E O
AST
145th Year, No. 145
REGONIAN
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
$1.50
WINNER OF 16 ONPA AWARDS IN 2021
EXPANDED EMPLOYMENT SECTION SEEKS
TO LINK EMPLOYERS WITH JOB SEEKERS
INSIDE
COVID-19
sets monthly
record for
local deaths
East Oregonian
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Rodeo fans stroll through a line of food vendors Sept. 15, 2021, at the Pendleton Round-Up Grounds in advance of the grand entry of the
111th Pendleton Round-Up. Local business owners report crowds were smaller than usual.
$
BOOM OR BUST?
$
Delta surge breaks grim records
Meda said about the prospect of enforcing
the mandate during Round-Up week.
Instead, Meda said he spent the week
“sipping Coronas in California,” adding that
he has no regret about passing over poten-
tial business while he kept his business dark.
Even before the pandemic, Meda said busi-
ness has been steadily shifting away from
the area around his restaurant and rest of
South Main Street and more toward South-
west Court Avenue, closer to the Round-Up
Grounds.
Since the pandemic started, the rate
at which COVID-19 has infected and
killed Umatilla County residents has been
among the highest of all Oregon coun-
ties, according to a newsroom analysis of
state data. Just six Oregon counties have
reported a higher death rate than Umatilla
County.
The county’s death rate is now nearly
twice as high as some densely populated
Portland metro counties such as Mult-
nomah County, which has more than 10
times as many people, state data show.
The downtown Portland county’s vaccina-
tion percentage is nearly 30% higher than
Umatilla County’s.
See Round-up, Page A7
See County, Page A7
Downtown businesses see mixed impact from Round-Up week
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — The streets are clear,
the cowboys are gone and the Round-Up
Grounds are dormant once again. The 2021
rodeo is over and local business owners are
starting to assess what kind of fi nancial
impact the Round-Up had after canceling
last year’s event.
The conventional wisdom surrounding
the economy of the Round-Up is that visitors
need somewhere to eat, drink and sleep when
the rodeo isn’t happening, lifting all boats as
tourists spread their money throughout the
economy.
But the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
has scrambled some of that conventional
wisdom.
Joe’s Fiesta Mexican Restaurant owner
Joe Meda said he had nothing to report on
Round-Up week because his restaurant was
closed. Meda said he decided to take the
week off so he wouldn’t have to worry about
enforcing the mask mandate, especially since
many potential customers come from states
where there are no face covering rules. ‘
“I would either end up dead or in prison,”
PENDLETON — Umatilla County
reported more COVID-19 deaths in August
than any month since the pandemic began.
The county in a press release Wednes-
day, Sept. 22, reported its 126th COVID-
19 death. The latest victim is a 54-year-old
woman who tested positive for COVID-19
Aug. 7 and died Aug. 31 at Oregon Health
& Science Hospital, Portland. She had
unspecifi ed underlying health conditions.
The disclosure raises August’s death
toll to 22, topping the county’s previous
monthly record set in July 2020.
The record-setting spike in COVID-19
deaths come after a dramatic surge in cases
driven by the delta variant, which shattered
pandemic records, infected large amounts
of unvaccinated people and fi lled regional
hospitals.
This year, the unvaccinated have
accounted for approximately 49 out
of every 50 people hospitalized with
COVID-19 in Umatilla County, according
to data from the county’s health depart-
ment.
“Our hospital system is plugged up
right now with unvaccinated people with
COVID,” said Dr. Jon Hitzman, Umatilla
County’s public health offi cer.
Pandemic pauses House work on redistricting
Sept. 27 deadline
looms as Republican
walkout a possibility
to block Dems’ plans
By GARY WARNER
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — A political
showdown in the House over
political redistricting was put
on hold for at least a day amid
repor ted COVID-19 cases
traced to the session Monday,
Sept. 20, in the Capitol.
House Speaker Tina Kotek,
D-Portland, announced just after
1 p.m. that a COVID-19 case had
been traced to the House session.
She canceled the House floor
session until the morning of Sept.
22.
“This is obviously a devel-
oping situation and hopefully
we will be back tomorrow to
complete our business,” Kotek
said.
No additional informa-
tion was given on the identity
of the person
who tested
positive. The
House had been
inter r upted
at least three
times during
Kotek
the past year by
outbreaks among lawmakers and
staff .
Kotek’s announcement was
made to a nearly empty chamber.
The House was scheduled to vote
on fi nal passage of new legislative
and congressional maps required
to refl ect population changes in
the 2020 U.S. Census.
However, there were questions
as to whether the GOP lawmakers
would show up at all.
Republicans are consider-
ing a boycott or walkout to block
a Democratic redistricting plan
they say includes a broken prom-
ise by Kotek on partisan parity on
the committee deciding the fate
of legislative and congressional
district maps for the 2022 election.
See House, Page A7
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian, File
Christina Garcia, right, receives her fi rst
shot of the COVID-19 vaccine from Sharon
Waldern during a vaccination clinic at Good
Shepherd Medical Center in Hermiston on
Feb. 12, 2021. Umatilla County in August
set a monthly record for COVID-19 deaths.
Water from data centers reused for agriculture
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
UMATILLA — The tiny city
of Umatilla and the internet giant
Amazon have come up with a unique
use for the cooling water from the
company’s massive server farms.
They are using it irrigate the
region’s other farms — the kind that
grow crops.
Perched along the Columbia River
in Northeastern Oregon, Umatilla is a
haven for irrigated agriculture where
farmers grow everything from hay
and wheat to high-value potatoes,
onions, carrots and melons.
In 2009, Amazon broke ground
on its fi rst campus of data centers
in Umatilla. Data centers are large
warehouses filled with computer
servers. All the information gathered
Wikimedia/Capital Press
Umatilla and Amazon have built a system for using cooling water from the
internet giant’s server farms to irrigate the region’s farms.
by websites like Amazon and Face-
book is stored in the server farms.
Amazon was attracted to the
Columbia Basin, in part, by the
availability of clean water that could
be used in cooling systems for all
those servers. A single data center
consumes between 250,000 and 1
million gallons of water per day in
the warmer summer months, when
outside temperatures can top 100
degrees.
That water still is mostly clean
once it comes out the other end, said
Umatilla City Manager Dave Stock-
dale.
With two data center campuses
now online and another two being
built, Stockdale said it didn’t make
sense, nor was there capacity, to treat
all that mostly clean water at the city’s
sewer plant.
Both the city and Amazon began
pondering ways they could reuse the
water, adding benefi t for the commu-
nity.
The answer, they decided, was to
deliver the water to the same farmers
that have powered Umatilla’s econ-
omy for decades.
See Water, Page A7