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REGION/3A
GIRLS BASKETBALL/1B
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2018
142nd Year, No. 70
One dollar
WINNER OF THE 2017 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Measure 101 passes
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Dan Lonai, Umatilla County Department of
Administrative Services director, verifi es a ballot total
while counting ballots Tuesday at the Umatilla County
Courthouse in Pendleton.
UMATILLA
Oregon voters passed Measure 101
on Tuesday, saving state lawmakers
from having to go back to the drawing
board. The ballot measure passed with
61 percent of statewide ballots in favor
and 39 percent opposed, according to
unoffi cial results.
In Umatilla County, the measure
failed by a margin of 56 percent to 44
percent. Only 12,346 of the county’s
42,156 voters — or 29 percent —
turned in ballots. In Morrow County,
the measure failed 60 percent to 40
percent. Turnout was also 29 percent.
Supporters and opponents fought a
fi erce war of words during the months
leading to the election, but the public
remained relatively blasé, maybe
confused, by the ballot measure. Only
32.4 percent of Oregon voters cast a
ballot according to data Tuesday night.
The lone ballot item in January’s
special election asked voters to
approve or disprove a plan to cover
a billion-dollar defi cit in Medicare
coverage with a package of tax and fee
increases. Oregon lawmakers had actu-
ally approved the package during the
last legislative session. Large hospitals
would pay a 0.7 percent tax and health
care insurance companies and certain
other providers would pay 1.5 percent.
Three Republican representatives
— Rep. Cedric Hayden, R-Cottage
Grove, Julie Parrish, R-West Linn, and
Sal Esquivel, R-Medford — launched
a referendum drive to repeal the bill.
Patty Wentz, spokeswoman for the
Yes for Health Care campaign, was in
an ebullient mood on election night.
See MEASURE 101/2A
PILOT ROCK
City hopes
to reuse
data center
water for
agriculture
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
A water reuse project by the city
of Hermiston has inspired Umatilla
to imagine new ways to use water
exiting the region’s data centers.
Umatilla city manager Russ
Pelleberg shared details of the
project, which the city hopes to
begin construction on later this
year, at the Oregon Water Coali-
tion’s annual membership meeting
in Hermiston on Tuesday morning.
The $3 million project would
separate Umatilla’s commercial
wastewater from its domestic
fl ows, allowing the city to send
water from current Amazon data
centers at the Port of Umatilla,
a planned data center off Lind
Road and any future data centers
to irrigation canals for agricultural
use. Future phases would include
an industrial wastewater treatment
plant at the port and storage ponds
for keeping reuse water during the
winter when it is not needed for
irrigation.
Pelleberg said data centers use
“a ton of hydraulic capacity” for
cooling purposes, but the water
coming out the other end and into
the city’s sewer system is still
“very, very clean.”
“It didn’t make sense to treat
clean water,” he said.
As the city looked for better
solutions,
Hermiston
was
pioneering a reuse program with
West Irrigation District. Water
coming from Hermiston’s recycled
water treatment plant built in 2014
was well within the state’s standards
for cleanliness, but was too warm
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Scott Hinkle and Sara Hebard of Pilot Rock lost their son, Liam Flanagan, 8, pictured in the cell phone photo, on Saturday after an
eight-day battle with a fl esh-eating bacteria.
‘We don’t want any other
parents to go through this’
Boy dies from rare flesh-eating
bacteria days after bike crash
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
See WATER/3A
Contributed photo
Liam Flanagan lays in his hospital bed during his battle with
necrotizing fasciitis.
Liam Flanagan seemed a typical
eight-year-old boy.
The Pilot Rock second grader
rode his bike, scarfed down
molasses cookies after school
and roughhoused with his three
step-brothers. He loved to wear
camo and feed the animals on his
family’s farm.
But life, as the saying goes, can
turn on a dime.
Saturday before last, Liam
wrecked his bike as he rode down
a hill on his family’s Spring Creek
property. Blood seeped from a
thigh wound where the end of
the handlebar sliced through his
jeans. An emergency room doctor
stitched him up and the incident
seemed destined to fade from
memory as just another foible in
the life of an active, young boy.
Several days later, however,
Liam found himself fi ghting for his
life.
Flesh-eating bacteria, which
likely entered his wound from the
soil, attacked the boy’s soft tissue.
In the days to come he would
endure four surgeries to remove
infected tissue.
“Almost his
whole right side
was gone. They
kept cutting and
hoping. Cutting
and hoping.”
— Sara Hebard, Liam’s
mother on doctors trying to stay
ahead of the deadly infection
Liam’s mom and stepfather,
Sara Hebard and Scott Hinkle,
realized something wasn’t right
on Wednesday when Liam
complained of intense pain in his
groin area. Scott took a look and
reacted with alarm at what he saw.
“It was purplish-red and gangre-
nous looking,” he said. “We threw
him in the rig and went like hell.”
After surgery at St. Anthony
Hospital to remove infected tissue,
Liam and his mother fl ew by air
ambulance to Doernbecher Chil-
dren’s Hospital in Portland early
See FLANAGAN/3A