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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 29, 2015)
BMCC LOSES 3 MATCHES AT SEASON OPENER VOLLEYBALL/1B WEEKEND EDITION Relief for wildfi re victims LIFESTYLES 1C REGION: Documentary follows Monte Beckman 3A NATION: New Orleans remembers Hurricane Katrina 11A AUGUST 29-30, 2015 139th Year, No. 227 WINNER OF THE 2015 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD $1.50 2QHPRUHVWDQGDJDLQVW&DQ\RQ&UHHN¿UH Unusually windy weather expected to blow through Saturday By TIM TRAINOR East Oregonian Staff photo by Jade McDowell The newly-designed logo for the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center. EOTEC in doubt for 2016 Fire of¿ cials are being forced to make one more stand against the destructive and unpredictable Canyon Creek Complex ¿ re as a rare August wind storm is set to arrive Saturday. Weather forecasters are calling for wind gusts of 35 mph through the valleys and 45 mph over ¿ ery ridgetops as a low pressure system pushes from the west, over the Cascades. The wind is expected to hit the 6,9-acre ¿ re around 11 a.m. Saturday. The weather team at the Grant Corporate activity keeps grant dollars À owing as aviation industry changes By JADE MCDOWELL East Oregonian See EOTEC/8A See FIRE/12A Airport a small engine Fair, rodeo may remain downtown one more year Partners in the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center aren’t sure the project will be ready in time for the 2016 Umatilla County Fair and Farm-City Pro Rodeo. This year’s fair and rodeo were billed as the last at the current fairgrounds, and in -une the of¿ cial report from project manager Frew Development was that everything was on schedule to be ready in March of 2016. But lately words like “maybe” and “probably” have been creeping into the conversation, and at Friday’s meeting of the EOTEC authority board chair Ed Brookshier addressed the question of holding the 2016 fair and rodeo at EOTEC. “That is certainly what we want to do, but we all have to work together to address things that right now we don’t have answers to,” he said. Brookshier said he felt the group needed to have those answers by the end of September to give the fair and rodeo boards — and anyone else wishing to use the event center in 2016 — adequate time to prepare. One concern is the À ow of revenue, Brookshier said. The authority is counting on revenue from govern- ment entities to come in at certain times. If any of those payments are held up, EOTEC doesn’t have extra funds on hand to pay contractors and get reim- bursed later. The project has also run into snags with on-site infra- structure for water and other County Fairgrounds ¿ re head- quarters called the forecast a “very atypical event” that hasn’t been seen in the area in decades. That has ¿ re of¿ cials on the defensive, and attempting to push the blaze into safer terrain that has By JADE MCDOWELL East Oregonian Staff photo by E.J. Harris An Amerifl ight Metroliner cargo plane sits on the tarmac of the Hermiston Municipal Airport while United Parcel Service employees load the plane with overnight packages from the area on Wednesday. Staff photo by E.J. Harris UPS employees load an Amerifl ight Metroliner car- go plane with overnight packages from the area Wednesday at the Hermiston Municipal Airport. Staff photo by E.J. Harris An Amerifl ight Metroliner cargo place comes in for a landing Wednesday at the Hermiston Municipal Airport. Commercial À ights don’t grace the runway of the Herm- iston Municipal Airport, but the hub provides a connection for many of the city’s big customers. “There is a lot more corporate traf¿ c out there than people would assume,” assistant city manager Mark Morgan said. No one tallies each touchdown and takeoff at the airport, but there are an estimated 30,000 “operations” at the airport each year. Summer months are busier than winter months thanks in part to traf¿ c from three agricultural companies that use the airport as a base. People tend to think of airports the size of Hermiston’s — with its 4,500-foot runway — as the domain of single-engine hobby planes, but Morgan said a signi¿ cant amount of the traf¿ c coming in and out of the airport is agricultural or corporate. Crop dusters come and go, and corpo- rate planes deliver executives for companies like RDO Equipment and DuPont Pioneer. The airport also hosts a UPS freight plane 10 times a week, handles traf¿ c created by construction projects and sees helicopter traf¿ c for things like ¿ re¿ ghting and medical transport. Hermiston Aviation, which is contracted to run the airport on behalf of the city, only has three See AIRPORT/12A MILTON-FREEWATER Along came a cider Blue Mountain Cider Company now largest seller in the state By ANTONIO SIERRA East Oregonian The largest producer of malt alcohol beverages in Eastern Oregon isn’t in Pend- leton or Hermiston, nor is at other regional beer hubs like Terminal Gravity or Baker City Brewing Co. In fact, the top producer doesn’t even make beer. Although it’s only been operating for 13 years, Milton-Freewater’s Blue Mountain Cider Co. has grown from a passion project in a basement to the largest cidery in the state and a top 20 malt beverage producer overall. According to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission taxable barrels of malt beverage list, Blue Mountain Cider produced more than 5,271 barrels of hard cider last year, or roughly 163,000 gallons. Andrew Brown, director of winery and cidery operations, said the company really started to take off in 2009 and has grown as much as 120 percent in recent years. Brown said one of Blue Mountain Cider’s biggest advantages is access to apple orchards. Whereas other companies make their cider from juice concentrate or rely on the ups and downs of the apple market, Blue Mountain Cider sources its apples from the orchards of its parent company, Earl E. Brown & Sons. The Brown family’s vertical integration allowed Blue Mountain Cider to not only expand its own product but make products for other companies. Brown said Blue Mountain Cider takes part in contract packing agreements, where the company makes and packages ciders for other cideries across the country. Contracts come and go, but Blue Mountain Cider usually has about seven active agreements and has made cider for companies in California, Texas and New York. Brown said the company prefers to package the cider itself under these agree- ments, which keeps jobs in Milton-Free- water. See CIDER/12A Staff photo by E.J. Harris Blue Mountain Cider Company in Milton-Freewater has begun a new line of cider in a can called Blackfi n Hard Cider.
