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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JULY 24, 2018
Interior officials keyed in on
Cascade-Siskiyou logging benefits
Documents
reveal internal
deliberations
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Dale Barrett, left, is helping Chris Sherby, co-owner of
S&F Land Services, take over his land surveying on the
North Coast.
New firm takes over
local land surveying
By EDWARD
STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
Dale Barrett, a land sur-
veyor who joined HLB &
Associates in 1986, has
amassed a treasure trove of
maps, plans and institutional
knowledge from countless
North Coast projects dating
back to the 1970s.
As he approaches retire-
ment, Barrett is helping tran-
sition HLB’s operations to
S&F Land Services, a Port-
land-based firm that has
taken on his team of coastal
surveyors.
HLB was originally
founded in Manzanita by
Colin Handforth and Ron
Larson in 1975 as Handforth
and Larson Surveying and
Engineering.
Barrett, previously a
county surveyor, joined the
two in 1986, creating HLB
& Associates. In 2006, the
company merged with Port-
land-based design, planning
and engineering firm Otak
Inc. to form HLB Otak.
Otak recently gave HLB
notice that it would be pull-
ing out of the partnership,
Barrett said.
“They were just not that
interested in the coastal mar-
ket,” he said. “They want
big-city stuff. Their primary
focus is Denver, Portland,
Seattle.”
Otak reached out to S&F,
an emerging small business
formed in 2016 by Christo-
pher Sherby and Matthew
Faulkner, a former employee
of HLB, about taking over
the surveying team. This
month, S&F took over all of
HLB’s accounts.
The company’s survey
projects range in size from
small residential property
line disputes and municipal
contracts to large commer-
cial projects and the recon-
struction of the system of
jetties at the mouth of the
Columbia River. S&F is able
to provide cost-effective
surveying locally because
of the copious records and
institutional
knowledge
from HLB’s 43-year his-
tory, Sherby said. Former
employees of HLB have
also taken up many positions
with local municipalities.
“Dale’s been taking me
around to introduce me to
all the agencies, and every-
where we go, it’s usually
someone who’s worked for
Dale,” Sherby said.
HLB had more than 50
employees and offices in
Manzanita, Gearhart and
Long Beach, Washing-
ton, when the merger with
Otak occurred in 2006. But
during the Great Recession,
Otak cut the staff down to
fewer than 10 and closed the
offices in Long Beach and
Manzanita, Barrett said.
“All the work is still
here,” he said. “The pos-
sibility of growth is really
good. The struggle is to find
the staff.”
With a staff of around
seven, the company has
been inundated with work
so far and is looking to add
more surveyors on the coast,
Sherby said. Like others, it
faces a lack of affordable
housing that makes it dif-
ficult to bring in new peo-
ple. But for those who join,
Sherby said, S&F provides
a high-quality, family wage
position.
“We’re trying to provide
a full, lifetime career,” he
said.
By COURTNEY FLATT
Northwest Public
Broadcasting
While deciding whether to
shrink Oregon’s Cascade-Siski-
you National Monument, Inte-
rior Department officials focused
on the land’s logging potential.
The information was
revealed in mistakenly-re-
leased documents.
Conservation groups are
frustrated by revelations in
The Washington Post that
Interior Department officials
focused on the logging value
and not the biological diversity
the monument was designated
to protect.
Dave Willis, of the Soda
Mountain Wilderness Council,
a conservation group working to
protect the monument, said it’s
a very important biological cor-
ridor, connecting three moun-
tain ranges in southern Oregon
and Northern California.
“It’s a crucial pathway for
critters that don’t want to be
isolated and have to marry
their cousins all the time,” Wil-
lis said.
He said that connec-
tive land bridge needs to be
strengthened.
President Barack Obama
expanded the Cascade-Sis-
kiyou National Monument a
few days before he left office.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke
has recommended shrinking
Bureau of Land Management
The Trump administration may shrink the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.
its size, but President Donald
Trump hasn’t made a decision
yet.
Willis wants the monu-
ment’s boundaries kept intact.
“It sounds like (Zinke is)
ignoring not only the science,
but the economics as well. Not
only ignoring it, but hiding it
under a rock,” Willis said.
Willis said his group will
take legal action if the monu-
ment is downsized.
“These forests need consci-
entious protection, not heed-
less degradation,” Willis said.
Logging groups say Pres-
ident Obama should not have
been able to expand the mon-
ument. Parts of the expansion
included what are known as
O&C lands, which were des-
ignated by Congress for timber
production.
“These lands are the life-
blood of rural communities in
western Oregon,” said Travis
Joseph, president of the Amer-
ican Forest Resource Council,
an industry group.
Joseph’s group is part of
a lawsuit that argues Obama
didn’t have the authority to
designate monument land
after Congress had estab-
lished that same land for tim-
ber production.
“If a president can do that,
what prohibits a president
from designating even more
O&C lands for a national mon-
ument?” Joseph said.
Survey: Brown and Buehler tied for governor
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
Likely voters appear to be
evenly divided in the race for
governor between Gov. Kate
Brown and state Rep. Knute
Buehler, according to the first
public results of a poll since
the May primary.
The random online survey
of 770 registered voters, con-
sidered likely to cast a bal-
lot in the November election,
was performed by Gravis Mar-
keting, a nonpartisan research
firm that has been repeat-
edly scrutinized for inaccurate
results.
Kate
Brown
Knute
Buehler
The survey was conducted
July 16 and July 17 and was
weighted by voting demo-
graphics. Gravis reported pay-
ing for the survey and gave it a
margin of error of 3.5 percent-
age points.
About 45 percent of those
surveyed indicated they would
vote for Brown; the same per-
centage said they would vote
for Buehler. Ten percent of
respondents were uncertain.
The campaigns for both
candidates declined comment
on the survey.
Patrick Starnes, the Indepen-
dent Party of Oregon nominee,
and other third-party nominees
for governor were not offered
as an option, so it’s unclear how
undecided and third-party vot-
ers could sway the results.
The governor’s race was
just one of 25 questions posed
to the survey participants.
Oregon woman reunites girl with toy lion lost on remote hike
Associated Press
BEND — A little girl
who lost her beloved stuffed
lion on a hike in the Oregon
backcountry was reunited
with her favorite toy over the
weekend after a community
effort to identify her.
Hiker Holly Spaman, who
recently moved to Bend from
Yakima, Washington, ran
into Audrianna Flores and
her family as they descended
Broken Top Trail on July 16
on their way back from a
hike to the remote No Name
Lake.
The distraught 7-year-old
told Spaman about her lost
stuffed lion, “Kitty,” which
had fallen out of her moth-
Holly Spaman
A small stuffed lion was found along the Broken Top
Trail near Bend.
er’s backpack unnoticed
during the trek, the mother,
Erin Allen, told The Associ-
ated Press.
Spaman didn’t think
she’d find the toy in such a
vast wilderness, but she kept
her eyes peeled and spotted
Kitty a few miles later.
She didn’t have the fam-
ily’s name or number. So
she put Kitty on a rock and
snapped a photo of the well-
loved beige-and-yellow lion
in front of jagged peaks of
Broken Top Mountain —
snow in the background —
and posted it online when she
got home.
“Yesterday late afternoon
I met a sweet child on Bro-
ken Top Trail to No Name
Lake who asked me to keep
an eye out for her stuffed ani-
mal,” Spaman wrote. “Guess
what? I found it! If anyone
knows this kiddo, please help
us connect.”
Seattle OKs new rights for nannies, domestic workers
Associated Press
SEATTLE — Nannies,
house cleaners and other
domestic workers in Seattle
would gain new labor protec-
tions under legislation passed
Monday by city leaders.
The City Council unani-
mously approved a so-called
“bill of rights” that ensures
domestic workers receive min-
imum wage, proper rest, meal
breaks and other rights.
Eight states have passed
similar legislation, including
New York, Oregon and Illi-
nois. Seattle is believed to be
the first city to do so.
“The reality is their work
makes the work of this city
possible,” said City Councilor
Teresa Mosqueda, who spon-
sored the legislation, adding:
“They clean our homes and
they clean our yards and they’ve
been left out of labor laws.”
The ordinance would cre-
ate a panel of employers and
workers to come up with rec-
ommendations on wage stan-
dards, retirement and health
care benefits, training and
other issues. It would also pre-
vent employers from keeping a
worker’s personal documents.
The new rules, which take
effect in January, would apply
to those working in private
homes, such as a nanny, house
cleaner, home care worker,
gardener or cook. It applies to
independent contractors, full-
time, part-time and temporary
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell
said in a statement that she
was unhappy that the Trump
administration made a deci-
sion to “dismiss evidence,”
when deciding whether to
shrink national monuments.
“The fact that the Trump
administration places no value
on the booming recreation
economy that generates over
$887 billion annually is no sur-
prise to those of us who have
been watching their shameful
record of exploiting our pub-
lic lands over the last two years.
This ‘drill at all costs’ approach
is wrong for our economy and
wrong for the environment,”
the Washington state Democrat
said.
workers and hourly or salaried
employees.
Mosqueda noted that most
domestic workers are women,
people of color or immi-
grants, and that they have been
excluded from federal labor
laws that protect other work-
ers or that give employees the
right to organize.
Several domestic workers,
some speaking through Span-
ish interpreters, spoke in favor
of the measure Monday. Some
described how they had been
victims of wage theft in the
past or knew others who were
afraid to speak out. They told
council members that workers
deserve a minimum wage and
other protections.
For the past year, domes-
tic workers have been organiz-
ing for better labor protections
with support from Working
Washington, Casa Latina and
the National Domestic Work-
ers Alliance.
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Spaman’s friends for-
warded her note, which was
then passed on to complete
strangers as everyone tried
to reconnect the girl with her
lost lion.
The Bulletin, the local
newspaper,
joined
the
search and after almost a
week of community effort,
a very happy Audrianna
was reunited with Kitty on
Saturday.
On Monday, Allen told
the AP that her daughter was
sleeping — undoubtedly
with Kitty — and wasn’t
available for an interview.
“This has been truly
amazing — all of the kind
people out there in this
world,” Allen said.
Gravis has a 67 percent
accuracy in calling races,
according to Nate Silver’s
FiveThirtyEight.
For example, in January
2016, a Gravis Marketing poll
got a Maryland congressional
race wrong by 96 percentage
points, according to The Fix,
a politics blog from the Wash-
ington Post.
This is the second time that
Buehler has attempted to unseat
Brown from a statewide elected
position. In 2012, he challenged
her for the office of secretary
of state and lost with 43.2 per-
cent of the vote compared with
Brown’s 51.3 percent.
Earthquake
strikes off the
Oregon Coast
Associated Press
PORTLAND — The
U.S. Geological Survey
recorded a 4.3-magnitude
earthquake today in the
Pacific Ocean off the Ore-
gon Coast.
The temblor struck
about 125 miles west of
Gold Beach. It occurred at
a depth of 6.2 miles.
There have been no
reports of injuries or
damage.
Experts have said for
years that Oregon and the
Pacific Northwest are due
for a major earthquake
with a magnitude of 8.0 or
higher. Small quakes, like
today’s, are fairly common.