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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (March 20, 2018)
GOING GREEN WOMEN’S SWEET SIXTEENS REGION/3A SPORTS/1B TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2018 142nd Year, No. 109 WINNER OF THE 2017 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD One dollar PENDLETON TEENAGER TAKES MUSTANG FROM WILD TO MILD Developer plots for a 116-home subdivision Washington developer hopes to break ground in June, needs approval By ANTONIO SIERRA East Oregonian Staff photos by E.J. Harris Madison Feller lifts the leg of her mustang, Leo, while training the animal Monday at her home outside Pendleton. Kids have 98 days to tame wild horses for competition By KATHY ANEY East Oregonian M adison Feller bounced on the balls of her feet and peered through the rail fence. Nervous energy surged through her body as she waited for the first glimpse of the wild mustang she would train over the next 98 days. The Pendleton teenager had signed on with Teens and Oregon Mustangs, a nonprofit that pairs teens and wild horses. Each of the 40 feral horses in the St. Paul Rodeo corral that day had run wild in Oregon, untouched by human hands, until they were caught and placed in a Bureau of Land Management holding facility. Their teenage trainers would gentle their charges, train them and bring them to the Linn County Fairgrounds on Thursday for a three-day compe- tition and auction. Madison, 16, ignored the pouring rain as she strained her eyes to get a look at Leo, the bay horse assigned to her. Finally, a helper shooed the mustang into an alleyway that led to the back of the family’s horse trailer. Madison drank in the sight of him. “He was gorgeous,” she said. “A bright red coat, thick black mane and tail, bay markings, stocky legs, and to top it all off, a white star on his forehead.” Madison Feller scratches the nose of her mustang, Leo, while training the animal Monday at her home outside of Pendleton. The Bureau of Land Manage- ment freeze brands all of the wild mustangs they round up. See MUSTANG/8A Already slated for a strong year, Pendleton’s housing sector is set to receive another boost. Developer Hal Palmer is working toward regulatory approval for Sunset View Estates, a 116-unit single family home subdivision at the corner of Southwest Hailey Avenue and 30th Street, near Harris Junior Academy. If Sunset View receives approval from the Pendleton Planning Commission on Thursday to divide the 28-acre property into more than 100 lots, Palmer hopes to break ground in June. In a Monday interview, Palmer, from Longview, Washington, said he was investing in Pendleton because of the need for new housing in the city. He said his business partner has developed housing across Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Palmer’s company — Hal Palmer Rentals — sent a representative to a housing conference convened by the city in August to spark interest in development. At the conference, city officials reiterated the results of a housing study that showed Pendleton’s market could support 125 more rental units and 90 for-sale units, especially three-bedroom units. Palmer’s interest was piqued and his company put together plans that meet the parameters of Pendleton’s estimated housing needs and then some. “The fact that there’s so little inventory helps,” he said. Palmer said it was still too early to say what the houses would cost buyers or how many bedrooms they would have, but the plans submitted to the city give a basic overview of what the subdivision would look like. The project would be divided into seven phases, and the 30-house first phase would be the largest. The planned lot sizes range from 7,000 square feet to more than 13,000 square feet, with some potential price variation depending on the house’s placement on the ridge of property. In the process of constructing the houses, builders would also create roads that access both Hailey and 30th Street, as well as three cul-de- sacs within the subdivision. See HOUSING/8A Oregon’s new clean air law provides more info than action By ROB DAVIS The Oregonian/OregonLive PORTLAND — Oregon’s new clean air law will give Oregonians an unprecedented wealth of infor- mation about the health risks that factories create by releasing toxic air pollution. Yet many factories won’t have to reduce their emissions under the highly touted new law, an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive has found. The results make clear that the law is a far cry from the major over- haul Gov. Kate Brown promised in response to the 2016 crisis about toxic metals in Portland’s air. The analysis shows the law was so weakened after negotiations with industry lobbyists that, even if state regulators discover a factory is increasing neighbors’ risk of getting cancer, they may be unable to require new controls. In other words, Oregon regula- tors will eventually know a lot about the dangers posed by air polluters in the state, but they often won’t able to do anything about it except to warn the public. Activists who supported the bill say it isn’t as protective as it should be, but is still an important first step. “People want to know — what’s my risk from living next to this source?” said Mary Peveto, pres- ident of Neighbors for Clean Air, a Portland advocacy group. “We never had a measurable metric. This changes that completely.” See CLEAN Air/8A SPRING CLEANING Staff photo by E.J. Harris An excavator claws its way through a blighted property at 356 S.E. 3rd Street on Monday in Pendleton. More photos at EastOregonian.com and follow us on Instragram @eastoregonian