NATION/8A
80/54
TRUMP FIRES
FBI DIRECTOR
PENDLETON ROUND-UP
HALL OF FAME ANNOUNCES
NEWEST INDUCTEES
SPORTS/1B
WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 2017
141st Year, No. 147
One dollar
WINNER OF THE 2016 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Part of tunnel collapses at Hanford
Workers evacuated, no radiation leak detected
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
Associated Press
RICHLAND, Wash. — A portion of a
tunnel containing buried rail cars full of radio-
active waste collapsed Tuesday at a sprawling
storage facility in a remote area of Washington
state, forcing an evacuation of some workers
at the site that made plutonium for nuclear
weapons for decades after World War II.
Offi cials detected no release of radiation
In this 2014 fi le photo, a
sign warns of radioactiv-
ity near a wind direction
fl ag indicator at the “C”
tank farm on the Hanford
Nuclear Reservation near
Richland, Wash. An emer-
gency has been declared
Tuesday at the Hanford
Nuclear Reservation after
a portion of a tunnel that
contained rail cars full of
nuclear waste collapsed.
at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and no
workers were injured, said Randy Bradbury,
a spokesman for the Washington state Depart-
ment of Ecology.
No workers were inside the tunnel when
soil collapsed two to four feet over a 400
square foot area. The tunnels are hundreds of
feet long, with about eight feet of soil covering
them, the agency said.
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, fi le
See HANFORD/7A
CTUIR
honored by
Governor
for creek
restoration
ECHO
East Oregonian
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
The city of Echo wants to expand their sewage treatment facility onto ten acres of Michael Yunker’s ranch outside of Echo.
The city says they would like Yunker to sell the property willingly, but will take the land through condemnation if necessary.
Landowner turns up
nose at sewage plan
City has power to use eminent domain,
asks ranch owner to sell voluntarily
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
Michael Yunker loves his
ranch on the Umatilla River.
He doesn’t love the idea of
giving up 10 acres of it to store
the city of Echo’s recycled
water. But the city may not give
him any choice in the matter.
Yunker was given a letter
from the city’s attorney in
December stating that the city
needed somewhere to locate
a “reclaimed water” pond and
irrigation fi eld to upgrade to the
city’s sewer system. Engineers
had determined that a 10-acre
section of his 65-acre property
was the best spot.
The city could take the land
from Yunker and compensate
him for it in a legal process
called condemnation, the letter
stated, but it would be better for
him to sell it voluntarily so the
city did not have to handle the
situation in the “most expensive
and least neighborly way.”
The news hit Yunker hard.
“I kind of went into a funk,”
he said. “I didn’t know what to
do.”
He called those 10 acres
the “heart” of his ranch. They
encompass the only area of the
ranch not in a fl ood plain, he
said, as well as his pump and
irrigation lines. The condem-
nation would also include an
See ECHO/10A
Morrow County bucks rural trend,
comes roaring back from recession
By GEORGE PLAVEN
East Oregonian
By and large, job growth in rural
Oregon has lagged behind the post-re-
cession recovery seen in metro areas
like Portland and Salem, according to
a report issued Tuesday by the state
Employment Department.
One notable exception, however, is
in Morrow County, where employment
has risen a whopping 40.1 percent
compared to pre-recession levels and
workers are paid the third-highest
average wages statewide.
The state’s report, titled “The
Employment Landscape of Rural
Oregon,” details why rural areas are
See EMPLOYMENT/10A
EO fi le photo
A shipping container is offl oaded from a railcar at one of
the railroad spurs at the Port of Morrow in May 2015.
The Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Indian Reservation were
honored by the Oregon State Land Board
and Gov. Kate Brown for a fi sh habitat
restoration project on Catherine Creek.
The Stream Restoration Project Award
was given to the CTUIR and its partners
by Brown at a ceremony Tuesday in
Salem, which was also attended by Trea-
surer Tobias Read and Secretary of State
Dennis Richardson.
The Tribe restored one mile of salmon,
steelhead and bull trout habitat on Cath-
erine Creek near La Grande, funded by
$2.8 million from Bonneville Power
Administration and its ratepayers as part
of a 10-year
Columbia
“Restoring
Basin
Fish
Accords with fl oodplains and
states
and
streamfl ow is
tribes, which
help mitigate
critical to our
the environ-
efforts to offset
mental impact
of dams on the
mainstem Co-
Columbia and
Snake rivers.
lumbia River
The project
fi sh mortality
included the
purchase of
and increase
545
acres
fi sh numbers.”
of land and
rebuilding the
— Eric Quaempts,
stream bed,
CTUIR natural
according to a
resources
director
press release,
which allows
for permanent protection of wetlands,
instream water and summer fl ows.
“People tend to separate the fi sh, the
riparian zone, the stream and the fl ood-
plain from each other, but they’re all
interconnected in our restoration view,”
Eric Quaempts, CTUIR natural resources
director, said in a press release. “Restoring
fl oodplains and streamfl ow is critical to
our efforts to offset mainstem Columbia
River fi sh mortality and increase fi sh
numbers.”
Over the years, portions of middle
Catherine Creek were pinched off from
its natural fl oodplain to make room for
farms, resulting in a loss of habitat and
increased erosion along the stream bank.
This longterm trend affected both man
and fi sh — ranchers saw their property
chronically fl ooded by the erosion while
seasonal fl ows created a power fl ush
effect that swept away gravel beds where
adult salmon spawn and prevented juve-
niles from resting on their journey to the
Pacifi c Ocean.
To reconnect Catherine Creek with its
original fl ood plain, the tribes and their
partners restored the area by carving
out pools and side channels while also
planting boulders, log jams and native
vegetation in the stream and alongside it.
The creek is part of the Grande Ronde
River Basin, a habitat for federally
protected populations of wild salmon,
steelhead and bull trout. The CTUIR is
now managing the land and restoration
site.