Saturday, July 30, 2016
OFF PAGE ONE
DAIRY: More than 7,000 acres WHEAT: Glyphosate-resistant wheat
were sold to Lost Valley Ranch found in Eastern Oregon ield in 2013
Page 12A
East Oregonian
Continued from 1A
Continued from 1A
and GreenWood will continue
to sell wood chips to pulp and
paper mills.
The Boardman Tree Farm
has been around since 1990,
and has become a popular
attraction for visitors to the
community. Residents will
have one more chance to
bid farewell to the tree farm
during the inal “Very Poplar
Run,” a charity 5K, 10K and
15K race that beneits the
Agape House in Hermiston.
Rice said they are planning
to make this year’s event extra
special.
“The idea is to do it up real
nice for the last event,” he
said.
More than 7,000 acres
of the tree farm also sold to
Lost Valley Ranch, formerly
Willow Creek Dairy, which is
proposing to bring in 30,000
cows on ground east of where
Homestead Lane intersects
with Poleline Road. The dairy,
owned by Greg te Velde, is
in the process of obtaining a
conined animal feeding oper-
ation, or CAFO, permit with
the state. If approved, it would
become the second-largest
dairy in Oregon behind only
nearby Threemile Canyon
Farms.
The permit regulates
how Lost Valley Ranch
would handle wastewater
and manure generated on
site to protect surface water
and groundwater. A public
hearing on the permit was
held Thursday at the Port of
Morrow in Boardman, with
the majority of comments in
favor of the proposal.
Wayne Downey, of Herm-
iston, managed the design
of the facility, which he said
uses the best management
practices and latest tech-
nology. The design calls for
open top lagoons capable
of holding 260 acre-feet of
liquid manure, which is then
recycled and applied onto
farmland for growing animal
feed.
Lagoons are to be built
with a synthetic liner and
leak detection system to
protect groundwater. The
farm will conduct annual
soil monitoring and quarterly
sampling of monitoring wells,
according to its application.
Marty Myers, general
manager
of
Threemile
Canyon Farms, also supported
the proposal. For 15 years,
Willow Creek Dairy has
leased land from Threemile
Canyon, and Myers described
te Velde as a good tenant.
“Sustainable agriculture
is really what we’re talking
about here,” Myers said.
“This whole operation is
really a recycling venture,
where the cows are the main
beneit.”
Morrow County Planning
Director Carla McLane
presented comments on
behalf of the county court,
which were not necessarily
in opposition of the project,
but did pose some concerns.
McLane said the dairy would
be located within the Lower
Umatilla Basin Groundwater
Management Area as well as
three different critical ground-
water areas, which raises
questions about water use and
contamination.
“We’re not unfamiliar
with (land application) here
in Morrow County, but we
have to ind a way to balance
that with historical impacts
of high nitrogen levels in the
groundwater,” McLane said.
Written public comments
will be accepted through
Thursday, Aug. 4 on the
project. There is no timetable
for a decision to issue the
permit, which is done jointly
by the Oregon Department of
Agriculture and Department
of Environmental Quality.
———
Contact George Plaven at
gplaven@eastoregonian.com
or 541-966-0825.
FIRE: Juniper Canyon a hotbed for ires
Continued from 1A
association,
landowners
have access to grant funds
and
steeply
discounted
ireighting equipment from
other government agencies or
the military.
Marvin Vetter is the
rangeland ire protection
coordinator with the Oregon
Department of Forestry. He
assists interested parties in
the process of forming a
rangeland association, as
well as providing training
and helping associations get
equipment. Vetter refers to
the associations as volunteer
wildland ire departments.
However, the associations are
not trained to tackle structure
ires.
Legislation passed this
spring in Oregon now allows
for counties to form associa-
tions under local emergency
management and provide
training and equipment to the
association. But Vetter said
the legislation only applies to
counties with 200,000 plus
acres of unprotected range-
land.
In addition to the 156,000
acres in Umatilla County
with no protection, an area
near Milton-Freewater has
106,600 acres under voluntary
contracted coverage. It is not
a tax-funded department or
district, but a private service
people in the area have to
pay for to receive coverage.
It is unclear whether that area
would qualify for rangeland
association protection.
The Oregon State Fire
Marshal’s
website
also
suggests
creating
ire
protection through forming
a domestic water supply
district, county service district
or a governmental industry
ire brigade.
Cliff Bracher has property
located within the no man’s
land area. A portion of Bracher
Farms is protected by the
Helix Rural Fire Protection
District.
With the formation of
Umatilla County Fire District
1, additional property owned
by Bracher, including his
family home, was incorpo-
rated into the district’s service
area.
Bracher spoke with the
East Oregonian on his cell
phone while in the middle of
wheat harvest at an area of
his property that still remains
unprotected. He said that
the threat of ire out there is
“always a concern.” He is,
however, grateful for the new
coverage he receives through
the new ire district.
“We’ve already received
services and I haven’t even
paid the bill yet,” he said in
reference to tax money he will
have to pay on his property
to be included in the newly
formed district.
Bracher said the ideal
would be to have ire stations
every few miles throughout
the area, but since the land is
so rural and not many people
live out there, it’s just not
realistic. He would like to see
a rural ire department outside
of Pendleton. The problem
is, he said, “Nobody wants to
pay for it.”
Funding might be the
biggest hurdle in getting the
area protected. As it stands
now, Bracher says his irst call
when a ire gets out of hand
is to the Forest Service ofice
in Walla Walla because it has
access to resources like planes
that can drop ire retardant
or the ability to send ground
crews.
One area in no man’s land
that seems to be a hotbed for
wildland ires is the Juniper
Canyon area east of Hat Rock
near the Washington border. A
ire will start by Highway 730
and quickly build into a large
blaze.
Pendleton Fire Chief Mike
Ciraulo said his department
responds to areas without
coverage as requested.
“Our priority is ires that
threaten our protection area,
however we have made a
conscious decision to respond
as requested irrespective of
threat,” Ciraulo said in an
email.
No man’s land is not a new
issue, according to Stanton.
“This unprotected land,
no man’s land, has been a
problem a long time.”
is unlikely the wheat presents any safety
concerns if present in the food supply as a
result of this incident,” APHIS stated.
The USDA Foreign Agriculture Service
and U.S. Wheat Associates are providing
analysis and testing capabilities to overseas
markets so they can test wheat entering
their countries to ensure there’s no presence
of GE wheat, said Glen Squires, CEO of the
Washington Grain Commission.
Some overseas buyers ban genetically
engineered commodities.
“We’re hoping it won’t cause disrup-
tion,” Squires said. “It may, a little bit, until
they get comfortable with the tests.”
Others in the grain industry also don’t
foresee much market disruption.
“Our customers and buyers were
contacted immediately when there was a
inding,” said Michelle Hennings, execu-
tive director of the Washington Association
of Wheat Growers. “Going to that extent
and being proactive with our buyers and
customers will be a positive instead of a
negative.”
“The evidence they’ve presented to us is
suficient, we feel, that this has not affected
commercial wheat supplies,” said Steve
Mercer, vice president of communications
for U.S. Wheat Associates. “We are very
conident that nothing has changed the U.S.
wheat supply chain’s ability to deliver wheat
that matches customer speciications.”
Japan and South Korea may be “tempo-
rarily cautious” about new imports of some
U.S. wheat, as they were during a previous
case in 2013, Mercer said.
In the spring of 2013, a farmer in Eastern
Oregon found glyphosate-resistant wheat
plants in one of his ields. An APHIS inves-
tigation was unable to pinpoint the source
of the wheat.
Mercer said USDA could provide the
tests to overseas markets as soon as next
week. Monsanto developed the test to
identify the wheat in commercial grain
shipments, and USDA has validated the test
and its sensitivity.
Squires said he does not know who the
farmer is.
“I can’t speculate anything on how it
happened, where it came from,” he said.
“We’re not surprised by this at all,” said
Amy van Saun, an attorney for the Center
for Food Safety in Portland. The center is a
nonproit public interest and environmental
advocacy organization. “Contamination
by GE crops and GE organisms generally
is inevitable. It keeps happening over and
over again.”
This is the third discovery of genetically
engineered wheat in the U.S. Besides the
2013 discovery in Eastern Oregon, in
September of 2014 a different variety of
glyphosate-resistant wheat was found on a
Huntley, Mont., research plot, where genet-
ically engineered wheat had been legally
tested 11 years before.
No genetically engineered wheat is
commercially available.
Van Saun said the center wants to see
better regulations for ield trials and to
protect farmers who grow non-GE crops.
“These ield trials were taking place
back in the late 1990s-early 2000s, so why
is this still happening now?” she asked.
APHIS says it has taken measures to
ensure no GE wheat moves into commerce.
“Out of an abundance of caution,” the
agency is testing the farmer’s full wheat
harvest for the presence of any GE mate-
rial, according to the notice. The farmer’s
harvest is inished and will be held while
USDA completes testing of the grain.
So far, all samples have tested negative
for any GE material. If any wheat tests
positive for GE material, the farmer’s crop
will not be allowed into commerce.
There are no GE wheat varieties for sale
or in commercial production in the United
States.
Dan Steiner, grains merchant for Morrow
County Grain Growers in Boardman, Ore.,
said the basis, the difference between
wheat cash prices and futures prices on the
Chicago Board of Trade, dropped July 29
about 15 cents per bushel, primarily out of
caution.
Steiner believes the marketplace is
waiting to see how the investigation unfolds
and customers respond.
“Because we had the event earlier,
they’re better prepared,” he said. “They’re
going to have systems in place to inspect
and check. It didn’t have the shock impact
it had a few years ago.”
Grain import oficials in Japan and
South Korea have tested for the “GE event”
identiied in 2013 in virtually every load
of U.S. wheat delivered to those countries
since August 2013, U.S. Wheat and the
National Association of Wheat Growers said
in a joint statement.
No GE wheat has been identiied in more
than 350 million bushels of wheat exported
to Japan alone, the organizations said.
Researchers at Washington State Univer-
sity have conducted routine phenotype
screening for glyphosate tolerance in wheat
since 2013. Varieties included in WSU’s
trials represent more than 95 percent of the
wheat planted in Washington and much of
the acreage planted in Idaho and Oregon,
according to the U.S. Wheat and NAWG
statement.
“Screening to date has revealed no
glyphosate-tolerant wheat plants in these
trials,” the statement said.
U.S. Wheat’s Steve Mercer praised
USDA’s handling of the situation.
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