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