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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 16, 2016)
JOHN RAMOS OF HERMISTON DYLANN ROOF GUILTY OF ALL 33 CHARGES PORTLAND STRUGGLES WITH ICY ROADS 10A Enjoy a free peppermint mocha at Bloomz Coffee Bar in Hermiston CHURCH SHOOTING/8A FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2016 141st Year, No. 44 One dollar WINNER OF THE 2016 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD Your Weekend • • • Christmas extravaganza Sunday at Great Pacifi c Night at the Children’s Museum on Friday Paul Gorham Memorial Scholarship Breakfast For times and places see Coming Events, 5A Catch a movie Jonathan Olley/Lucasfi lm Ltd. via AP “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” For showtime, Page 5A For review, Weekend EO Weekend Weather Fri Sat Sun Staff photo by E.J. Harris Clayton Servi uses a snow shovel to dig out his girlfriend’s car on Southeast Third Street on Thursday in Pendleton. 15/-4 14/7 28/24 Oregon reimburses schools for lead testing of water By PARIS ACHEN Capital Bureau SALEM — The Oregon Emergency Board on Wednesday approved reim- bursing schools more than $2 million for about 53,000 tests for lead in school water supplies. The board established a $5 million reserve fund in September and authorized the Oregon Department of Education to accept applications from schools for reimbursement of costs associated with testing for elevated lead levels in drinking water. The 53,000 tests come from school districts that represent 89 percent of public school students in the state, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Offi ce. School districts had until See LEAD/10A Can you dig it? Snowstorm pummels Columbia Basin By GEORGE PLAVEN and PHIL WRIGHT East Oregonian All hands were on deck Thursday as city and county employees began digging out of a strong winter storm that dumped seven inches of snow in some places across the Columbia Basin. Mary Wister, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pendleton, said the latest round of snow began accumulating at about 2 p.m. Wednesday and persisted through Thursday morning. It was the most snow to fall in a 24-hour period since December 2008, according to Wister, when 7.4 inches was recorded in Pendleton. “We’ll go many years without seeing this much snow in one day,” Wister said. That left city road crews to work around the clock paving and sanding streets. Bob Patterson, Pendleton public works director, said they spread gravel through the night Wednesday, though loose, powdery snow still made for diffi - cult driving conditions throughout the day Thursday. “We do the best we can, but we have to rely on our citizens to have proper traction devices to get around,” Patterson said. The city does not use a plow to clear streets, Patterson said, but does have three Staff photo by Daniel Wattenburger gravel trucks at its disposal. The highest Carter Cleveland, 9, shouts as friend Kelyn Purves, 10, See STORM/3A hangs on during a sled ride at the Sunset Elementary hill in Hermiston on Thursday. Avalanche of good deeds follows storm By JADE MCDOWELL East Oregonian The snowy conditions brought out Good Samaritans in force, fi lling social media with thank-yous and shout-outs to those who helped unstick strangers’ cars and shovel neighbors’ sidewalks. Melissa Jane Davison-Monkus of Pendleton said she and her husband are both recovering from surgery, so clearing the snow and de-icing their car would have been diffi cult. “It would not have been easy for us to get out of our drive,” she said. She and her husband noticed a scraping sound outside, however, and when they looked out the window they saw two teenage boys who live on their street busy clearing their drive and scraping the ice and snow off of their car. April Davis, Ashley Martinez and Kaitlin Clayson of Hermiston each wrote on Facebook that their cars got stuck Thursday morning but they were quickly assisted by strangers who got out of their own cars and See KINDNESS/3A PENDLETON Boutique will allow passengers to bypass security By ANTONIO SIERRA East Oregonian Before winning a lucrative Essen- tial Air Service contract, Boutique Air promised a different experience than the now-defunct SeaPort Airlines. Besides better planes and customer service, Boutique is set to offer another service SeaPort had long abandoned — security check- point-free experience at Portland International Airport. Representatives from Boutique and the Port of Portland both confi rmed that Boutique customers would be able to bypass Trans- portation Security Administration screenings when going to and from Portland. Pendleton’s Eastern Oregon Regional Airport did away with TSA screenings several years ago, and although SeaPort fl ights to and from Portland initially enjoyed this privi- lege, TSA checkpoints were added in 2012 when SeaPort started using the main terminal, adding another 45 minutes to an hour to some passen- gers trips. What will make a TSA-free experience possible is Boutique’s partnership with Atlantic Aviation, a fi xed-base operator with a hangar on the Portland International Airport grounds but outside the main terminal. Michelle McNulty, Boutique marketing and community manager, explained how the set-up will work in an email. “We will be providing shuttle service from the FBO [Atlantic Aviation] to the main PDX terminal (and vise versa),” she wrote. “This shuttle will be run by Boutique Air. The passengers that are traveling into PDX via Boutique Air will be able to request the shuttle once they land (from a customer service) agent and will be driven to the main PDX terminal. “For the passengers at the PDX main terminal, they can call the designated number (provided on our website under the airport information for the Portland International Airport) to have the shuttle come pick them up.” With only a half-mile separating them, Port of Portland spokeswoman Kama Simonds said there’s a walking path between the Atlantic Aviation hangar and the main terminal for those who choose not to use the shuttle. Simonds said Atlantic Aviation also has a rental car service on-site. Boutique’s Dec. 19 service start date is welcome news for Pendleton’s business community, which had to endure several months of no commer- cial fl ight service from Pendleton. Pendleton Chamber of Commerce executive director Gail Nelson said air service is especially utilized by government agencies like the InterMountain Education Service District, which often need to attend conferences and meetings in Salem. During the gap in coverage, Nelson said the chamber solicited interest to charter a fl ight between Pendleton and Portland, but the idea never gained enough traction.
