OFF PAGE ONE
Thursday, February 3, 2022
East Oregonian
Motel:
Continued from Page A1
Reopening the motel isn’t
exactly a turnkey project.
Mogg said there are a number
of things that will need to be
replaced and repaired for
a building that hasn’t oper-
ated as a hotel in years and
was even briefl y rented out
as low income apartments by
the former owners.
When the project is
finished, Mogg said the
MotoLodge will be themed
around the mid-20th century
era of auto travel, although
not in a “kitschy” way that
evokes “Happy Days.” He
said Cascadia intends to off er
higher quality rooms than
the average budget motel
but won’t be seeking luxury
clientele who might patron-
ize chains like Radisson.
Mogg said the project
will be reliant on obtaining
a grant from the city’s urban
renewal district. Charles
Denight, the associate direc-
tor of the Pendleton Develop-
ment Commission, said the
district already has received
an application through the
district’s rejuvenation grant
program, which provides
funding for full-scale reno-
vations.
Mog g s a id C a s ca-
dia expects to open the
MotoLodge by Memorial
Day, ahead of the summer
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Workers install roofi ng materials Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, at the former Knights Inn at 310 S.W. Dorion Ave. in Pendleton
event season.
In an interview, Chrisman
said Cascadia’s project was
proof that Pendleton was an
“international tourist desti-
nation waiting to happen.”
He added the MotoLodge
should be a good compliment
to Moto Stuff, a different
business that is in the process
of turning the old fi re station
at 911 S.W. Court Ave. into a
multi-use stop for motorcycle
enthusiasts.
Chrisman said downtown
hotels rely more heavily on
local tourism than lodging
near Interstate 84, which can
draw potential customers
from motorists just looking
for a quick stop on their way
to somewhere else.
It’s been a tumultuous
two-year period for the hospi-
tality industry, and not every
hotel has made it to this stage
of the pandemic operating in
the same way they used to.
The owners of the Whis-
key Inn sold their property
to the Community Action
Program of East Central
Oregon, which now uses the
building as transitional hous-
ing and an emergency shel-
ter for unhoused residents.
The Pendleton City Council
recently revoked the busi-
ness license for The Mari-
gold Hotel, 105 S.E. Court
A7
Ave., after a string of calls
for service from police that
culminated in a shooting
on the property. At a city
council hearing, The Mari-
gold’s owner said many of
the problems with staff and
customers formed while he
was away from the property
and focused on his family’s
health.
But overall, hotel owners
and operators see opportu-
nity in Pendleton. Besides
MotoLodge, Parley Pearce, a
former co-owner of Hamley
& Co., still is planning to turn
the historic Oak Hotel, 327
S.E. First St., into a boutique
hotel. Outside the downtown
core, a 78-room Radisson
Hotel location is expected to
open in the spring, the owner
of the Pendleton Holiday Inn
is planning on building a new
motel for the franchise while
retaining the building under
a diff erent name, and the city
continues to pursue a hotel
at the Pendleton Convention
Center. All of these develop-
ments are happening on top
of a growing vacation rental
industry through services
such as Airbnb.
Chrisman said Pendleton
over-relied on the Round-Up
as its main tourist attraction
for many years. If the city is
able to keep up its trend of
starting and maintaining new
tourism events each year, he’s
confi dent the city will be able
to accommodate the boomlet
of new lodging options.
Elk:
Continued from Page A1
going on, that we have staff
kind of running frantic on, is
we have a lot of elk damage,”
McCanna said on a recent
wildlife management Zoom.
“Elk getting into hay stacks
is one of the big ones.”
McCanna is an expert on
resolving wildlife confl icts
with humans for the Wash-
ington Department of Fish
and Wildlife. He teaches
farmers how to set up auto-
matic propane cannons to
haze them with noise. But
elk are smart and sometimes
it doesn’t always work.
This year, drought has
upped the stakes — hay
prices are up across the
West.
“This summer was very
hot and dry. And alfalfa and
grass hay is at a premium
right now,” McCanna said.
Peter Nilsson/Contributed Photo
Elk in this undated photo gather at Peter Nilsson’s farm out-
side La Grande. He says he loves watching the bald eagles
and moose that show up on his farm by the river. And he
thinks elk are cool, too. But not when an entire herd parties
all winter at his spread, eating his hay.
programmed to eat big quanti-
ties of dried twigs and grasses
with a lower energy.
“The bug is Clostridium
perfringens,” Colin Gillin
explained. He’s the state
veterinarian for the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wild-
life.
“It’s a bacteria that all
ruminants carry in their
guts, it’s just you don’t want
that Clostridium to get out of
control,” Gillin said. “And it’s
when you throw corn in there,
it starts to have a party.”
In this case, the corn is hay.
The bacteria break down
the walls of the stomach and
intestines, so an elk can starve
to death with a belly full of
alfalfa.
Floods and fi res
Meade Krosby is a senior
scientist at the University
of Washington’s Climate
Impacts Group in Seattle.
“So, one of the primary
ways that wildlife respond
to changing climate is by
moving,” K rosby said.
“They shift their ranges —
they want to track the change
in climate as it happens.”
She said now more
than ever before, animals
will need to move quickly.
Climate induced f loods
and fi res in the Northwest
are dramatically pushing
animals around on the land-
scape. She said wildlife will
need safe corridors to run
for it.
“They have to move so
fast, but they have all this
stuff in the way,” Krosby
said. “They have roads and
highways in the way, they
POM:
Continued from Page A1
monitoring and DEQ did not
provide an agency-approved
method until 2021.
Measu r i ng n it rogen
in plant tissue is “neither
an accurate nor a useful
measure of the amount of
nitrogen removed from fi elds
by crops, and the information
does not measure compliance
with any permit requirement
or serve any other purpose
under the permit,” the appeal
states.
Groundwater nitrates
are a serious concern in the
Lower Umatilla Basin, which
was designated a Ground-
water Management Area in
1990 to curb contamination
from non-point sources like
farms and municipal waste-
water facilities.
Drinking groundwater
‘Elk curtains’
Rajah Bose/Contributed Photo
A deer in this undated photo forages through a neighborhood on the outskirts of Spokane at
sunset. Deep snow in many parts of the Northwest have driven animals out of higher eleva-
tion range toward farms and haystacks.
Starving with a belly
full of hay
ria with the season and what’s
available to eat. In the spring
and summer, bacteria colo-
nies adjust to digest green
shoots and high-protein feed.
But, in the fall and winter
gut bacteria are essentially
At the Northwest Hay
Expo in Kennewick, mostly
men, mostly unmasked,
roam around the great hall,
slapping hands and check-
ing out the latest in twine,
balers and tarping technol-
ogy. Pamphlets, ball caps and
squishy stress-balls shaped
like little tractors litter
vendor’s tables.
A vendor motions to a
passing farmer, “Hi, ya, how
you? Enjoying your day so
far?”
Clint Vieu is from Walla
Walla. He’s with a major
tarping services company
called ITC Services out of
Moses Lake. He said one
solution for growers is to
install “elk curtains” that are
tarps covering the sides of
big stacks. Left unprotected,
Vieu said, “Stacks have fallen
on elk ‘cause they’ll eat into
it so much that it will actu-
ally destabilize the stack and
it will collapse and fall in on
the animals.”
‘It’s life’
Every year, elk bust up
Anthony Leggett’s fences to
get to his hay and crops. And
every year, he fixes them
again.
“You know if I chase them
off my property, they just go
to the neighbor’s property
and get into their haystack,”
Leggett said.
Still, Leggett has made his
peace with the elk.
“We just happen to live in
a spot where there’s a trail that
they come down on,” he said.
“For us, it’s life.”
have cities in the way, agri-
cultural areas. And all of
these form these barriers
to wildlife getting to where
they need to go to shift their
ranges to adapt to climate
change.”
Making things worse, elk
can starve on hay.
Elk have four chambered
guts that change their bacte-
with elevated nitrates can be
harmful in infants, causing a
condition known as methe-
moglobinemia, or “Blue
Baby Syndrome.”
The management area
encompasses parts of north-
ern Umatilla and Morrow
counties, including the cities
of Hermiston, Echo, Stan-
field, Umatilla, Boardman
and Irrigon, with a combined
population of 33,534.
Ir rigated agriculture
contributes most of the
leached nitrogen into the
groundwater in the area, esti-
mated at 70%. About 12%
comes from confi ned animal
feeding operations, such as
dairies; 8% from livestock
pastures and 4.6% from food
processing land application.
The port acknowledged
that most, but not all, of the
sites for wastewater appli-
cation are in the Lower
Umatilla Basin Groundwa-
ter Management Area.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality issued a $1.3 million fi ne against the Port of Morrow for applying exces-
sive amounts of nitrate-containing water to some area farmland. The port has appealed the fi ne.
EO Media Group, File