Page 8A
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East Oregonian
Saturday, January 2, 2016
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By JIM SALTER
Associated Press
ST. LOUIS — The worst of the
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over in the St. Louis area, leaving
residents of several water-logged
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of 2016 assessing damage, cleaning
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back — or in some cases, where to
live.
Farther south, things were getting
worse: Record and near-record crest
predictions of the Mississippi River
and levee breaks threatened homes
in rural southern Missouri and Illi-
nois. Two more levees succumbed
Friday, bringing to at least 11 the
number of levee failures.
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10 inches of rain over a three-day
period that began last weekend, is
blamed for 22 deaths. Searchers
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people — two teenagers in Illinois,
two men in Missouri and a country
music singer in Oklahoma.
On Friday, water from the
Mississippi, Meremec and Missouri
rivers was largely receding in the
St. Louis area. Two major high-
ways — Interstate 44 and Interstate
55 — reopened south of St. Louis,
AP Photo/Jeff Roberson
In this aerial photo, homes are surrounded by loodwater, Wednes-
day in Paciic, Mo.
meaning commuters who return to
work next week won’t have hours-
long detours. Some evacuees were
allowed to return home.
But in the far southwestern tip
of Illinois, the 500 or so people
living behind the Len Small levee,
which protects the hamlets of Olive
Branch, Hodges Park, Unity and
rural homes, were urged to move to
higher ground after the Mississippi
began pouring over the levee.
Alexander
County
Board
Chairman Chalen Tatum said sand-
bagging efforts were cut off because
it was simply too dangerous for the
volunteers. Far more water is to
come before the Sunday crest.
“It’s going to get ugly,” he said.
In St. Mary, Missouri, a town of
about 360 residents 50 miles south of
St. Louis, neighbors and volunteers
placed sandbags around homes after
a small agricultural levee broke. The
Mississippi River was expected to
crest there Saturday at about 3½ feet
below the 1993 record.
The main culprit in the St. Louis
region was the Meramac River, a
relatively small Mississippi tribu-
tary. It had bombarded communities
in the far southwestern reaches of
the St. Louis suburbs during the
week. By Friday, it was relenting,
but not before some points topped
the 1993 record by 4 feet.
Two wastewater treatment plants
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that raw sewage spewed into the
river. A water plant closed at High
Ridge.
Hundreds of people were evac-
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Park and Arnold, and many of their
homes took in water.
Among those were displaced
were Damon Thorne, 44, and his
60-year-old mother, Linda, who live
together in an Arnold mobile home
park that washed away after a small
private levee proved no match for
the surging Meramec. For now, the
Thornes are staying in a Red Cross
shelter at a Baptist church.
“We’re just basically homeless,”
Damon Thorne said. “We have
nowhere to go.”
In West Alton, Missouri, a
Mississippi River town that sits near
the convergence with the also-ele-
vated Missouri River just north of St.
Louis, evacuees couldn’t yet return
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pour over the overwhelmed levee,
Mayor Willie Richter said. He
estimated that about three-quarters
of the homes were damaged.
Nearly 1,000 residents left West
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to return. Richter said some of the
remaining 500 or so may leave
this time, too. Richter, 46, said he’s
staying put in the same house where
he grew up. He plans to raise the
home off the ground a bit.
“It’s our family home, so it’s hard
to think about leaving,” Richter said.
Many hard-hit St. Louis-area
towns kept residents updated using
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Facebook page to advise residents
Friday that the evacuation order was
lifted, and the city of Arnold’s Face-
book page urged residents to watch
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In southeast Missouri, the
fast-rising Mississippi damaged
about two-dozen homes in Cape
Girardeau and threatened a power
substation, though the community
of nearly 40,000 residents is mostly
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Continued from 1A
Rita Glover
Rita Glover could easily have
been written off as a casualty of her
traumatic childhood.
Glover’s parents drank too
much and used drugs. Her family
lived in poverty, sometimes
camping out in the woods. As
a little girl, Glover experienced
sexual abuse by a family member.
By age 14, she was taking care of
her younger brother by herself in a
low-income apartment.
“I started using meth at 14 and
smoking cigarettes,” Glover said.
“I became sexually active.”
She dropped out of school
and had two children by 22. Her
life became one drug-induced
roller coaster ride interspersed
with periods of semi-clarity and
attempts to clean up. During one
low period, she remembers living
in a leaky, cockroach-ridden trailer
in Hermiston that provided a place
to crash after nights of drinking
and drugging.
“There wasn’t a single day,
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something,” she said. “At least
once a week, I cried myself to
sleep. I didn’t want to live, but I
was too chicken to die.”
She sees her past clearly now
and describes it succinctly.
“I was running around making
terrible memories.”
Glover, who now lives in
Heppner, reels off details of her
past life in a detached way as if
she is describing another person.
In a way, she is. Indeed, it’s hard
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woman as an addict. These days,
she attends college and works at
Community Counseling Solutions
as a peer support specialist. She
will receive her associate’s degree
in human services in the spring
from Kaplan University’s online
program.
Looking back, Glover realizes
she went down the same rabbit
hole as many who experienced
repeated trauma as children,
attempting to medicate post-trau-
matic stress, anxiety and depres-
sion with narcotics and alcohol.
Mental illness and drug addiction,
she said, are often interwoven and
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ended in failure. And the next. She
was embarrassed and not ready to
be honest about how far she had
fallen. During one visit with a CCS
counselor, she downplayed the
details.
“I lied my way through it — I
talked about my social drinking,”
she said. “He could see right
through me. He was nothing but
kind.”
Finally, she found herself ready
to do the work required to break
free. She went to treatment. She
joined a support group. She meets
regularly with mental health and
drug counselors. She stopped
smoking.
Her new life includes faith and
church.
“I was baptized a month before
treatment,” she said.
The mother of three now
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says she isn’t ashamed about her
past, but is incredibly grateful to
have emerged from the darkness
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laughter.
She remains vigilant, though.
Her unhealthy coping behavior of
the past lurks just out of sight.
“It’s always there,” she said.
“It’s something to be aware of.”
———
Contact Kathy Aney at kaney@
eastoregonian.com or call 541-966-
0810.
PERS: State faces an $18B unfunded pension liability over 2 decades
Continued from 1A
alternative investments will
help the state avoid a repeat
of what happened in the 2008
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public employees’ pension
fund lost a third of its value
in six months.
The fund has largely
recovered from the effects
of the crash, but for a variety
of other reasons the state
now faces an $18 billion
unfunded pension liability
over the next two decades.
The shortfall could grow if
the state’s investment returns
continue to fall short of the
7.5 percent assumed rate
of return or if there is an
economic downturn.
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cials are most interested
in hedge funds’ promise
of uncorrelated returns,
meaning that the funds will
lose less — or perhaps even
produce returns — in a down
economy. Although research
has shown hedge fund
performance is correlated
to the stock market, Oregon
has invested in funds with
“truly uncorrelated returns,”
according to Oregon State
Treasury Communications
Director James Sinks.
“Currently, about 70 cents
of every $1 in (pension)
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ment gains, so sustainable
and strong performance is
key,” Sinks wrote in an email.
In
late
November,
researchers at the Roosevelt
Institute released a report
that examined hedge fund
investments by 11 other
states. The researchers, who
also received support from
the American Federation of
Teachers and the Haas Insti-
tute for a Fair and Inclusive
Society at the University of
California, Berkeley, found
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between hedge fund returns
and overall pension fund
investment performance. The
researchers also cited market
data that showed hedge fund
performance was “highly
correlated” with the stock
market.
As it turns out other state
pension funds have not
followed Calpers’ decision
to divest. The California
pension system cited costs
and complexity as reasons
for its 2014 decision to exit
from hedge funds.
The Oregon State Trea-
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release the fee schedules
for the three hedge funds in
which the pension system
invested, citing an exemption
in Oregon public records
law. It allows the agency to
keep hidden any documents
submitted by hedge funds
and other private funds not
subject to federal disclosures
and other regulations.
As a result, it’s impossible
to know how much the
pension fund will pay over
the life of the investments.
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release aggregate hedge fund
fees for 2014, which suggest
the state paid 0.27 percent in
fees that year on two hedge
funds — AQR Delta Fund
II and AQR Style Premia
Fund — and 1.07 percent
on the third fund, Reservoir
Strategic Partners Fund.
That is probably a tiny
portion of what the state
will eventually pay, given
the typical hedge fund fee
structure.
Keith Larson, a member
of the Oregon Investment
Council, said hedge funds
typically charge a 2 percent
management fee, plus a 20
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is partly why the funds have
a negative image.
One of the AQR funds
had a return of 5.6 percent
as of June, while it was too
early to calculate a return on
the second fund, according to
a state document. Reservoir
Strategic Partners Fund
had a return of 3.9 percent
which, although it was
below the state’s assumed
overall pension fund return
of 7.5 percent, was not bad
compared with the state’s
actual pension fund return of
just under 3 percent during
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year.
Hedge funds enjoy strong
support from the Oregon
Investment Council, which
has unanimously supported
them every time there was a
vote to invest in a new fund.
The council’s experience
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collapse helps explain why.
The crash revealed that
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ments, such as bonds and
other securities, were riskier
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realized.
“Part of the reason for
that was in order to try and
achieve a high return for the
state, the state had invested
in a lot of corporate debt,”
Larson said. The pension
fund had also invested in
mortgage-backed securities,
many of which contained
high-risk loans that went into
default during the housing
crisis.
Katherine Durant, chair
of the Oregon Investment
Council, said the 2008 crash
was a pivotal moment.
“We’ve never seen that
kind of a global crash of the
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in the last downturn,” Durant
said. “Usually it was just
equities or bonds, it wasn’t
everything. But everything
went down.”
Larson agreed. “That was
a bit of an ah-ha moment,”
Larson said. “I think the
people that were doing the
day-to-day investing knew
well and good pretty much
what we were investing in.
We were investing in these
turbo-charged assets, that
had higher returns but higher
risk ... But I think it was a
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the entire portfolio, what the
effects would be.”
Wheeler, who became
treasurer in March 2010, said
it was important to diversify
the state’s pension fund
investments so that various
investments move in different
directions, under different
conditions. “In some cases,
they can serve as countering
forces to economic forces
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“In 2008, there was no safe
harbor. Everything went
down.”
Larson said the situation
taught him two things: The
Oregon Investment Council
needed to better understand
the risks across investments,
and it needed to build a
better portfolio of alternative
investments to prepare for
economic downturns. The
state purchased a system to
better track assets and risk,
and has been working to build
the alternatives portfolio,
which in addition to hedge
funds includes investments
in funds that own natural
resources such as timber and
infrastructure such as ports,
airports and a power plant.
Uncorrelated returns are
important to the pension fund
because when its value dips,
schools and other public
employers can end up paying
more into the fund.
“It’s as much about the
uncorrelated returns as it
is about the high returns,”
Larson said of the alterna-
tives portfolio.