THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2015
140th Year, No. 5
WINNER OF THE 2015 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
One dollar
HEPPNER
Morrow
County to
drop judge
position
Will take effect in 2017
By GEORGE PLAVEN
East Oregonian
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Sophomore Ellie Glover falls on her back into the mud pit while battling with team Luau against the Hippies on Wednesday
during the Mud Wars in Pendleton. TOP: The junior team, Piggies in the Mud, struggle in the pit.
Muddy tug fest
celebrates 20 years
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
Wednesday night’s Mud Wars
wasn’t exactly good, clean fun.
It was good and it was fun,
but it de¿ nitely wasn’t clean.
Mud oozed and splattered. The
adrenaline-charged girls who
faced off for the annual slimy
tug fest at the Happy Canyon
arena began the night with pris-
tine fashionable costumes that
soon turned a uniform shade of
chocolate brown.
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Freshman Riley Sorensen looks back toward the
crowd covered in mud while taking part in the
Mud Wars on Wednesday in Pendleton.
Nineteen Pendleton High
School teams took turns
plunging into the 10-inch-deep
mud pit for epic battles of
tug-o-war. Many of the girls had
used duct tape to ensure their
shoes and socks would remain
on their feet.
To begin the evening, the
Nerds, looking appropriately
geeky, and Pajama Jam, dressed
for a slumber party, stepped into
the muck. The girls bent frozen
See MUD/8A
Supporters can’t agree on low-carbon measures
By HILLARY BORRUD
Capital Bureau
On its face, Oregon’s
low-carbon fuel standard has a
simple promise: It will reduce
carbon emissions from trans-
portation fuel used in the state
by 10 percent over a decade,
starting in 2016.
As it turns out, even
supporters of the underlying
law disagree over how the state
should calculate that reduction.
The standard is supposed to
account for the total amount of
carbon generated by gas, ethanol,
electricity and other fuels across
their life cycles, from the ¿ eld or
power plant to the tailpipe.
Fuel importers and producers
will likely meet the standards
through a combination of cleaner
biofuels blended into gas and
diesel, as well as carbon reduc-
tion credits the state will issue
to owners of electric charging
stations and other alternative fuel
infrastructure.
The Oregon Department
of
Environmental
Quality
proposed rules last month that
would follow California’s lead
to include the impact of new
demand for biofuels crops such
as corn and soybeans. This
factor is known as the indirect
land-use change and as recently
See FUEL/8A
Big changes are coming to Morrow
County government.
Commissioners voted Sept. 16 to
effectively eliminate the county judge
position that acts as county administrator
and presides over juvenile court.
Instead, juvenile cases will be
absorbed into circuit court and the county
will hire a full-time administrator who
reports to three part-time commissioners.
Currently, county government operates
as two part-time commissioners and one
full-time judge.
The county began recruiting a new
administrator in June, and interviewed
three ¿ nalists for the job Oct. 12-1.
Human Resources Director Karen Wolfe
said they hope to make a hire soon.
See JUDGE/8A
Obama takes
aim at Rx
drug abuse
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
Associated Press
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Traveling
to a region in the throes of a drug abuse
crisis, President Barack Obama promised
Wednesday to use his bully pulpit and
federal programs to try to combat the
“epidemic” of heroin use and prescrip-
tion painkiller abuse that is upending
communities across the country.
“This crisis is taking lives; it’s
destroying families and shattering
communities all across the country,”
Obama said at a panel discussion on
opioid drug abuse. “That’s the thing about
substance abuse; it doesn’t discriminate.
It touches everybody.”
On stage at a crowded community
center, Obama heard from advocates,
health care workers, law enforcement
of¿ cials and policy makers about
the depth of a problem that has long
See DRUGS/8A
Travel writers Let ‘er Buck
Chinese bloggers explore
Oregon’s seven wonders
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
Pat Beard raised his coffee cup
Tuesday morning to the two men across
his table at the Pendleton Coffee Bean.
“Let ‘er Buck,” toasted Beard, event
recruiter for Travel Pendleton.
The two Chinese travel bloggers,
Lintao Li and Anzhen Teng, didn’t speak
English, but they were familiar with the
catchphrase. They had just visited the
Pendleton Round-Up and Happy Canyon
Hall of Fame. They had ogled photos
of cowboys riding broncs and bulls and
watched rodeo action on a video. Around
Li’s neck hung a long green-and-yellow
scarf he’d received from the visit, embla-
zoned with the words “Let ‘er Buck” and
the rodeo’s iconic bucking bronc.
During the coffee break, the pair of
travel writers, aided by translator Vivian
Liang, asked Beard to de¿ ne the phrase.
Beard, a rodeo cowboy wearing a big
cowboy hat, obliged.
“When you are about to do something
daring or reckless or fun, you say ‘Let ‘er
Buck,’” Beard told them. “It’s the slogan
of the Pendleton Round-Up.”
He grinned at them and gave them
a lesson in pronunciation. When they
parted, there were let ‘er bucks all-around.
The men were on their second day of
a tour of the Seven Wonders of Oregon
— Crater Lake, Painted Hills, Smith
Rock, the Wallowas, Mount Hood, the
Columbia River Gorge and the Oregon
coast — and places in between. The
night before, after visiting Boardman’s
Sage Center, they dined at the Hamley
See TRAVEL/8A
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
Lintao Li and Anzhen Teng, of China, are travel bloggers who
are on a tour of the Seven Wonders of Oregon. They pose
Tuesday outside the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute after a tour.