A2
Hood River News, Saturday, July 4, 2015
Dripping, soaking, or
just plain going dry
Photo by Kirby Neumann-Rea
T UCKER-ED O UT
Swimmers pause on the Hood River bank just below Tucker
Bridge, where property owner Bob White is trying to get
word out that access is not allowed. “This is private proper-
ty and we are liable if something happens,” said White, who
has had issues with illegal access all 30 years he has owned
the adjacent Apple Valley Store. “No Trespassing” signs are
either vandalized or ignored, and litter and impact of pets
are continual problems, he said, besides the issue of people
illegally parking in the Apple Valley lot, or worse, in shaded
areas on the private road to the east. “I am about at my wit’s
end about this,” White said, noting that the county’s Tucker
Park is located less than a mile away, with plenty of parking
and river access.
P YROS
Continued from Page A1
working order,” he said.
“There’s a crew that gets
together that does all the
physical stuff, getting ready
for the show, as well as the
people involved with raising
the funds and getting the li-
censes — there’s a whole set
of things we all have to go
through,” he said.
Fireworks are delivered a
week before the show and
stored in a magazine on one
member’s property. When
club members move the fire-
works to the Spit, the Port
must close the area because
“once explosives are onsite,
no one can be there unless
they’re a licensed pyro,” he
explained, “or they have to
be supervised by licensed
pyros, and they have to be
over 18 and be a U.S. citizen,
and not have any felony
records — they’re pretty
strict, there’s a lot of paper-
work to fill out for anybody
that’s onsite.”
Wife Sarah is not a mem-
ber of the club, but helps
with the display, too. She and
Dave put together and mail
the flyers that are sent to
about 600 regular donors
every year, and she wires the
show and helps Russ Pad-
dock — Eyeopeners py-
rotechnic-in-charge — “by
double checking all the en-
tries he’s made of the firing
order of all the different
sizes of shells,” Kalousdian
said. (Shells come in sizes
ranging from two to six inch-
es in diameter — the bigger
the diameter, the higher it
goes.)
On the day of the Fourth,
you can find both Kalousdi-
ans walking the Marina,
seeking donations for next
year’s show. That’s because
the fireworks display is liter-
ally a year in the making.
“Work on the Fourth actu-
ally starts on the Fourth of
July for the next year,”
Kalousdian said. Lions prac-
tice their firework shooting
skills year-round, most no-
tably at Hood River Valley
High football games, headed
by Lions Paul Zastro and
Paddock. T hen, in the
spring, they go to “pyro
school” — a must to get li-
censed by the state fire mar-
shal — and order the fire-
works from the distributor.
“We can go to a demo in
April, where they show the
different fireworks, and we
can say, ‘oh, yeah, we really
like that one, the one with
the hearts or the one with
the flag,’ and they’ll put that
show together for us,” he
said. “Then Russ Paddock
takes that inventory and sets
up the firing order of the
show, so we can have an
opener and a mid-show and a
finale, and we know what
kind of fireworks we want in
each of those sections.”
There are about 15 Lions
involved with the fireworks,
and just as many non-Lions,
who are certified and/or
help with the display. “Most
of those people show up on
the 30th to check all the
wiring, and then on the
third, we build racks and put
mortars in place. The fire-
works come on the Fourth of
July. People work those three
days, and then on the fifth,
we show up in the morning
and clean up the site.”
The shows generally last
25 to 30 minutes, with about
900 rounds fired, and costs
about $15,000.
“Donations are what
makes it happen,” Kalousdi-
an said. “If we were hiring
Western Fireworks to put a
show on, it would be about
$50,000 for them to supply
everything, but because the
Lions do it — that’s our com-
munity service — we put on
a $50,000 show for the com-
munity, and the community
chips in and pays for it, and
we do all the rest of it,” he
said.
“The Lions are all about
community service, and this
is the biggest community
service thing we do every
year,” he said. “If it wasn’t
for the public making dona-
tions, the show wouldn’t hap-
pen.”
The Kalousdian’s moved to
Hood River in 1991 from Lake
Tahoe to open Discover Bicy-
cles. Soon after, Dave began
looking into service organi-
zations to join.
“Eyeopeners Lions was
what I joined because I was
starting a business up, and I
could go to the meeting at
6:30 in the mor ning and
couldn’t get away at noon,
(when) the Hood River Lions
met … that’s why I joined the
Eyeopeners,” he said. “The
fireworks was just a bonus.”
What are large users of
water around the county
doing to reduce? We called
public agencies, and some
private, Wednesday and
Thursday to find out:
Idlewilde Cemetery —
“We’ve cut back about 30 per-
cent,” sexton Bob Huskey
said. “We are as brown as
we’ve ever been.”
Huskey is moving to a
morning and evening sched-
ule, traveling back from his
home in Parkdale for the
evening irrigation. Huskey
has also changed the overall
schedule for the 16 separate
“blocks” that make up the
older section of the ceme-
tery. Instead of a continual
rotation from one block to
the next, the watering of the
16 sections is now spread
over a six-day period.
He said lawns are kept
green out of consideration
for the families with loved
ones buried there, but that
gradually people could come
around to accepting a brown
cemetery. Asked about let-
ting the grass go dormant,
Huskey said that it could be
done if he was directed to do
so by the cemetery board.
“We know that it’s dry for
D ROUGHT
Continued from Page A1
For more infor mation,
please contact the Hood
River USDA office.
Barb Ayers, county emer-
gency services manager, said
that all residents, business-
es, visitors and landowners
are reminded of the extreme-
ly hazardous fire season con-
ditions in Hood River Coun-
ty, due to high temperatures,
low humidity, consistently
high Gorge winds, lack of
rainfall and snowmelt. Ore-
gon Department of Forestry
recently restricted all
forestry lands to level 3 (ex-
treme fire danger) regula-
tions, which limits the use
and safety requirements for
mowing, weed whacking,
campfires, harvesting, off
road vehicles and other ac-
tivities.
■
FID rotation schedule is
essentially a 3.5 day on, 3.5
day off rotation of the Upper
and Middle FID Districts
that are affected by “ex-
tremely limited Kingsley
Reservoir flows,” according
to a letter to from FID. In the
letter, FID customers are al-
lowed to use irrigation water
only during “on days” and
must cease irrigating during
all other times.
However, Indian Creek
Golf Course owner Brian
Brandt said the FID board
did not ask any of the users
at the meeting to give their
opinion.
“It’s a bad deal for me. It’s
going to affect my opera-
tions,” he said. “An every
other day schedule would be
good for me and for a lot of
people.”
Areas of his golf course
might not rebound if let go
dormant, because of the clay
content in the soil. “It will
just go bare and we’ll have to
re-seed,” he said.
everyone and we are willing
to do our part,” he said.
■
Hood River Golf Course
— “We’ve cut down about
half our water,” said owner
Brian Brandt. “I’m sure
we’re reduced our water use
more than anyone in the
county. Basically we’re wa-
tering half of the golf course
and using half the water we
had been.”
As a result, “the whole
place is like a rock.
“It’s gonna be a brown golf
course. It is what it is,” he
said.
However, he said the
greens, comprised of bent-
grass, need more water and
will suffer if they don’t get
water at least every other
day. Under the FID rotation
schedule, the course will go
3.5 days without water.
■
Indian Creek Golf
Course — The course has re-
duced water by 25 percent
“and we are working on cut-
ting by about half,” accord-
ing to superintendent Tyson
Jacobs. “We’re not watering
our roughs or out-of-play
places, and everywhere
we’ve cut back.”
Here is the geographical
breakdown of the FID rota-
tion schedule:
Group one – On days Sun-
day, Monday, Tuesday and
ending Wednesday at noon.
All of Binns Hill Drive, all
of York Hill Drive, all of Ri-
ordan Hill Drive, all of Fra-
zier Drive, upper Tyler
Drive, Westwood Drive,
Phelps Creek Drive. All of
Kingsley Road, Country Club
Road to Barrett Drive, West
Wind, all of Sunset Road,
Sky line Drive, Reed Road.
Group two – On days
Wednesday starting at noon.
Thursday, Friday, ending Sat-
urday at midnight.
Country Club Road from
Barrett North, Barrett Road
to Markham Road, Cannon
Drive, Rockford Road, lower
Tyler Drive, West Belmont,
Firwood Drive, all of Ken-
wood Drive, all of Markham
Road, all of Portland Drive,
Carter Road, Doug Fir Drive,
Hayes Drive, Royal Anne
Drive, Haywor th Road,
Riverdale Road, Peters Drive,
Kahoe Drive.
District irrigation water
lines will remain charged, so
tur ning your ir rig ation
water off is voluntary. FID
crews will be enforcing this
rotation schedule daily. Pa-
trons that fail to comply with
the rotation schedule risk
further sanction, up to and
including having their irri-
gation water shut off. Farm-
ers Irrigation District is ask-
ing that all district water
users voluntarily stop water-
ing lawns and any non-essen-
tial landscapes for the dura-
tion of the summer. FID or-
chardists and farmers are
asking for support in dra-
matic, voluntary cut-backs
in the watering of lawns so
that our extremely limited
supplies can be focused on
critical farms and crops.
River flows are the lowest
they’ve been in over 30 years
and we need everyone’s help
to get through this unprece-
dented drought.
Asked about non-watering
of the fairways, he said, “It’s
a matter of keeping things
alive.” The greens will die
without regular watering, he
said. Soaker hoses are used
on the greens and tee areas
and other places. Jacobs said
he has stepped up water con-
servation measure he has
used at Indian Creek for 18
years.
■
Parks and Recreation —
“We are going to stop water-
ing our lawns, as recom-
mended, for fish and farms,”
said Lori Stirn, Hood River
Parks District director.
Parks and Rec will stop ir-
rigating parks that are estab-
lished, but a few trees at Bar-
rett Park and Devon Court
will continue to get water.
The district’s “decorative
areas,” such as the pool’s
lawn, won’t get any more
sprinkler treatment.
However, Stirn said Parks
and Rec will continue to keep
a few trees on “drip regula-
tion.” Most of those are
young Moon Glow junipers
planted at Devon Court, near
the Indian Creek Trailhead.
“We want to keep those
plants alive,” said Stirn.
■
Port of Hood River — “Is
it that important to keep
grass green? No. But we
want to keep trees alive —
grass will come back,” said
Michael McElwee, Port of
Hood River Executive Direc-
tor. “We’ll be stopping most
of our landscape – our lawn –
irrigation, this week.”
The Port plans to “keep
watering the Event Site be-
cause it gets such intense use
in the summer.”
He said the marina area
“we keep green for its multi-
ple uses and community ben-
efit” and the same goes for
the grass areas around the
airport runway. “That’s im-
portant to keep (irrigated),”
he said.
McElwee indicated that
the watering schedule will
focus mainly on mornings
and evening in order to avoid
evaporation in the after-
noon.
Most port properties use
city water for irrigation, but
there are riverfront portions
that tap into the Columbia
River. Most notably is the
Marine Park, where the Port
continues to irrigate the
trees.
SPRINKLER waters a lawn Wednesday night, next to a pear or-
chard. Leaving enough water for growing fruit, given the low water
levels in reservoirs, is the key quandary facing Farmers Irrigation
District as it places users on a rotation schedule.
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