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NATION/6A
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2017
141st Year, No. 254
One dollar
WINNER OF THE 2017 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
PENDLETON
Your Weekend
So the wells don’t run dry
•
•
•
Harvest Festival
Saturday in Boardman
Free First Friday
at Tamastslikt
Live musical theater
all weekend at BMCC
The intake
for the city
of Pendle-
ton’s aquifer
recharge
system takes
water from
the Umatilla
River east of
Pendleton
during the
higher rates
of fl ow.
For times and places
see Coming Events, 6A
Weekend Weather
Fri
Sat
Sun
74/51
63/44
61/36
Staff photo by
E.J. Harris
Watch a game
vs.
Mountain View vs. Pendleton
Friday, 7 p.m., Round-Up Arena
Task force:
Independent
commission
should
redistrict
By CHRIS LEHMAN
Oregon Public Broadcasting
A task force created
by Oregon Secretary of
State Dennis Richardson is
recommending that future
redistricting be done by an
independent commission.
That would be a signifi -
cant change from the current
model, which tasks Oregon
lawmakers with drawing up
a plan.
Redistricting is the process
of drawing new legislative
and congressional districts to
match shifts in population. It
takes place every 10 years,
following the U.S. Census.
Oregon’s next redistricting
will occur in 2021.
The current method of
allowing lawmakers to draw
the maps is “susceptible
to political manipulation,”
Richardson wrote in a news-
letter announcing the task
force report. “There is an
inherent confl ict of interest in
allowing legislators to draw
their own districts and pick
their own voters.”
Legislative redistricting
See REDISTRICTING:/8A
Drought-resistant Pendleton still sees dwindling groundwater
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Pendleton’s aquifer storage and
recovery system has won plaudits
from the state and been a crowning
achievement for the city’s public
works director, but it isn’t a silver
bullet.
Despite the innovative system that
allows Pendleton to funnel most of
its drinking water from the Umatilla
River rather than pumping it from the
ground, the city’s groundwater supply
has still dwindled over the years.
The numbers fl uctuate depending
on whether it has been a wet or dry
winter, but Public Works Director
Bob Patterson said groundwater
levels have dropped an average of
1.4 feet per year for the past 14 years
since the ASR went online.
That’s better than the average 3.5
feet per year decrease before. But
the new system isn’t consistently
preventing groundwater loss, much
less recharging the aquifer.
Groundwater depletion is often
discussed in an agricultural context
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
The water pressure for the city of Pendleton’s well water system reads
on a gauge at city well 14 on the west side of Pendleton. The city
currently operates eight wells for its drinking water system.
in Oregon, but cities across the arid
Eastern Oregon landscape rely on
the same supply.
If the area can’t stop drawing
heavily from the aquifer, Patterson’s
prediction is dire.
“At some point, someone’s going
to go dry,” he said.
It’s just a matter of where and
when.
Deepening wells
Patterson, whose work in the
development of Pendleton’s ASR
system earned him a spot on the
2016 Top Ten Public Works Leaders
by the American Public Works
Association, compared extracting
groundwater to straws in a bowl.
Pendleton has eight straws in the
bowl — wells that pump 8.5 million
gallons of water per day during peak
use.
The city eases its groundwater
consumption by drawing water
directly from the river during the
winter and spring, treating it and
storing it at the water fi ltration plant
in east Pendleton.
Utilizing micro-turbines that
power fi ve wells and a fi rst-of-its-
kind siphon design used for water
fi ltration, the city has stored billions
of gallons of water in a drought-
plagued region that averages just 12
inches of rain per year.
On balance, the city now draws
100 percent of its supply from water
stored from the cooler months,
See GROUNDWATER/8A
Firefi ghting funding added to $29B disaster package
By ANDREW TAYLOR
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The
Trump administration on
Wednesday asked Congress
for $29 billion in disaster aid
to cover ongoing hurricane
relief and recovery efforts
and to pay federal fl ood
insurance claims.
The request comes as
the government is spending
almost $200 million a day
for emergency hurricane
response and faces a
surge in fl ood claims for
federally insured homes
and businesses slammed by
hurricanes Harvey, Irma,
and Maria.
White House budget
director Mick Mulvaney
told lawmakers in offi cially
submitting the request that
the federal fl ood insurance
program “is not designed to
handle catastrophic losses
like those caused by Harvey,
Irma, and Maria. The NFIP
is simply not fi scally sustain-
able in its current form.”
Mulvaney proposed a
package of changes to the
fl ood insurance program
that, among others, would
Associated Press
LEFT: This Sept. 4 photo provided by Inciweb showed the Eagle Creek wildfi re burning in the Columbia Riv-
er Gorge east of Portland. RIGHT: In this Oct. 4 photo, a monkey walks over the rubble left in the wake of
Hurricane Maria on Cayo Santiago, known as Monkey Island, in Puerto Rico, one of the world’s most
important sites for research into how primates think, socialize and evolve.
protect low-income policy-
holders from big rate hikes,
allow the government to
drop from the program
properties that have been
repeatedly fl ooded, and
phasing out policies on new
homes in fl ood zones.
In
the
meantime,
Wednesday’s
request
proposal would provide
$16 billion to pay those
fl ood claims, along with $13
billion for Federal Emer-
gency Management Agency
disaster
relief
efforts.
Federal fi refi ghting accounts
would receive $577 million
as well to replenish them
after a disastrous season of
Western wildfi res.
Rep.
Greg
Walden
(R-Oregon) applauded the
funding designated to recoup
fi refi ghting costs, as well as
the included recommenda-
tion that forestry reform be
pursued to help curb wildfi re
borrowing going forward.
“Another fi re season
winds down and, once again,
the Forest Service needed to
rob money from important
fi re prevention work to pay
for fi ghting wildfi res,” he
said in a statement. “We
must not only supplement
those accounts to pay for
the cost of this fi re season,
but it’s past time that we fi x
how we pay for fi res and
treat them like the natural
disasters they are.”
The Senate’s top Demo-
crat quickly backed the aid
request but signaled oppo-
sition to the administration’s
proposed restrictions on
fl ood insurance.
“This funding request is a
good start, but those affected
by Maria, Harvey, Irma and
wildfi res still have a long
and diffi cult road ahead,”
said
Minority
Leader
Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
“We should act on this
supplemental quickly, but it
See WILDFIRE/8A