www.hoodrivernews.com
Belinda Ballah guides Prevention Department
By BARB AYERS
For the Hood River News
Belinda Ballah, the
County’s new Prevention
Department Director,
brings a fresh perspective
and longtime community
experience, to helping Hood
River kids grow up healthy.
Ballah was recently
named the new Director of
Hood River County Preven-
tion Department, but she is
not
new
to
drug/alcohol/tobacco pre-
vention, youth services or
Hood River County. Her ca-
reer in reaching youth in-
cludes work as the County’s
Drug/Tobacco Certified
Prevention Specialist, 13
years at Hood River Middle
School as a special educa-
tion Instructional Assistant
and coach for kids with be-
havioral challenges, and ex-
tensive youth outreach for
Hood River Alliance
Church.
The Prevention Depart-
ment team, including Bal-
lah, is committed to helping
people. Ballah’s career
focus has been on reaching
kids to help them make
healthy choices, mobilizing
local youth’s unique per-
spectives and creativity,
helping families overcome
personal or traumatic chal-
lenges and helping our
community reach its full,
healthy potential. With
longtime volunteer service
to TIP, now known as crisis
response team, she may be
called in to our local hospi-
tal, homes or agencies to
serve as a family resource
in a time of tragedy.
“Our whole community
is very health focused. Our
department’s focus is on
helping kids grow up and
thrive in our healthy Gorge
environment. While we
can’t protect kids from
everything, we can work to-
gether as a community to
help them flourish,” Ballah
Submitted photo
BELINDA BALLAH shows one product of a Health Media Club marijuana abuse prevention
campaign. Ballah and others work with middle school and high school students on public ed-
ucation outreach promoting healthy lifestyles.
said.
Youth are at the core of
the Prevention Depart-
ment’s mission, specifically
helping kids navigate a
complex world of conflict-
ing lifestyle choices. Ballah
worked with longtime lead-
ers Joella Dethman and
Maija Yasui, who both re-
cently retired from the
Hood River County Com-
mission on Children and
Families, now known as the
Hood River County Preven-
tion Department. Now, Bal-
lah leads the charge, as her
department helps kids
make wise choices by avoid-
ing drugs, tobacco, and al-
cohol, and carrying this
prevention message to their
peers and community.
Kids’ passion for this
subject is evident in the
football-stadium- size mu-
rals completed in 2013 at
Wy’East
Middle School, featuring
school eagle mascot Tuffy,
soaring over Mount Hood,
reminding us that “Soaring
Above the Influence” is
cool. Wy’East kids worked
with the Prevention De-
partment and a local profes-
sional artist to design two
spectacular bilingual drug,
smoke, alcohol and weapon
prevention murals. The
Wy’East “Soaring Above
the Influence” video can be
viewed on YouTube at
Wy’East_Soaring.
Teens in HEALTH (Help,
Educate, Advocate, Lead To-
wards Health) Media Clubs
at HRV High School,
Wy’east and Hood River
Middle Schools design ad
campaigns that encourage
a tobacco and drug-free
lifestyle. Their handiwork
(and their smiles) are fea-
tured on movie theater
trailers and newspaper arti-
cles.
For this 4th of July, teens
designed stickers and plas-
tered them on 3500 cases of
beer sold at local retail
stores, reminding adults
not to drink and drive or
provide alcohol to minors.
Kids are part of the solu-
tion in Prevention, but so is
coalition building - working
together, from a whole com-
munity perspective. One of
the Prevention Depart-
Photo by Kirby Neumann-Rea
PREVENTION PARTNERS, including Dulce Cavender, a long-time Health Media Club volun-
teer, received thanks last month from Ballah and the rest of the Prevention Department.
Find what you
NEED
in the
GORGE
CLASSIFIEDS
ment’s coalitions brings to-
gether partner agencies,
parents, and interested
community members, in-
cluding business leaders in
Odell to reach families of
migrant farm workers and
help educate local Hispanic
kids and families.
Local Hood River faces
are stars on the State’s
www.SmokeFreeOregon.co
m website, speaking from a
variety of viewpoints –
store owner, HRV teens,
Parks Department, County
officials and Hispanic com-
munity members – these lo-
cals are now State
spokespersons for bringing
communities together for
the common good.
Hood River County devel-
ops policies to help improve
community outcomes. The
community norm for allow-
ing smoking is changing as
more and more businesses
and agencies move toward
becoming tobacco, smoke
and vape free.
One of the major focuses
for the department this fall
will be addressing how the
new marijuana laws will
impact youth and public
safety. Ballah, like County
public safety officials,
wants to help protect youth
from a potential new under-
age drug problem, as the
availability of marijuana
rises. At the same time, it
will be important to coun-
teract the public perception
that the harm marijuana
inflicts on kids lowers with
loosened laws. Experts are
concerned that the legaliza-
tion of marijuana for adults
will increase kids’ access to,
and use of, marijuana, al-
though it remains illegal
for people under age 21.
In her personal time, Bal-
lah also focuses on youth
and family - her husband,
kids and grandkids, all
Gorge residents. She also
enjoys horseback riding.
Joe Guenther
Financial Advisor
1631 Woods Ct
Suite 102
Hood River, OR
97031
541-386-0826
www.edwardjones.com Member SIPC
Patti Ann Monzie
541-490-5625
www.MommaMonzies.com
pamonzie@charter.net
Hood River Weather Forecast
Today July 22
Thurs. July 23
Fri. July 24
Forecast
Partly Cloudy
Sunny
Sunny
Hood River News
wins ONPA awards
Hood River News advertis-
ing staff repeated in Oregon
Newspaper Publishers Associ-
ation Better Ad ideas awards
in judging for 2014, and the
news department brought
home four prizes including a
first place for Best Business
and Economic Reporting.
Hood River competes
against other multi-issue
weeklies throughout the state.
Awards were presented last
week at the annual convention
for newspapers in Oregon.
In the Best Ad Idea Contest,
Hood River News took first
place among non-dailies for
best overall advertising (non-
dailies). This is the consecu-
tive second year Hood River
News has earned the top ad-
vertising award for non-
dailies.
The News also took first and
second places in best section
cover for the Gorge Giving sec-
tion, and Panorama section,
respectively.
The News also took third in
best advertising headline
(GPSI) and second for best in-
stitutional/image ad (North-
west Pediatrics)
Trisha Walker earned a sec-
ond place for her June 2014 ar-
ticle on Community Support-
ed Agriculture enterprises
(CSAs), called “Grown Local”.
Ben Mitchell, Kirby Neu-
mann-Rea, and Trisha Walker
took second in Lifestyle cover-
age for the August Kaleido-
scope, “The prolific, delicious
Daytime / Overnight
High / Low (°F)
78° / 59°
82° / 60°
87° / 63°
Sat. July 25
Sunny
83° / 61°
Sun. July 26
Sunny
83° / 58°
Tues. July 28
Sunny
Sunny
541-386-1123
B1
‘Urban logging’
Crews keep busy as beetle-kill trees become neighborhood hazards
By KIRBY NEUMANN-REA
Bark Beetle Workshop
News editor
When a tree falls in an
urban wood, many people
hear it.
And many people have
feelings about it.
That’s part of the chal-
lenge when it comes to the
problem of tall neighbor-
hood conifers that have been
damaged or killed by bark
beetle infestation, a growing
problem throughout the
Gorge.
Arborist David Braun
said, “The first line of de-
fense is to avoid damage and
maintain tree health; at the
forest stand level, this
means removing weak and
damaged trees and main-
taining wide enough spacing
to maintain rapid growth.
“The January 2012 ice
storm provided prime food
for the beetle in the form of
broken trees; because much
of this was colonized be-
fore it could be cleaned up,
the bark beetle population
greatly increased,” said
Braun, who runs Braun
Consulting of Hood River,
one of a number of local
businesses working with
property owners dealing
with the growing blight in
Gorge forests private and
public.
Another is WyEast Tim-
ber Services of Hood River,
who recently addressed a
small grove of pine trees
beset by beetles in the Hope
Terrace development off
West May Street, where a
number of trees had to be
cut down and removed.
Wy’east owners Paul Jones
and Matt Hegeberg work
with landowners who need
to take the action few
would ever wish for.
“It’s extremely challeng-
ing, not only because we
need to take care of utility
lines and houses,” Jones
said. “One of the chal-
lenges is: a landowner sur-
rounded by up to eight
landowners, and people feel
ownership of those trees
even if they are not on
their property. Communica-
tion with all of neighbors
is paramount.
“It’s extremely busy, one
job leads to another, but
only a few people do it,” he
OSU Extension Service
holds a presentation and dis-
cussion on bark beetle infes-
tations and tree health in the
Hood River area on Dec. 6, 10
a.m. to noon at the OSU Ex-
tension Service Conference
Room, 2990 Experiment Sta-
tion Drive, Hood River.
This free session will help
participants learn about local
tree health issues and the con-
tinuing infestation of bark bee-
tles in Ponderosa pine and
Douglas-fir in the Hood River
area. Register by calling the
Hood River Extension Office at
541-386-3343 or email deb-
b i e. m c d o n a l d @ o r e g o n -
state.edu.
CLOSE QUARTERS: Paul
Jones (below) of WyEast
Forestry falls several large
beetle-kill pine trees board-
ering the Hope Terrace de-
velopment at the west end
of May Street. The trees
quickly showed signs of
bark beetle infestation over
the last couple of years and
had to be taken down for
the safety of the nearby
homes. The top two images
are of Columbia Tree Service
workers falling dead trees
this year in urban settings.
said. “It’s politically diffi-
cult, and challenging,
working in tight spaces.”
Jones said, “The sole rea-
son we are doing urban log-
ging is strictly to remove
the dead and dying and dis-
eased trees.”
Ponderosa pines are cur-
rently being targeted by the
California Five-Spined Ips
bark beetle in and around
White Salmon, Hood River,
Mosier, and The Dalles.
The insects leave a tell-tale
powder trail extruding
from bore holes about an
eighth of an inch long. The
insects are about one-quar-
ter inch long.
“They fill a role in the
forest as the ‘undertakers,’
dealing the final blow to
trees weakened by storm
breakage, fire, or over-
topped by larger, faster
growing tree,” according to
Braun.
However, the beetles at
times infest healthy trees
— the case now in the mid-
dle Gorge. While a snag
may yet frame the view,
and dead trees fill impor-
tant ecological roles, con-
centrations of dead trees
increase fuel load. The bee-
tle-killed trees also begin to
rapidly decay at the base,
and may be within range of
Photos by Adam Lapierre
Please see BEETLES, Page B2
blackberry”.
Editor Kirby Neumann-Rea
and photographer Adam
Lapierre took first in Best Eco-
nomic and Business coverage
for their November 2014 Kalei-
doscope article on urban log-
ging. (Lapierre now works for
Slingshot.)
Lila May’s party on Friday
receives lots more help
The July 31 prom-birthday
party for Lila May Schow, who
is about to turn 5, is getting
bigger.
The party may well be the
last one for this feisty straw-
berry blond ember of a girl
who has battled neuroblas-
toma cancer for more than
three years. The party will be
in the Butler Bank Building,
301 Oak St., starting at 6 p.m.
The Halls are planning a
party that will be part birth-
day, part prom, part Cinderella
ball, part wedding day. Kids
must be present with a parent.
Lila will arrive in a horse and
carriage and walk down a red
carpet.
“It will be an event not to
miss with food, games, real
princesses, music, dancing,
photo booths and more,” said
family friend Jenny Lorenzen,
who is organizing the party.
Third Street (between State
and Oak) will be closed off for
food, games, and more.
People are welcome to bring
gifts, although gift cards are a
highly recommended idea. A
donation jar will be available
as well. Parking will be avail-
able at Hood River News, lo-
cated three blocks away at 6th
and State streets.
Union Event Co. is donating
the space and organization.
Other sponsors are: Melika;
Juanita’s Fine Foods, with
chips and ingredients for at
least a few hundred people;
Veronica’s Salsa, salsa for a
few hundred people; Safeway,
lemonade, 500 bottles of
water, an cider; Rosauers,
balloons, food trays, and
more; Best Defense, $200;
Hawks Ridge, sponsoring all
costs of the drawbridge; A
Kidz Dental Zone : $500 plus
manning the Ice cream
booth.
WEEKLY SUDOKU
ANSWER
Sponsored by:
!
K
O
O
L
This size ad in the HRN
9 times for only $175 50 !
Call Kirsten at 541-386-1234
Oregon Weather Map
Newport
53° | 63°
Portland
59° | 79°
Salem
56° | 82°
86° / 59°
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Puzzle on Page A3
Dewpoint 54°F (12°C)
Pendleton
59° | 90°
Bend
51° | 85°
Ontario
64° | 96°
Visibility NA
Last update 20 Jul 7:00 am PDT
IDAHO
Actual High / Low
AGRIMET HOOD RIVER OR
Lat: 45.6842 Long: -121.5181 Elev: 510
http://uspest.org
North Bend
56° | 67°
Klamath Falls
52°
| 86°
CALIF.
© 2015 Wunderground.com
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82/62
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90/52
97/54
94/58
Mostly sunny, with a high near 76. West wind 8 to 11 mph.
Updated Monday, July 20
at 9:00 a.m. PST
Data from www.weather.com
91° / 65°
@gVc #& JVRcd
6iaVcZV_TV
3140 W. Cascade, Hood River
5
2
8
1
7
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Barometer NA
Eugene
55° | 82°
Medford
60° | 93°
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Wind Speed WNW 9 G 24 MPH
WASH.
Astoria
56° | 68°
8
5
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1 7 9 3
5 8 3 6
4 2 6 9
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Humidity 59%
This week’s Forecast
Mon. July 27
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
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Date
A5
Hood River News, Wednesday, July 22, 2015
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