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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (May 29, 2015)
STANFIELD, PILOT ROCK FACE OFF WITH TOP SEEDS Drunk driver passes ambulance, runs out of gas REGION/3A BASEBALL/1B FRIDAY, MAY 29, 2015 139th Year, No. 161 WINNER OF THE 2013 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD Old radar blocking wind farm potential Your Weekend • • • Dancing With Your Pendleton Stars Mark Skinner Cancer Benefi t at Elks Lodge Bowling for the Boiler at Desert Lanes Wyden says industry an investment in rural Oregon For times and places see Coming Events, 6A By GEORGE PLAVEN East Oregonian Catch a movie “Our goal all along is not to be heavy-handed and issue citations, our intent is just to get the problem to move along.” Hermiston Police Department, the city’s parks and recreation department and Hermiston School District collaborated to come up ZLWK DQ RUGLQDQFH JLYLQJ RI¿FHUV the authority to ask disruptive teen- agers to stop their behavior or leave. He has heard criticism that the ordinance is frivolous and that “misusing park equipment” left children standing on swings open to getting kicked out of the park. But (GPLVWRQ VDLG RI¿FHU GLVFUHWLRQ means that’s not how the ordinance is being used. That doesn’t mean the depart- ment won’t issue citations. Three people have been issued two An outdated Air Force radar in Fossil is holding back nearly 4,000 megawatts of proposed wind energy across Eastern Oregon and Washington, according to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon. :\GHQ LV QRZ DVNLQJ WRS RI¿ cials at the Pentagon and Federal Aviation Administration to replace the system with tech- nology that can overcome interference, or “clutter,” created by turbines. In a letter sent May 21 to Secretary of Wyden Defense Ash Carter, Secre- tary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and FAA Administrator Michael Huerta, Wyden said the Fossil radar is increasingly seen as an impediment to local wind energy development, which has grown into a leading source of revenue for many rural communities. The Obama administration has also made clean energy and reducing carbon emissions a top priority. To that end, Wyden said Oregon has answered the call by nearly quadrupling its wind gener- ation between 2008 and 2013. But developers continue to run into roadblocks with the Fossil radar, a long-range surveillance system jointly managed by the Department of Defense and Homeland Security. It is also used E\WKH)$$IRUDLUWUDI¿FFRQWURO Numerous wind turbines have been tagged by the FAA as a “potential hazard” for obstructing or blocking the radar’s ability to monitor airspace. The system was last given a software upgrade in 2010 to avoid stalling the 845-megawatt Shepherds Flat Wind Farm in Gilliam and Morrow counties. However, Wyden said the administration must replace the entire Fossil radar to avoid scut- — Jason Edmiston, Hermiston Police Chief See PARKS/8A See WIND/8A Jasin Boland/Warner Bros. Pictures Dwayne Johnson stars in the earthquake disaster fi lm, “San Andreas.” For showtime, Page 5A Weekend Weather Fri Sat Sun Staff photo by E.J. Harris A group of teens hang out in the gazebo in McKenzie Park after school Thursday in Hermiston. Warnings but no citations for misusing parks under new Hermiston ordinance By JADE MCDOWELL East Oregonian 88/62 87/61 89/60 Ex-U.S. House Speaker Hastert paid hush money CHICAGO (AP) — Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert agreed to pay $3.5 million in hush money to keep a person from the town where he was a longtime high school teacher silent about “prior misconduct” by the Illinois Republican who once was second in line to the U.S. presidency, according to a federal grand jury indictment handed down Thursday. The indictment, which doesn’t describe the alleged misconduct by Hastert, charges the 73-year-old with one count of evading bank regulations by withdrawing $952,000 in increments of less than $10,000 to skirt reporting requirements. He also is charged with one count of lying to the FBI about the reason for the unusual withdrawals. Each count of the indict- ment carries a maximum SHQDOW\RI¿YH\HDUVLQSULVRQ DQGD¿QH Hastert, who had worked as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., since shortly after he left Congress in 2007, resigned from Dickstein Shapiro LLC, a spokesman IRUWKHOREE\LQJDQGODZ¿UP said Thursday. One dollar It’s been two months since Hermiston passed an ordinance allowing police to trespass people from city parks for misusing the equipment, and no one has been kicked out yet. Police have issued 37 warnings to 32 people, almost exclusively at McKenzie Park next to the police headquarters and Hermiston High School. Hermiston Police Department Chief Jason Edmiston said the ordinance has been useful for the department to legally interact with people causing problems at parks and ask them to stop their disruptive behavior. “Our goal all along is not to be heavy-handed and issue citations, our intent is just to get the problem to move along,” he said. City councilors passed the ordi- nance in March after staff told them teenagers congregating at the Rotary cook shack in McKenzie Park had become a nuisance. Citizens were calling the police to complain about the teens using the cook shack as a bathroom, leaving litter behind, Staff photo by E.J. Harris Graffi ti covers the top of a picnic table in McKenzie Park on Thursday in Hermiston. jumping bikes and skateboards onto tables and bothering other park users with loud profanity and mock ¿JKWV %XW XQOHVV RI¿FHUV DFWXDOO\ caught the teenagers in the act of breaking a law, they couldn’t do anything. Edmiston said there were discussions about banning students from McKenzie Park or putting up bars on the cook shack. But instead Sudden freeze following warm fall kills trees, shrubs By KATHY ANEY East Oregonian Staff photo by Kathy Aney A freeze in November likely killed this Siberian elm in John and Lynn Robertson’s yard on Best Road in Pendleton. It’s a sad sight — a dead tree surrounded by its budding brethren. Freezing temperatures on the heels of an unseasonably warm fall killed hundreds of trees in parks and neighborhoods in and around Pendleton. As spring comes into full glory, the death toll becomes more visible. John Robertson laments the loss of a huge Siberian elm that shaded his yard off Best Road long before he and wife, Lynn, moved there in 1992. This year, “it just never leafed out.” Except for a smattering of growth, the branches are bare. Robertson will give the tree some time to recover before hiring someone to cut it down. Pendleton Parks Superintendent Donnie Cook said the sight of so Don’t Miss Out! Subscribe to the East Oregonian E-mail Newsletters and stay informed on the topics that matter most to you. Visit www.EastOregonian.com/EO/Newsletters and sign up today! many dead trees in the city’s parks and cemetery “almost brings tears to my eyes.” In late January, he noticed a row of Hogan cedars with browning needles at Riverfront Plaza. As spring came on, the casualty list grew. A row of plum trees lining a city parking lot. Four honey locusts at Riverfront Plaza. In the cemetery, quite a few young trees and six or seven older trees. He is keeping a vigilant eye on a large white ash at Pendleton Community Park. “It’s just a beautiful tree and it has about 40 leaves right now,” Cook said. “It’s sad.” Most heart-breaking is the apparent loss of a scarlet oak placed at Olney Cemetery in memory of his son, Ryan. Cook planted the tree in Olney’s Memory Garden after See TREES/8A