Page 8A
OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
ROADS: Pendleton has used close to 700 tons of gravel this year
Continued from 1A
and sidewalks. Snow and ice
are going to cause damage, he
said, but so are the tempera-
ture extremes of the region.
Any city that experiences
below freezing temperatures
in winter and temperatures
above 100 in summer is going
to see asphalt and concrete
damage, Sivey said.
He also said plenty of
winter damage is done by
studded tires, which people
can drive on until March
31 — often many weeks after
the last ice has melted in the
Hermiston area.
Dennis Hull with the
National Weather Service
reported Pendleton’s winter
fell into the “extreme” cate-
gory under the Accumulated
Winter Season Severity
Index. The index tracks the
persistence and intensity
of cold, snowfall and snow
depth and it compares each
winter going back to 1950-51.
For a winter to be classified as
“extreme,” it must rank above
the 95th percentile in severity.
Last year, Pendleton’s
winter was in the mild or
moderate classifications.
“Just looking at the
persistent cold, Pendleton
normally has only 12 days
where the temperature fails to
reach 32 degrees during the
daytime from Dec. 1 to Jan.
22,” according to Hull. “This
winter there have been 24
days, just short of the record
of 28 days set in 1985-86.”
During the same period,
he added, Pendleton has had
snow on the ground for 38
straight days.
“Normally there are only
15 days of snow cover,” Hull
reported. “The record is 52
days again set in 1985-86.”
The cold winter, Patterson
said, caused 151 frozen or
broken water meters and at
least five broken water mains.
“We’re now assessing a
policy looking at extreme
temperatures and how long
and at what temperature we
should have folks drip water
to keep pipes from freezing,”
Patterson said.
Each winter, Pendleton
PGE: Gas already a quarter of energy supply
Continued from 1A
In comments due to state
regulators this week, a variety
of stakeholders will argue
that PGE is rushing into a
gas-heavy future that might
be good for its shareholders,
but is risky for ratepayers and
nearly as bad for the planet as
coal.
“Right now, it looks like
a shell game,” said Amy
Hojnowski, senior represen-
tative for the Sierra Club’s
Beyond Coal Campaign.
“They’re manipulating the
process to get the outcome
they want, which is a self-
built expansion of their
existing gas infrastructure at
the Boardman site.”
PGE says that’s nonsense.
It says it’s keeping an open
mind about resource choices
and will let the market decide
who can provide the cheapest,
lowest-risk power to meet its
customers needs in a compet-
itive bidding process. But,
bottom line, it says it needs to
keep the lights on, and can’t
do that with renewables alone,
a point reinforced during the
recent cold snap, when the
wind wasn’t blowing and
solar panels around the state
were covered in snow.
“We’re not putting our
thumbs on the scale for any
particular technology or
fuel,” said Brett Sims, PGE’s
director of resource strategy.
“In the end, we don’t know
what will bid in, but we
believe there are resources
beyond new gas plants.”
A gas future?
The rush to gas is on
nationally and could accel-
erate under a Trump admin-
istration loaded with fossil
fuel advocates and promising
to unleash a new wave of
drilling. Utilities around the
country are already building
or planning scores of new
gas-fired power plants and
pipelines as they close older
coal units, take advantage of
historically low gas prices,
and add more renewable
resources that require backup.
At first glance, that’s a
climate win: gas-fired power
plants emit about half the
carbon dioxide as an equiv-
alent one powered by coal.
But the new plants will still
generate considerable carbon
dioxide for decades. More-
over, the main component of
natural gas is methane, a far
more potent greenhouse gas
in the short run.
Trump’s energy plan,
posted Friday on the White
House website, said he was
committed to rolling back
Barack Obama’s Climate
Action Plan, which had aimed
to reduce methane leakage
from the oil and gas industries
by 45 percent by 2025.
Gas-fired
electricity
already makes up a quarter of
PGE’s energy supply today. It
just opened a 440-megawatt
gas plant at the Boardman site
this summer. The previous
year it opened Port Westward
II, a dozen small gas-fired
engines in Clatskanie that can
flexibly incorporate renew-
able resources.
In
November,
PGE
unveiled its newest plan for
meeting customer demand.
The study forecast a power
supply shortfall of more than
800 megawatts by 2021,
about what it takes to power
800,000 homes.
It’s a big hole, mostly the
result of the coal plant closure.
PGE looked at different
combinations of replacement
resources, then scored them
according to how they would
fare under varying fuel price,
carbon cost and demand
growth scenarios.
Filling the shortfall
PGE’s “preferred” option
didn’t specify the technology
or fuel type, but identified
two big energy needs, the
vast majority from a reliable
resource that isn’t subject
to the weather. Apart from
hydroelectricity, which may
not be available in the quan-
tity PGE needs, or coal, that
generally means natural gas.
A smaller component
of the identified need was
renewable energy, likely from
wind farms on the Columbia
Plateau or in Montana.
A variety of stakeholders
didn’t like that result. Some
complain PGE’s action plan
isn’t specific enough, and that
its scoring methodology was
skewed to favor the gas plants
it wants to build.
“They’re cooking their
proprietary model,” said
Robert Kahn, executive
director of the Northwest
& Intermountain Power
Producers Coalition. “It’s the
ultimate black box.”
PGE denies that. It says it
is trying to offer maximum
flexibility and will consider
all resource types that meet
its criteria. It also said most
of the metrics it used are
industry
standards
and
required by the state’s Public
Utility Commission.
Renewables
advocates
noted that PGE could have
chosen another mix. The
top options, including one
with far more wind energy
and less gas, scored within
a few points of one another
on a 100-point scale. They
all met the utility’s reliability
standard.
“The technologies that
exist today are good enough
to do the job, said Rachel
Shimshak, executive director
of Renewable Northwest.
“You just have to have a
utility that’s focused on fitting
them all together.”
Tyler Pepple, a lawyer
for the Industrial Customers
of
Northwest
Utilities,
contends PGE doesn’t need
to add another wind or solar
farm until 2028 or 2030,
and can comply with the
state’s increasingly rigorous
renewable energy mandates
by drawing down the massive
bank of renewable energy
credits it has built up. In
the meantime, renewable
energy costs will fall, making
compliance cheaper in 2030
and 2040.
EOTEC: On schedule to finish barns by July 14
Continued from 1A
profitable. However, when it
comes to marketing he said
one current problem is that
business manager Heather
Cannell — currently the
center’s only employee until
a new administrative assis-
tant starts in February — is
shoveling snow, cleaning
bathrooms and setting up
tables in addition to trying to
book events.
“Sometimes when you try
to save a dime it costs you
a dollar,” Givens said. “We
may be at that point.”
Cannell said it is also hard
to market a half-finished
project, because people want
to know how many seats the
rodeo arena will have or what
day the barns will be finished,
and she can’t tell them for
sure.
“I rented to an RV rally and
had to call and say, ‘Please
still come, but we won’t have
any grass for you,’” she said.
“I don’t want to over-promise
and under-deliver.”
She said since the event
center building opened in
May 2016 there have been
40 events at the center, gener-
ating about $36,000 in net
profits. And Cannell said she
has 43 more events booked
into early 2018.
Councilors and commis-
sioners asked Smith and
Givens to go back to the
EOTEC board and ask for an
operations and staffing plan
to be ready in the next month
or so for the two partners to
review a second joint work
session.
They acknowledged it
might require some addi-
tional investment by the
city and county to pay for a
marketing-focused director
who could make the center
viable long-term.
“It’s going to cost a little,
but Byron can’t run EOTEC
forever,” mayor David Drot-
zmann said.
The city council gave
the county commission a
heads-up that it would be
making a formal request to
change the name of East
Airport Road, where EOTEC
is located. The city has been
getting complaints from
truck drivers, contractors and
others who ended up lost on
the adjacent Airport Way.
Commissioner
Bill
Elfering asked if the council
had discussed the change
publicly and the council
noted they had discussed it
during their last city council
meeting.
Givens said he had heard
from concerned citizens
living on East Airport Road
who were not happy about
the proposed change, and
said from going through a
street name change himself
he knows that the costs and
inconvenience add up when
everyone has to get new driv-
er’s licenses and other legal
documents.
Commissioner
George
Murdock said he had also
gone through a road name
change twice and it “wasn’t
fatal.”
The commissioners will
discuss the city’s request
when it comes before them at
a later date.
During Monday’s work
session the city and county
also received updates on
construction. John Eckhardt
of Knerr Construction said
things are on schedule to
break ground on the barns
by Jan. 30 and finish them by
July 14.
“We do not have a lot of
flexibility in our schedule,”
he said.
Carl Hendon of Hendon
Construction said work
on the rodeo arena has
continued with heaters and
insulating covers over the
concrete where possible
to push through the cold,
snowy weather. The original
“aggressive” schedule would
have had the arena finished
before June 1, but due to
the long stretch of below-
freezing weather Hendon
said that date is now June 14.
In response to a question
from the city council about
the safety of pouring concrete
during such cold weather,
Hendon assured them that
all the tests have shown the
concrete has cured properly
and is as strong as it needs to
be.
“It’s not going to fall
down,” he said.
The EOTEC board has a
meeting Friday at 7 a.m. at
the Eastern Oregon Trade and
Event Center.
———
Contact Jade McDowell at
jmcdowell@eastoregonian.
com or 541-564-4536.
stockpiles 600 tons of gravel
for use on its roads. Patterson
said the city averaged using
200 tons a season during the
past 10 years, and last year
used 50 tons.
This year, Patterson said
the city has used close to 700
tons. The city also has an
agreement with the Oregon
Department of Transportation
to dip into another 300 tons if
the need arises.
Cleaning up the rock also
is going to take some time
and cost some money.
Patterson said the city
rented a mechanical sweeper
for six to eight weeks to help
gather the gravel starting in
March, when schools go on
spring break.
“We estimate it will take
to about mid-April (to finish)
with all this rock out there,”
he said.
The Oregon Department
of Transportation is keeping
tabs on where winter did the
most damage to roads.
Tom Strandberg, the
department’s spokesperson in
Eastern Oregon, said a large
pothole formed on Interstate
84 near The Dalles bridge,
and the department may have
to tackle that right away. He
also said new cracks and
seams are showing on state
roads in La Grande, where he
is based.
“I’m sure it’s all over the
area,” he said. “Not a whole
lot we can do when the
weather is too cold.”
Snow and ice still cover
miles of state roads in the
region. Strandberg said the
agency won’t have a full
account until winter recedes,
then it can crews can get to
work patching problem areas.
How much this might
affect the state road budget
remains a question, Strand-
berg said, but ODOT workers
in Eastern Oregon racked up
7,000-plus hours of overtime
in December — more than
twice the amount for the
month in any of the previous
four years.
And with winter not over,
he said, everyone is going to
have to wait and see the final
toll.
UMATILLA: Application will go back to Pelleberg
Continued from 1A
Sharp also noted that the
city council voted on the
zone change for the property
on Dec. 20 — a change that
would take effect 30 days
later. Therefore, when the
application was submitted
on Jan. 10, it was for land
still zoned commercial.
Sharp said the application
was incomplete, as well,
because it did not follow a
long list of criteria including
plans for development of
streets, utilities, storm water
drainage and other compo-
nents.
“If the application had
been submitted to the plan-
ning department for review
and a development of a staff
report, several items would
have been noted that make
the application inappropriate
and illegal for the planning
commission to consider it at
this time,” he said.
The rest of the planning
commission agreed and
voted to send the application
back to Pelleberg.
During
Tuesday’s
meeting Sharp also brought
up two new buildings he
said had been added recently
to the property of Alanis
Auto Detail on Sixth Street.
He noted that a conditional
use permit had been
granted for the business,
but the construction of new,
permanent structures on the
property was not part of the
conditional use permit.
Since the only body
with authority to amend the
conditional use permit was
the planning commission,
Sharp questioned why no
request to amend had come
before the commission when
the buildings were erected.
Searles said he was “not
aware of the construction
until most of the work
was already done.” But in
November, Searles said
he told the business owner
that before the work was
completed he needed a
conditional use permit,
building permit and elec-
trical permit.
Searles said the business
owner told him that the
city manager had given
him permission to erect the
structures. Searles told the
business owner that the city
manager did not have the
authority to do that.
Under questioning from
Sharp, Searles said he did not
know whether the business
owner had misunderstood
Pelleberg and wouldn’t be
able to speak for the city
manager about what had
been said.
Commission
member
Lyle Smith said the detail
shop was a good business for
the city but the commission
needed the business owner
and Pelleberg to sit down
with them so they could
work out the permit issue
and clarify that city staff does
not have the legal authority
to approve changes.
“We really want to keep
this guy in business ... but
we really need to keep things
by the books,” Smith said.
“We can’t shortcut.”
The commission directed
Searles to ask a represen-
tative of the business and
Pelleberg to attend their
next meeting to discuss the
issue. A call to Pelleberg by
the East Oregonian was not
returned Tuesday night.
The city council has
called for a special city
council meeting that will take
place Wednesday, Jan. 25 at
city hall at 7 p.m. The only
item on the agenda, besides
the pledge of allegiance and
approval of the agenda, is an
executive session on “Staff
performance/Disciplinary
action.” The closed-door
session is under ORS
192.660 2(b) and 2(i) which
pertain to discussing “the
dismissal or disciplining
of, or to hear complaints or
charges brought against, a
public officer, employee,
staff member or individual
agent” and to “review and
evaluate the employment-re-
lated performance of the
chief executive officer of
any public body, a public
officer, employee or staff
member.”
———
Contact Jade McDowell
at jmcdowell@eastorego-
nian.com or 541-564-4536.