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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2017
141st Year, No. 244
Your Weekend
WINNER OF THE 2017 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
One dollar
Fires spark calls for forestry reform
Lawmakers urge active management, end to fi re-borrowing
By GEORGE PLAVEN
East Oregonian
•
•
•
Household hazardous
waste collection day
Peace Pole Dedication
at Stanfi eld
Cason’s Place Grief
Support Open House
For times and places
see Coming Events, 3A
Weekend Weather
Fri
64/43
Sat
67/42
Sun
Out of the ashes of another record-
breaking wildfi re season across the West,
Oregon lawmakers are calling for changes
in the way national forests are managed
and how the government pays for fi ghting
increasingly large, destructive fi res.
Rep. Greg Walden, the state’s lone
Republican member of Congress, visited
Pendleton and Hermiston on Thursday
where he touted the Resilient Federal
Forests Act of 2017, which passed the
House Committee on Natural Resources
in June. The controversial bill includes
provisions that would expedite certain
forest thinning projects, while establishing
a pilot program to resolve legal challenges
through arbitration.
Democrats Ron Wyden and Jeff
Merkley, meanwhile, joined a bipartisan
group of senators pushing to end the prac-
tice of “fi re borrowing,” where the Forest
Service and Bureau of Land Management
are forced to rob money from fi re preven-
tion programs to pay for fi ghting wildfi res.
Their bill, the Wildfi re Disaster Funding
Act of 2017, would make federal disaster
funding available when the cost of
fi refi ghting exceeds the 10-year average,
thereby maintaining the agencies’ budgets
See FORESTS/8A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
U.S. Rep. Greg Walden speaks during a Hermiston Rotary
luncheon on Thursday in Hermiston.
HERMISTON
69/45
Walden
discusses
immigration,
cybersecurity
Watch a game
vs.
Ridgeview vs. Pendleton
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
Friday, 7 p.m., at Pendleton
“Dr. Clark has been absolutely instrumental in improving the safety
of animals and humans in developing African countries.”
The country’s immigra-
tion system is a “byzantine
mess” that Congress needs
to fi x, Rep. Greg Walden
said Thursday at a Hermiston
Rotary Club meeting.
Walden advocated for a
comprehensive legislative
package featuring stronger
border security, a better visa
system, an overhaul of the
legal immigration process
and a permanent solution for
recipients of the Deferred
Action
for
Childhood
Arrivals.
“I’m actually glad the
president put a hot rock in
our pockets to get it done in
the next six months,” he said,
referring to President Donald
Trump’s decision to begin
phasing out DACA.
Walden said for a legal
immigration system to work,
a country must be able to
control its borders with
a combination of tactics,
including physical barriers
and patrols.
“You’re never going to
have a wall across the whole
thing,” he said. “That just
doesn’t make sense.”
Not all undocumented
immigrants are walking
across the Mexican border,
however. Walden said 45
percent of undocumented
immigrants got into the
country on a temporary visa,
then overstayed that visa.
There are tens of thousands
of immigrants like that from
Ireland alone, he said.
“We have a broken visa
system,” he said.
There are plenty of ques-
tions that need answered in
an immigration overhaul. As
tens of thousands of jobs in
technical fi elds go unfi lled
because companies can’t fi nd
qualifi ed applicants, Walden
questioned whether it makes
sense to give so many of the
country’s legal immigration
spots to people chosen by
lottery or based purely on
a family connection. He
also questioned whether the
country should be “booting
out” young people who
could be helping fi ll those
skilled jobs.
“What do you do with
kids who, through no fault
of their own, have been here
since they were in diapers,
and have been a good part of
their community?” he asked.
Another hot topic Walden
took
questions
about
Thursday was cybersecurity.
— Dr. Tom Meyer, American Veterinary Medical Association president.
See WALDEN/8A
HERMISTON
Graduation
weekend
a boon for
businesses
By JAYATI
RAMAKRISHNAN
East Oregonian
As the school board
grapples with the decision of
whether to move graduation
30 miles north to Kennewick
next spring, local businesses
and restaurants are consid-
ering the impact of a potential
location change in their sales
for the month of June.
The Hermiston School
Board will decide next month
between moving graduation
to the Toyota Center and
leaving it in its current
location, the Hermiston High
School gymnasium. The
board has been discussing
a move for a few months,
citing crowded ceremonies
and a growing student
population. The board had
discussed holding the cere-
mony at Kennison Field or
at the Eastern Oregon Trade
and Event Center rodeo
arena, but both of those
options were ruled out as too
See GRADUATION/8A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
When Pendleton veterinarian Arthur Clark gives people directions to his home he tells them “turn at the
elephant scapula.”
Man with the plan
Andrew Clark receives award for international problem solving
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
Dr. Andrew Clark likes to
use his big brain to conjure
simple,
user-friendly
solutions to complicated
problems.
Here’s an example of
how Clark thinks.
Several years ago, the
Pendleton
veterinarian
pondered the problem of
rampaging bird fl u in Egypt,
where 35 million chickens
had already been killed in an
attempt to derail the disease.
The virus, often passed
on to people processing
poultry, disproportionately
affected small children and
women of childbearing age
even though thousands of
men worked in commercial
poultry operations handling
diseased and dead birds by
the millions.
The reason wasn’t a
mystery. Each household
had a fl ock of chickens,
which roamed through
yards and even inside
homes. Women are the
ones who generally feed
and manage the birds and
eventually slaughter them
by cutting their jugulars.
“There is a lot of
muscular movement and
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Arthur Clack holds out a collection of African thorns he has collected over his
years of work on the continent.
a death struggle,” Clark
said. “Micro-droplets of
virus-laden blood shoot into
the air where they can be
inhaled.”
Children playing nearby
sometimes breathed in the
deadly virus.
His solution? A large
pot, a lid and hot water.
It goes this way: a
woman places a chicken
inside a large pot to
slaughter it and quickly
covers the pot with a lid.
After the struggle stops,
she slides the lid a crack
and pours in hot water
and lets it sit two minutes
before de-feathering and
butchering the chicken. Air
samples showed dramat-
ically decreased viral
plumes.
This is the kind of
quintessential simplicity
Clark loves.
The veterinarian recently
received an international
award for such out-of-the
box thinking. For this
project and development
of animal health programs
in Africa, Egypt and the
Middle East, the American
Veterinary Medical Asso-
ciation presented him with
See CLARK/8A