster focus of
call from steelheaders
By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
Eric Mortenson/ EO Media Group
Uplifted Farm owner Danny Grimm won a pair of blue ribbons at the Oregon State Fair for the cannabis he grows in a Salem
industrial area. The state’s growers consider themselves farmers and a new sector of agriculture, and the state agrees.
TAKING ROOT
MARIJUANA GROWERS CONSIDER THEMSELVES FARMERS
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
S
ALEM — Danny Grimm shares many of the concerns familiar to
pot growers throughout the Pacifi c Northwest and Northern Cali-
fornia. Start with federal regulatory overreach, because the recent,
undefi ned rumblings out of the Trump administration about “greater
enforcement” are enough to give anyone pause.
Throw in questions about water quality and nutrient inputs, plus a
complicated infrastructure of pumps, water lines and electrical controls
that Grimm and his employees must maintain. And don’t forget pests.
Like many producers he’d rather not use chemical insecticides, and so
far he’s protecting his crop with battalions of predator mites, ladybugs
and benefi cial nematodes.
“Once you’re having problems, if you don’t know how to fi x it,
bugs will eat you alive,” Grimm said.
The biggest issue is market uncertainty. Farmers are always looking
for the next big thing, and a lot of people are jumping
in to meet the demand. But what looks like a gold rush
now could go south if over supply drops the price.
Grimm said scaling up production will be the big-
gest challenge for small producers.
“It goes like any other industry,” he
said. “There will be people who fail and
people who make it — people who are
able to scale up and keep the quality.”
See PETITION, Page 9A
Size is an
issue at
the Pearl
‘Defi nitely ag’
Grimm, 31, grows cannabis. He’s the owner of
Uplifted Farm, and his crop land is a dilapidated
warehouse in an industrial area off Salem’s
Portland Road. He’s scrapped, made do and
scrambled to succeed. By at least one mea-
sure, he’s an excellent grower. This past summer,
the fi rst time the Oregon State Fair accepted cannabis plants for judg-
ing, he won blue ribbons for his Granddaddy Purple, an indica variety,
and his Super Sour Diesel, a more psychoactive sativa variety.
This spring, Grimm will move Uplifted Farm into a massive old
concrete building that used to be a slaughterhouse. He and his part-
ner, Nathan Martinez, will have 30,000 square feet of growing space in
what Grimm estimates is a $5 million renovation.
“I’m all in,” Grimm said.
Don’t tell him he’s not a farmer, or that cannabis is not an agricul-
tural crop.
See GROWERS, Page 4A
Decision delayed in
Prom resort appeal
Eric Mortenson/ EO Media Group
Electrical contractor Gregory Fuller, 69, of Federal Way,
Wash ., outfits old shipping containers with LED grow
lights and markets them as mobile pot growing systems.
This one sells for $110,000.
A Knappa High School principal
reported the incident in the fall of
2015. A video that had been shared
with students at the high school
See MOTHER, Page 9A
See PEARL, Page 9A
a plea agreement with the District
Attorney’s Offi ce.
A fi rst degree encouraging child
sex abuse charge was deferred until
successful completion of probation
as part of the deal. Second degree
encouraging child sex abuse and
using a child in a display of sexu-
ally explicit conduct charges were
dismissed.
Underage girl was
recorded, video
shared at school
By JACK HEFFERNAN
The Daily Astorian
James Michael
Hendrickson
Cody James
Carsner
Michael Hendrickson pleaded
guilty to invasion of personal pri-
vacy. They were given three years
of probation — including 100 hours
of community service — as part of
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
SEASIDE — A snafu in the submission
of a legal notice delayed a decision on the
future of a new hotel on the Prom .
But parties in favor and against a height
variance allowing construction of the pro-
posed three-story, 45-room Pearl Oceanfront
Resort on 341 South Prom made their cases
before city councilors during an appeals
hearing Monday night.
Because of an 8-foot grade difference
between the east and west sides of the build-
ing, a variance was needed to allow the
increase to 60 feet for the roof height at the
west building wing, an addition of 15 feet
over the 45 feet allowed by city zoning.
The Planning Commission granted the
variance in January, a decision appealed to
the City Council by Susan and Dan Calef,
owners of a duplex at 25 Avenue A. This is
their second appeal of the proposed struc-
ture. City councilors returned the project
to the Planning Commission last year after
rejecting a setback variance approval.
“The hardship is developing this property
at all, given not only the 8-foot grade change,
but also the variances that have been granted
to the adjacent property,” Pearl architect
David Vonada said Monday night.
Victim’s mother urges men to take
responsibility for sex recording
A victim’s mother provided
lengthy, personal testimony Mon-
day at the plea and sentencing
hearing of two Knappa men who
secretly recorded sex with her
underage daughter and shared the
video around their high school in
2015.
Cody James Carsner and James
SALEM — In the latest development in
the feud between sport anglers and commer-
cial fi shermen over the use of gillnets in the
L ower Columbia River,
a sport -angling group is
petitioning the governor
to remove a state fi sh
and wildlife commis-
sioner who voted with
three others to continue
to allow the practice in
late January.
The Association of
Northwest Steelheaders
Bruce
submitted a petition last
Buckmaster
week signed by nearly
6,000 people calling on
Gov. Kate Brown to remove Commissioner
Bruce Buckmaster.
Buckmaster, a Brown appointee, has
served on the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Com-
mission since 2015. Detractors argued at the
time he was a lobbyist for the commercial
gillnetting industry, a claim which the Asto-
ria man denied.
Buckmaster, the former owner of Bio-Or-
egon , the fi sh feed company, declined to
comment on the petition Monday. The Gov-
ernor’s Offi ce also declined comment on the
petition.
The petition also calls for Oregon’s com-
mission to adopt rules that align with a pre-
vious plan to phase out gillnetting altogether,
as Washington’s commission voted to do in
January.
Bob Rees, executive director of the Asso-
ciation of Northwest Steelheaders, said Mon-
day that his group was “not opposed to the
commercial fi shing industry” and recognized
that the industry played a role in Oregon’s
economy.
“The Steelheaders want to grow sport-fi sh-
ing opportunities all across rural Oregon, and
Buckmaster has shown he is not committed to
that by attempting to derail the reforms,” Rees
wrote in an email.
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