A2
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2022
IN BRIEF
State reports 25 new virus cases
for Clatsop County
The Oregon Health Authority reported 25 new
coronavirus cases for Clatsop County on Friday.
Since the pandemic began, the county had recorded
4,231 virus cases and 38 deaths as of Friday.
— The Astorian
COVID hospitalizations
in Oregon are peaking
SALEM — The number of people hospitalized for
COVID-19 in Oregon will peak near current levels
and then steadily recede to pre-omicron levels by the
end of March, Oregon Health & Science University
said in last week’s forecast.
“The way Oregon handled omicron is almost as
good as you’re going to see,” said Peter Graven, the
director of the OHSU Offi ce of Advanced Analytics.
“Oregon pushed out booster shots, Oregonians modi-
fi ed their behavior early, before omicron fully arrived
here, and we kept our masking rates relatively high
compared with other states.”
Meanwhile, the percentage of tests for COVID-
19 that were positive for the virus dropped last week
to 19% from an all-time high the previous week of
24.5%, according to Oregon Health Authority data.
— Associated Press
European green crab erupt
in Willapa Bay
WILLAPA, Wash. — Non native European green
crab are in the midst of a major expansion in Washing-
ton coastal waters, including Willapa Bay.
The small crab is regarded as a potentially devastat-
ing invasive species.
The Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe and Pacifi c
County Vegetation Management have been working
to determine overall populations and track the crab’s
growth in the bay. In 2021, Ed Darcher, with vege-
tation management, and others trapped 10,600 green
crab in Willapa. Washington Sea Grant staff and vol-
unteers are thought to have found around 4,400 last
year in Grays Harbor.
The invasive species was fi rst detected here in
1998, but populations remained low for most of the
next two decades. State funding for ongoing moni-
toring was axed in 2003. However, a recent upswing
in the crab population has local offi cials and shellfi sh
farmers worried about their long-term impact on local
aquaculture.
“I started to hear regular reports from farmers
around 2015 and at that point the reports were pretty
widespread through Willapa Bay,” said David Beugli,
executive director of the Willapa Grays Harbor Oyster
Growers Association. “Farmers were reporting them
on the oyster and clams beds, bare tide fl ats, within
eelgrass beds and in deep channels.
“That was when we began to encounter multiple
age classes and (egg-bearing) females. This is typical
for an invasive species that persists in low number for
years or decades until conditions become optimal.”
— Chinook Observer
DEATH
Feb. 5, 2022
In BRITT,
Brief
Patrick E., 82, of Astoria, died in Asto-
ria. Caldwell’s Luce-Layton Mortuary of Astoria is in
charge of the arrangements.
Death
MEMORIAL
Saturday, Feb. 12
Memorial
THOMASON, Dennis Leroy II — Celebration
of life and potluck from 1 to 4 p.m., Olney Grange,
89342 Oregon Highway 202. Those attending are
asked to bring a favorite dish to share.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
TUESDAY
Clatsop County Planning Commission, 10 a.m., (elec-
tronic meeting).
Cannon Beach City Council, 6 p.m., work session, (elec-
tronic meeting).
Lewis & Clark Fire Department Board, 6 p.m., main fi re
station, 34571 U.S. Highway 101 Business.
Clatsop Community College Board, 6:30 p.m., (electronic
meeting).
WEDNESDAY
Clatsop Soil and Water Conservation District, 10 a.m.,
(electronic meeting).
Clatsop County Board of Commissioners, 6 p.m., (elec-
tronic meeting).
Warrenton-Hammond School District Board, 6 p.m.,
Warrenton High School, 1700 S. Main Ave.
Astoria School District Board, 7 p.m., (electronic meet-
ing).
THURSDAY
Seaside Civic and Convention Center Commission,
5 p.m., 415 First Ave.
Gearhart Planning Commission, 6 p.m., (electronic
meeting).
PUBLIC MEETINGS
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Portland mayor bans homeless
camping near busy roads
By REBECCA ELLIS
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Portland Mayor Ted
Wheeler has banned people
experiencing homelessness
from camping next to free-
ways and along high-crash
corridors.
Wheeler issued an emer-
gency order, eff ective 3 p.m.
on Friday, that tasked the
city’s urban camping team
with stopping people from
setting up tents near busy
roadways. The mayor said
this is the fi rst in a series of
executive actions he plans
to take in the coming weeks
to address the city’s home-
lessness crisis, which has
been exacerbated by the
pandemic.
The order follows a report
by the Portland Bureau of
Transportation that found
70% of pedestrians who
were killed by cars last
year were homeless. While
Wheeler framed the move
as a “matter of urgency”
and a humane follow-up to
the jarring statistics, critics
accused Wheeler of using
the document as political
cover for a harmful crack-
down on outdoor camping.
Wheeler acknowledged
the proposal was in the
works before the report’s
release, but said the grim
fi ndings underscored the
need to act fast.
“We have continuously
witnessed
unsanctioned
camping in clearly unsafe
locations, sometimes jar-
ringly close to roads and
freeways,” Wheeler said at
a press conference Friday.
“You don’t need to be a traf-
fi c engineer to sense that
that’s not safe.”
Portland Commissioner
Jo Ann Hardesty, who over-
sees the city’s transporta-
tion bureau, said she was
not consulted on the ordi-
nance. Wheeler’s chief of
staff , Bobby Lee, said com-
missioners’ offi ces were
given the order on Thursday,
though the mayor’s offi ce
received little feedback.
The mayor’s plan quickly
generated outrage among
homeless and transportation
advocates. Opponents con-
tend the mayor’s action will
do little aside from moving
vulnerable people around
the city, forcing them away
from roads without giving
them an alternative place to
go. Twenty-fi ve advocacy
organizations penned a joint
rebuttal Friday to Wheeler’s
plan, saying the mayor was
ignoring the more signifi -
cant factors causing deaths,
Kristyna Wentz-Graff /Oregon Public Broadcasting
A homeless encampment perched along Interstate 5 in Portland.
such as poor road design and
deferred maintenance.
“Nowhere in any trans-
portation study, advocacy
campaign or community
forum seeking to address
our roadway safety prob-
lems has it been suggested
that unhoused people and
encampments should be
swept or outright banned as
a partial solution to this cri-
sis,” the letter read.
‘Quite shameful’
Ashton Simpson, the
executive director of Oregon
Walks, said he felt the may-
or’s order was shaped, not by
the transportation bureau’s
fi ndings, but by the Port-
land Business Alliance and
by People for Portland, an
advocacy campaign calling
for more police and shelter.
Both groups have recently
released polls that show that
Portlanders’ frustration with
City Hall has reached a new
threshold, and residents of
the city would be support-
ive of a more aggressive
approach to homeless.
“The intentions and gen-
uineness of the mayor are
not honest,” Simpson said.
“It’s quite shameful they
would use people’s death to
further their own political
interests.”
The mayor said the poll-
ing did not play a role in his
announcement, but noted he
was feeling a new wave of
support for his proposals.
“I think there’s also been
a systematic bias toward the
long-term development of
aff ordable housing and for
some time I’ve been some-
thing of a lone voice say-
ing we also need to act with
urgency,” Wheeler said. “I
feel that the tide has turned.
I feel the public supports this
direction.”
DIGITAL
EZpay (per month) .................................................................................................................$8.25
is available shelter space.
Wheeler did not directly
answer questions from
reporters Friday about how
his executive order meshed
with the federal court’s rul-
ing in that case. He said
only that city leaders would
do their “level best” to give
people alternative places to
shelter.
‘Clear and alarming’
Wheeler pinned the
blame for the lack of shel-
ter beds partially on the state
and said he’d made a pitch
to Gov. Kate Brown earlier
Friday for help adding 1,000
temporary shelter beds.
Charles Boyle, a spokes-
man for the governor,
responded that Brown was
focused on working with
local partners and had called
for a $400 million invest-
ment in aff ordable housing
in Thursday’s State of the
State.
“Our offi ce has commu-
nicated to the c ity that they
should engage in the legis-
lative process for additional
budget asks,” Boyle wrote.
Commissioner Carmen
Rubio released a cautious
written statement Friday on
the mayor’s proposal. It was
not clear if she supports or
opposes Wheeler’s plan:
“The traffi c fatality data
is clear and alarming, and
it requires a response. Over
the coming days, as we
learn more about how this
will work from the mayor’s
offi ce, I intend to make sure
that our eff orts to reduce
traffi c fatalities also treat
people with dignity and
respect,” she wrote. “These
actions will naturally disrupt
the lives of our houseless
neighbors, and we cannot
lose sight of those human
impacts.”
Port of Morrow appeals $1.3M state fi ne
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
BOARDMAN — The
Port of Morrow is appealing
$1.3 million in fi nes levied
by state environmental regu-
lators for excessively spread-
ing nitrogen-rich wastewater
as fertilizer on area farmland.
The port is seeking to
reduce its penalty, and has
requested a contested case
hearing with the Oregon
Department of Environmen-
tal Quality.
Located along the Colum-
bia River in northeast Ore-
gon, the Port of Morrow’s
Boardman Industrial Park is a
regional food processing pow-
erhouse, with companies pro-
ducing everything from frozen
french fries to cheddar cheese.
Under a Department of
Environmental Quality per-
mit, the port can recycle
wastewater from the facilities
by spraying it on farmland
growing potatoes, wheat,
alfalfa and other crops.
However, the amount
of wastewater applied can-
not exceed a certain thresh-
old to prevent groundwater
contamination.
EO Media Group
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality alleges
the Port of Morrow has applied excessive amounts of nitrate-
containing water to some area farmland.
The state alleges the port
violated its permit more than
1,000 times from 2018 to
2021, exceeding the nitrogen
limit and threatening public
health and safety.
In its response, the port
did not dispute that violations
occurred — specifi cally, that
soil nitrates measured more
than 30 pounds per acre in the
fourth- and fi fth-foot levels
underground.
The port chalked up these
off enses a combination of
less available acreage and
unusually high winter precip-
itation that required more fer-
tilizer applications.
Because of those unex-
pected challenges, the port
Subscription rates
Eff ective January 12, 2021
MAIL
EZpay (per month) ...............................................................................................................$10.75
13 weeks in advance ...........................................................................................................$37.00
26 weeks in advance ...........................................................................................................$71.00
52 weeks in advance ........................................................................................................ $135.00
The mayor’s offi ce said
the order will impact camp-
ers on 30 high-crash road-
ways, which are owned by
both the Oregon Department
of Transportation and the
city. The area encompasses
about 8% of the city, accord-
ing to the mayor. Portland
has the money to beef up
sweeps in the area after the
urban camping program was
given additional funding in
the last budget cycle.
Wheeler said there will
be no “right of return” for
people who were camping
in these areas, and they will
be forced to leave if they
return to previous campsites.
He added that he supports
the idea of fencing off dan-
gerous areas on state land
where people should not be
camping. He expects people
to see the impact of the order
over the coming months.
The mayor acknowledged
Friday that it is far from
clear where these campers
are supposed to go. Mult-
nomah C ounty has capac-
ity to shelter roughly 1,400
to 1,500 people year-round.
There were about 4,000 peo-
ple experiencing homeless-
ness in Multnomah County
in 2019, the last time there
was a fi nalized count of the
area’s homeless population.
The homeless population
has likely grown since then.
“In the absence of ade-
quate shelters, in the absence
of other alternatives, some
people will pick up and
move somewhere,” Wheeler
said. “Which isn’t really
solving the larger problem
but does solve the immedi-
ate problem.”
Under a 2018 fed-
eral court decision known
as Martin v. Boise, cities
are barred from prohibit-
ing camping unless there
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Northwest Hardwoods • Longview, WA
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claims the Department of
Environmental
Quality
authorized up to 80 pounds
per acre of soil nitrates in
the fourth- and fi fth-foot lev-
els in 2019. Only six of the
66 fi elds cited by the state
exceeded that limit, accord-
ing to the port.
Violations were “uninten-
tional, and beyond the rea-
sonable control of the port,”
the appeal states, and “had no
adverse eff ect on groundwa-
ter nitrate levels.”
The port also denies it vio-
lated its permit by failing to
monitor nitrogen uptake in
crops, since there are no stan-
dard methods for such moni-
toring and the Department of
Environmental Quality did
not provide an agency-ap-
proved method until 2021.
Measuring nitrogen in
plant tissue is “neither an
accurate nor a useful mea-
sure of the amount of nitro-
gen removed from fi elds by
crops, and the information
does not measure compliance
with any permit requirement
or serve any other purpose
under the permit,” the appeal
states.
Groundwater nitrates are a
serious concern in the Lower
Umatilla Basin, which was des-
ignated a Groundwater Man-
agement Area in 1990 to curb
contamination from non point
sources like farms and munic-
ipal wastewater facilities.
Drinking
groundwater
with elevated nitrates can be
harmful in infants, causing a
condition known as methe-
moglobinemia, or “b lue b aby
s yndrome.”
The management area
encompasses parts of north-
ern Umatilla and Morrow
counties, including the cit-
ies of Hermiston, Echo, Stan-
fi eld, Umatilla, Boardman
and Irrigon, with a combined
population of 33,534.
Irrigated agriculture con-
tributes most of the leached
nitrogen into the groundwater
in the area, estimated at 70%.
About 12% comes from con-
fi ned animal feeding oper-
ations, such as dairies; 8%
from livestock pastures and
4.6% from food processing
land application.
The port acknowledged
that most, but not all, of the
sites for wastewater applica-
tion are in the Lower Uma-
tilla Basin Groundwater
Management Area.