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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MARcH 15, 2019
US eases land restrictions meant to protect sage grouse
Gov. Brown backs
‘shift’ to active
conservation
By MATTHEW BROWN
Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. —
The Trump administration
today finalized changes to
sweeping federal land use
plans for Western States to
ease energy industry restric-
tions in a way officials say
will protect a struggling bird
species.
The changes by the
U.S. Bureau of Land Man-
agement will guide future
efforts to conserve greater
sage grouse, ground-dwell-
ing birds that range across
portions of 11 Western
states.
Environmentalists have
said the widely-antici-
pated move will undermine
protections for the chick-
en-sized bird. They would
allow more oil and gas drill-
ing and other activities on
grouse habitat.
But the administration
secured key backing from
Democratic and Republican
governors in affected states.
Oregon
Gov.
Kate
Brown, a Democrat, said in
a statement that the changes
marked “a shift away from
planning toward active con-
servation and landscape
management.”
The birds are known for
an elaborate mating ritual
in which males puff out a
yellow air sac in their chest
as they strut around breed-
ing grounds known as leks.
Their numbers have plum-
meted due to energy devel-
opment, disease and other
factors.
Opponents are expected
to challenge the changes in
court. Brian Rutledge with
the Audubon Society said
AP Photo/David Zalubowski
Male greater sage grouse perform their mating ritual on a
lake near Walden, Colo.
the revisions will make it
harder to stop the long-term
decline of sage grouse by
giving oil and gas compa-
nies access to crucial grouse
habitat.
“It’s a free for all, based
on prioritizing fossil fuel
extraction over any other use
of the federal landscape,”
Rutledge said.
U.S. Bureau of Land
Management Acting Direc-
tor Brian Steed said the
changes address concerns
aired by state officials that
previous policies governing
millions of acres of federal
land were too restrictive.
Those policies were
largely enacted under former
President Barack Obama.
They were memorialized in
a 2015 partnership between
Western states and the fed-
eral government.
Steed said the broad revi-
sions to the Obama-era
plans were meant to move
beyond what he called a
“one-size-fits-all” approach
under the old rules. He said
the changes give more flex-
ibility to land managers and
states concerned about bal-
ancing economic develop-
ment with protections for
the bird.
“Our intent was not to
throw out the plans, but to
make them better respond
to the needs on the ground,”
Steed said. “We’re doing
that in a very careful way to
ensure that the bird’s protec-
tions are still in effect.”
The birds once num-
bered in the millions but the
most recent estimates from
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service places the popula-
tion at between 200,000 to
500,000.
The 2015 plans capped
years of negotiations and
were intended to prevent
grouse from being listed as
a threatened or endangered
species.
Such a designation could
have brought severe lim-
itations on grazing, energy
development and other
activities across the bird’s
range, which covers some
270,000 square miles.
Under President Don-
ald Trump, Interior Depart-
ment officials have vowed
to lift obstacles to drilling.
Grouse protections have
long been viewed by the
energy industry as an obsta-
cle to development.
FAA’s close ties to Boeing company Senate votes
against Trump
questioned after 2 deadly crashes
border emergency
By TOM KRISHER,
DAVID KOENIG and
DEE-ANN DURBIN
Associated Press
For more than six
decades, the Federal Aviation
Administration has relied on
employees of airplane man-
ufacturers to do govern-
ment-required safety inspec-
tions as planes are being
designed or assembled.
But critics say the system,
dubbed the “designee pro-
gram,” is too cozy as com-
pany employees do work
for an agency charged with
keeping the skies safe while
being paid by an industry
that the FAA is regulating.
“There is a potential con-
flict of interest,” said Todd
Curtis, a former Boeing Co.
safety engineer and creator
of airsafe.com, a website
that focuses on airline safety.
“They (the FAA) don’t have
the money to do all of the
oversight. It’s a question of
being practical.”
The FAA’s oversight
duties are coming under
greater scrutiny after deadly
crashes involving Boe-
ing 737 Max jets operated
by airlines in Ethiopia and
Indonesia, killing a total of
346 people. The U.S. was
nearly alone in allowing the
planes to keep flying until it
relented on Wednesday after
getting satellite evidence
showing the crashes may be
linked.
The FAA concedes that
it doesn’t have resources to
keep up with a growing avi-
ation industry, and experts
say it lacks the personnel
to inspect every compo-
nent, especially those made
in other countries. But the
agency says the program’s
results speak for themselves.
The U.S. has the safest skies
in the world. Until April of
By LISA MASCARO,
ALAN FRAM and
CATHERINE LUCEY
Associated Press
AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim
An engine is recovered in November from a Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet that plunged into the Java
Sea, killing all of its passengers.
last year, U.S. passenger air-
lines had not had a fatality
since 2009, while carrying
several billion passengers.
But safety experts say it’s
time to look into the agen-
cy’s relationship with Boe-
ing, based in Chicago. The
FAA’s ties to the company
were revealed when Boe-
ing and the agency released
similar messages shortly
after the Indonesian air-
liner crashed in October and
again this week, when the
FAA announced that Boeing
would upgrade the Max’s
flight-control software, said
Mary Schiavo, a former
Transportation Department
inspector general.
With the messages, the
FAA “revealed that they
were just parroting what
Boeing told them,” she said.
The agency needs more
people with technical skills
to adequately monitor a com-
pany that makes machines as
sophisticated as today’s jets,
she said, contending that it
didn’t understand the Max’s
flight-control
computer
program.
“The FAA readily states
they don’t understand the
4 million lines of code and
the 150 computers,” Schi-
avo said. “What they do is
see that Boeing followed
the process, they checked
the FAA boxes. The pub-
lic thinks the FAA has more
involvement.”
Indeed, the agency’s own
website says that employ-
ees of manufacturers can
approve design changes and
aircraft repairs. “Using des-
ignees for routine certifica-
tion tasks allows the FAA to
focus its limited resources on
safety critical certification
issues,” it says.
Congress will exam-
ine the relationship between
Boeing and the FAA. U.S.
Rep. Peter A. DeFazio,
D-Oregon, chairman of the
House Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee,
said he would hold hearings
on the FAA’s process for
approving the planes.
The agency’s practice of
delegating certification pro-
cesses has come under scru-
tiny before. In a 1993 report,
the Government Account-
ability Office warned that
the FAA was falling behind
the industry in technical
competence because of lack
of training and delegation
of tasks to the manufactur-
ers. The report said 95 per-
cent of certification work for
the Boeing 747-400 jetliner
was delegated to the manu-
facturer in 1989. By compar-
ison, 70 to 75 percent of that
work was done by the FAA
in the early 1980s, the report
said.
WASHINGTON — In
a stunning rebuke, a dozen
defecting
Republicans
joined Senate Democrats
to block the national emer-
gency that President Don-
ald Trump declared so he
could build his border wall
with Mexico. The rejection
capped a week of confron-
tation with the White House
as both parties in Congress
strained to exert their power
in new ways.
The 59-41 tally Thurs-
day, following the Sen-
ate’s vote a day earlier to
end U.S. involvement in the
war in Yemen, promised to
force Trump into the first
vetoes of his presidency.
Trump had warned against
both actions. Moments after
Thursday’s vote, the presi-
dent tweeted a single word
of warning: “VETO!”
Two years into the
Trump era, a defect-
ing dozen Republicans,
pushed along by Demo-
crats, showed a willing-
ness to take that political
risk. Twelve GOP senators,
including the party’s 2012
presidential nominee, Mitt
Romney of Utah, joined the
dissent over the emergency
declaration order that would
enable the president to seize
for the wall billions of dol-
lars Congress intended
elsewhere.
“The Senate’s wak-
ing up a little bit to our
responsibilities,” said Sen.
Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.,
who said the chamber had
become “a little lazy” as
an equal branch of govern-
ment. “I think the value of
these last few weeks is to
remind the Senate of our
constitutional place.”
Many senators said the
vote was not necessarily a
rejection of the president
or the wall, but protections
against future presidents
— namely a Democrat
who might want to declare
an emergency on climate
change, gun control or any
number of other issues.
“This is constitutional
question, it’s a question
about the balance of power
that is core to our constitu-
tion,” Romney said. “This is
not about the president,” he
added. “The president can
certainly express his views
as he has and individual
senators can express theirs.”
Thursday’s vote was the
first direct challenge to the
1976 National Emergen-
cies Act, just as Wednes-
day’s on Yemen was the
first time Congress invoked
the decades-old War Powers
Act to try to rein in a pres-
ident. Seven Republicans
joined Democrats in halting
U.S. backing for the Saudi
Arabia-led coalition in the
aftermath of the kingdom’s
role in the killing of journal-
ist Jamal Khashoggi. Even
though there’s not likely to
be enough numbers to over-
ride a veto, the votes never-
theless sent a message from
Capitol Hill.
“Today’s votes cap a
week of something the
American people hav-
en’t seen enough of in the
last two years,” said Sen-
ate Minority Leader Chuck
Schumer, “both parties
in the United States Con-
gress standing up to Donald
Trump.”
Utti: No sophomore jinx season for Seaside star
continued from Page A8
game. So Hawes made it
clear Utti has what it takes
for the game when he
recalled that in the state play-
offs, “her senior year, in our
first-round game, she was
undercut and landed on her
chin and braced herself with
her right wrist. First 40 sec-
onds of the game. I went out
on the court, and thought, oh
my, this is how it ends. She
was bleeding all over.
“We literally patched her
together and sent her back
out, and she comes over
and says her wrist is hurt,”
he said. “She hadn’t even
noticed because of her sliced
chin. She said she couldn’t
shoot from more than a foot
because it hurt too much and
I said, ‘just get to the rim.’
And, of course, she did. She
played the final games with
a broken wrist. Tough, tough
young woman.”
In Fresno State’s quarter-
final matchup with UNLV,
Utti drew the short straw and
was assigned to guard a cou-
Jeff Ter Har
Maddi Utti during a 2017 state playoff game at Molalla, when she split her chin and broke her
wrist in a fall, then led Seaside to victory.
ple of very tall senior girls
— 6-4 Katie Powell and 6-2
Paris Strawth.
It was a tough assign-
ment that caused her to draw
two early fouls, earning her
a seat on the bench for some
of the first half.
After the intermission the
team adjusted, shut down
the big girls and Utti contin-
ued to contribute to the vic-
tory. The play-by-play sheet
provided at the conclusion
of the game shows “steal
by Utti, good layup by Utti,
assist by Utti, rebound by
Utti.”
Armed with press cre-
dentials, I attended the post-
game news conference. Utti
was one of the two athletes
that head coach Jamie White
brought to the session.
After a warm greeting,
I let Utti know I was very
impressed with her and the
team’s play. My first ques-
tion was what message she
had for folks back home.
“Tell everyone I appreci-
ate their support, they have
all been so good to me.”
Turning to coach White,
I asked how the team shut
down UNLV’s tall players,
in particular Powell, who
had 14 points in the first half
and three in the second.
Said White, “we focused
on getting her out of the game
and with her long reach, quick
movements and tenacious
defense, Maddi had a tremen-
dous impact on keeping the
ball out of Powell’s hands or
disrupting her shots.”
Utti had an impressive
season, starting in all 31
games and averaging just
over 32 minutes. She shot
56.4 percent from two-point
range and 50 percent from
beyond the arc. At the free
throw line she was 52 of 63.
Total points for the season
were 380.
She gathered 77 offensive
and 150 defensive rebounds,
68 assists, 59 steals and
33 blocked shots. For her
efforts, she earned honorable
mention on the all-Moun-
tain West team and first team
all-Mountain West defense.
Prior to the start of the
UNLV game, Marci Utti,
with a glow of pride in her
daughter, had mentioned
these two all-Mountain West
team honors.
“It was hard work that got
her to Fresno State, earned
her a starting position and
then these honors. She is not
done yet.”
Indeed there will be more
to come from Maddi Utti,
and we on the North Coast
can be very proud that one of
our own is representing Sea-
side High and the communi-
ties in such fine fashion.
Neil Branson is a former
teacher, cross country and
track coach at Seaside High
School