DEVASTATION:
WINTER STORM
WIPES OUT 1,600
DAIRY COWS
NORTHWEST/A2
SWIMMING:
BARNARD DIVES
INTO FOUR STATE
EVENTS
SPORTS/B1
E O
AST
143rd year, No. 86
REGONIAN
Thursday, February 14, 2019
$1.50
WINNER OF THE 2018 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
“HE ALWAYS TOLD ME THAT I WAS HIS ANGEL.
AND NOW HE IS MINE.”
— Franca Krajeski
Love and loss
PGE farm
to combine
wind, solar,
battery
Wheatridge project in
Morrow County to go online
after coal plant shuts down
By JAYATI RAMAKRISHNAN
and PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
Morrow County is going to be home to
the nation’s first large-scale energy facility
to combine power from wind, solar and bat-
tery storage.
Portland General electric has partnered
with Nextera energy resources to build the
new Wheatridge renewable energy Facil-
ity, consisting of a 300-megawatt wind
farm, a 30-megawatt battery storage facil-
ity and a new 50-megawatt solar farm. PGe
spokesperson steve Corson said the combi-
nation of that size is a first in North Amer-
ica, according to the experts at Nextera.
“They have told us the only other facil-
ities are pretty tiny — in the 2 megawatt
range,” he said.
The new facility will put PGe’s wind gen-
eration portfolio to more than 1,000 mega-
watts (1 gigawatt) — enough to serve the
See Project, Page A8
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Franca Krajeski moved to Pendleton to be close to her husband, Michael, who was serving a 90-month sentence at the Eastern
Oregon Correctional Institution.
Businessman
purchases iconic
Dave’s Food Mart
Couple spent most of their
married life separated by bars
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
Mcanally, co-founder of
Whisky Fest, now owns
3 nearby establishments
advertisements often show true love as dewey-eyed couples
exchanging romantic looks over candlelight, holding hands at
sunset or kissing on the beach.
real love is rarely so idyllic and carefree, however. and
sometimes it is forged with hard times.
Take the case of Michael and Franca Krajeski, who took the
“for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in
health” portion of their wedding vows to the extreme.
after Franca suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car acci-
dent in 2008, Mike nursed her through it. When Mike started
serving a 90-month sentence at the eastern Oregon Correc-
tional Institution, Franca moved to Pendleton to be close,
sometimes visiting him twice a day. Now, Franca wears some
of her husband’s ashes in a silver heart around her neck.
The inscription reads, “I used to be his angel, now he’s
mine.”
Their story includes plenty of human failure and heartbreak,
Contributed photo
See Love, Page A8
Mike and Franca Krajeski pose during a visit at the Eastern Ore-
gon Correctional Institution.
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
andy Mcanally owns another Pendleton
hot spot — dave’s 12th street Food Mart.
Mcanally also owns big John’s Pizza
and Mac’s bar and Grill, each a few blocks
from the popular fuel station and conve-
nience store at 220 s.W. 12th st.
dave Walters, a 1966 Pendleton high
school graduate, founded dave’s. he started
in the fuel-and-convenience-store business
in 1972 at another location in Pendleton with
his father.
he and his wife Toni Walters moved the
business in 1992 to 220 s.W. 12th st. where
See Dave’s, Page A8
Cellphone surcharge may pay for rural broadband
statewide usage fee
would pay for high-
speed internet expansion
By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE
Oregon Capital Bureau
saLeM — Oregonians could
see their cell phone bills go up to
raise money for expanding rural
high-speed internet.
Legislators are considering a sur-
charge on wireless calls to raise $10
million a year that utilities could use
for internet projects in rural Oregon.
The average cell phone user could
see an increase of $4 to $8 a year.
The surcharge would apply only to
calls within the state and also cover
voice-over internet protocols.
The state created a special fund
in 1999 to push telecommunica-
tions technology into rural areas.
The idea is that all customers would
help pay for services that are more
expensive to provide in sparsely
populated rural communities.
The critical telecom service
used to be landlines. Now, it’s the
internet.
according to a december report
from the u.s. Census bureau, rural
areas of the country trail in their
access to broadband.
In 2016, 64 percent of rural Ore-
gonians lived in areas where they
could access broadband speeds,
while 98 percent of Oregonians
in urban areas could, according
to the Federal Communications
Commission.
In rural areas of sherman, Gil-
liam and harney counties, the
share of residents who have access
to broadband was in the single dig-
its. No rural residents in Wheeler
County had access to broadband,
according to the FCC data.
a greater share of rural Orego-
nians — about 95 percent — had
high-speed internet access through
cellphones, although that access
varies widely between counties as
well.
some say the gap in accessibility
to fixed broadband — high-speed
internet you can access on a com-
puter or multiple computers at home,
school or at work — cuts off rural
areas from economic opportunities.
See Broadband, Page A8
“WE HAVE MORE
COWS THAN WE
DO PEOPLE IN THE
COUNTY. COWS,
FORTUNATELY,
DON’T USE THE
INTERNET, BUT OUR
SCHOOLS, AND
HOSPITALS AND
BUSINESSES
ABSOLUTELY DO.”
David Yamamoto,
a Tillamook County commissioner