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Thursday, July 29, 2021
E O
AST
145th year, No. 121
East Oregonian
A1
REGONIAN
Thursday, July 29, 2021
WINNER OF THE 2020 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
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COUNTY RECOMMENDS
MASKING UP
local law requires
stores to retrieve
abandoned carts
in a timely basis
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
PENdlETON — a new
ordinance regulating abandoned
shopping carts goes into effect
in Pendleton on Friday, July 30,
but many retailers don’t antici-
pate much of a change in their
operations.
Marjorie Bartlett, an assis-
tant manager at Bi-Mart, said her
store already retrieves its carts
whenever they are found off the
premises. dan Canale estimates
he’s only had to drive to pick up
one of his carts five times in his
seven-year tenure as a co-owner
of Grocery Outlet. If a cart leaves
the parking lot, he said he often
finds it across the street near the
safeway recycling center.
On July 6, the Pendleton City
Council approved a new local
law that requires retailers with
shopping carts to post return
information in their stores and
on their carts and retrieve aban-
doned carts in a timely basis or
face potential fines. The goal of
the new law is to put the onus of
retrieving abandoned shopping
carts on retailers instead of the
city.
like many of his peers at
other stores, ace hardware
manager Paul Turk said lost carts
haven’t been much of a problem
when most customers tend to
leave their carts in the facility
rather than take them out into
the parking lot.
But he still had some
concerns. he was unclear about
who would report the lost carts
to the store and how long staff
would have to retrieve it after
they are reported. he also didn’t
know if the police would provide
an escort to retrieve a cart if it
was an unsafe location.
Pendleton Police Chief Chuck
Byram said anyone can report a
missing cart to a store, but the
clock doesn’t start until after the
police notify the store. under
the ordinance, cart owners are
expected to retrieve their prop-
erty within 12 hours, but the city
won’t begin citing an owner until
five calendar days pass.
Registered nurse Heather McLeod enters a negative pressure room used for COVID-19 patients on Tuesday, July 27, 2021, in the medical/surgical unit
at CHI St. Anthony Hospital, Pendleton. As of that morning, the hospital had seven COVID-19 cases, according to hospital spokesperson Emily Smith.
See Carts, Page A7
See Surge, Page A7
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Move aligns
with feds amid
COVId-19 surge
By BRYCE DOLE
East Oregonian
PENdlETON — less
than a month after Oregon
lifted nearly all pandemic
mandates, umatilla County
residents once again are
being asked to mask up in
public indoor settings to
curb the spread of COVId-
19.
In a statement, umatilla
County Public health
aligned with recent recom-
mendations from the state
and federal government that
everybody, including fully
vaccinated people, should
wear masks indoors “due
to a substantial increase in
umatilla County’s COVId-
19 case rate.”
“What we’re seeing from
the delta variant supports
that more spread is happen-
ing,” said umatilla County
Public health director Joe
Fiumara. “While masks do
not stop all spread, they do
help limit it.”
Umatilla County has
state’s highest case
rate
On Tuesday, July 27, the
Centers for disease Control
and Prevention announced
the mask recommendations
and called for teachers,
staff, students and school
visitors to wear masks
regardless of their vaccina-
tion status or how much the
virus is spreading through
communities. however,
health experts maintain
that vaccinations remain the
public’s best bet to curb the
spread of the virus.
The CdC says people
should wear masks indoors
if they live in areas where
case rates exceed more than
50 new cases per 100,000
residents for the past week,
or if more than 8% of tests
are positive for that same
period.
The Oregon health
authority does not publish
case rates over seven days
in its weekly metrics, but
a report on July 26 shows
that, from July 11-22,
umatilla County saw a
case rate of 504 new cases
per 100,000 people — by
far the highest in the state.
during that same period,
17.6% of all tests came back
positive, the second high-
est in Oregon, just behind
Morrow County’s 17.9%.
The move back to
masking was prompted
by a national increase in
COVId-19 cases driven
by the highly infectious
delta variant, which is tear-
ing through unvaccinated
communities. It’s a dismay-
ing sign to health experts
that the pandemic has yet to
abate, as cases and hospital-
izations ramp up to levels
that rival last winter’s surge.
“at this point, you’re
either going to get the virus
or you’re going to get vacci-
nated,” Fiumara said. he
added that masks are a “tool
that we can use to try to not
overload the hospitals and
— not to be too blunt — not
end up with a whole bunch
of dead people.”
Oha repor ted two
new COVId-19 deaths in
umatilla County on July 28,
raising the county’s death
toll to 94.
One victim was a
33-year-old man with
underlying health condi-
tions who tested posi-
tive and died on July 24 at
Kadlec regional Medical
Center, richland, Wash-
ington. The other was a
90-year-old woman who
tested positive July 23 and
died July 27. The state has
yet to confirm where she
died and if she had under-
lying conditions.
“The mask is not about
protect i ng you r self,”
Fiumara said. “The mask is
about protecting those you
interact with.”
The recommendations
come as umatilla County
reports one of the larg-
est COVId-19 case spikes
in Oregon, with about 8%
of the state’s total cases
over the past two weeks
despite accounting for just
2% of its population. The
county’s case rate during
that same time period was
more than seven times
higher than Multnomah
and Washington counties,
which each have more than
500,000 more residents
than umatilla County.
Solving the dryland puzzle
Researchers seek efficiency, want
to tap into carbon credit market
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
PENdlETON — Exper-
imental plots of wheat
unfold across the Colum-
bia Basin agricultural
research Center like a
patchwork quilt of amber
and gold.
Christina hagerty, an
assistant professor of cereal
pathology at the station 7
miles north of Pendleton,
walked through the fields
on an early July morning
pointing out various trials
— everything from tests of
new wheat varieties to new
techniques for managing
weeds and diseases.
Each trial could ulti-
mately impact farmers’
bottom lines. “as research-
ers, we need to lose our shirt
before the farmer does,”
hagerty said.
The pur pose of the
center, commonly known
as CBarC, is to improve
dryland farming practices
in a region that receives
George Plaven/Capital Press
Christina Hagerty, a plant pathologist at the Columbia Basin
Agricultural Research Center, Adams, serves as one of the
project leaders for the station’s Resilient Dryland Farming
Appropriation.
little precipitation.
research funded by two
new congressional appropri-
ations will help the center’s
scientists from Oregon state
university and the usda
ag r icult u ral research
service unlock the secrets
of dryland farming and its
impacts on climate change.
One appropriation seeks
to develop dryland farming
techniques that can improve
soil health and save farmers
money by requiring less
fertilizer, herbicides and
other inputs.
The other is to study soil
carbon sequestration and the
overall carbon footprint of
dryland farms in the region
— critical information to
determine whether growers
can profit from participating
in future carbon markets.
See Dryland, Page A7