Wallowa.com
OPINION
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
A5
The effort to reduce waste takes all of us
REDUCE,
REUSE,
RECYCLE
Peter Ferré
A
lthough 75% of America’s waste
is recyclable, as a country we only
recycle 34.5% of it.
If/when we get to the 75% rate the effect
would be like removing 50 million passen-
ger cars from the U.S. roads. Wow! To get
to that 75% rate is going to take a concerted
effort by each one of us, (we each need to
reduce, reuse, recycle more), but the most
meaningful shift rests on the shoulders of
our government, and the businesses/indus-
tries, that make, package and sell the things
we buy. (We will talk further about this in a
future column).
In Wallowa County, we currently recycle
27% of the waste we generate, according
to a 2016 report from the Oregon Depart-
ment of Environmental Quality. To give our
planet a chance, (recycling just two alumi-
num cans saves the same amount of energy
it takes to power a PC for a single work-
day), we all need to do more. To give the
Wallowa County Recycling Program a
fighting chance to survive we also need to
do more.
You see, there is a lot of pressure being
put on the county’s recycling program to
cover its costs when recycling programs
around the country are being faced with
very low prices for recyclable materi-
als, (which is something we need to take
up with our governments and the compa-
nies who make and sell the things we pur-
chase). As with any business, there are two
primary things that can be done to achieve
and/or increase profitability. One is to lower
costs, and another is to increase revenue.
The Friends of Wallowa County Recycling
have worked hard over the past nine months
to help lower costs by changing how our
recyclables are hauled to processors, (sav-
ing 30% on shipping), by creating a vol-
unteer-led transportation initiative helping
further lower costs on moving certain recy-
clables, by coordinating more than 500 vol-
unteer hours to help sort, cover, clean and
manage the Recycling Center, by install-
ing more comprehensive signage funded by
donated funds and by spearheading grant
applications, legislative enquiries and cre-
ative solutions to help do more.
We also need to increase the revenue
of the recycling program, and the simplest
way to do so is for all of Wallowa County
to bring more clean, acceptable, recyclables
to the Recycling Center at 301 Fish Hatch-
ery Lane in Enterprise. You see, the clean,
acceptable recyclables generate revenue for
the county, and we need more of that rev-
enue to ensure that our Recycling Center
is not limited or overlooked because of a
few dollars. That’s right, we need more of
your clean aluminum and metal cans. We
need more of your newspapers, magazines,
mixed paper and junk mail. We need more
of your cardboard boxes, (with no packag-
ing in them), your toilet paper rolls, your
cereal, cracker, pasta and cookie boxes
made from paperboard. We need more of
your clean, lids removed, No. 1 PETE plas-
tic, (excluding clamshells, cookie/cake con-
tainers, plastic to-go boxes, fruit containers
and similar), and we need more of your No.
2 HDPE plastic without the lids. You see,
the more clean, acceptable recyclables you,
your family, your friends and everyone in
the county brings to the Recycling Center,
the more likely we are to continue to have
a recycling program to help us get to that
75% recycling rate. Thank you for your part
in helping make this happen.
To help with continuing to improve
the recycling opportunities we have, the
Friends of Wallowa County Recycling are
sponsoring an Earth Day Open House at
the Recycling Center on Friday, April 23
from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Join us to help with
some “spring cleaning” of the Recycling
Center (bring your gloves) and/or to enjoy
some fun recycling games, to learn more
about the opportunities and challenges we
have before us and to view the results of
the Recycling Art Contest. The results from
the Recycling Art Contest will be displayed
at the Josephy Center for Arts and Culture
after the Earth Day Open House. Do not
hesitate to email us at wallowacountyrecy-
cling@gmail.com or message us on Face-
book at Wallowa County Recycles with
questions, thoughts, ideas.
Finally, if you have questions on what
can be done with other waste products such
as paint, hazardous waste, batteries, tires,
etc., that are not accepted at the Recycling
Center please go to https://co.wallowa.
or.us/public-works/solid-waste/recycle-cen-
ter for details.
———
Peter Ferré is a member of the Wallowa
County Recycling Task Force.
To save community college, consider a K-14 structure
OTHER VIEWS
Kim Puzey
A
few days ago, I wrote about what I
believe is the foreseeable and inev-
itable insolvency of Blue Moun-
tain Community College under the present
model of operations and funding.
In my opinion, the greatest impediment
to the community college system in Ore-
gon is financial dependence on the discre-
tionary portion of the state budget. As men-
tioned in the earlier piece, that is not the
case with K-12 and higher education.
In the private sector, when an enter-
prise is struggling with cash flow to the
point of probable insolvency or bankruptcy,
there are often conversations about merg-
ers, acquisitions, dissolution or divestiture
of assets. I have been mulling these options
over in my mind for quite some time.
In order for Blue Mountain Community
College to come under the mandatory state
budget umbrella, I have wondered about
K-12 expanding to K-14, which is some-
thing that we are currently doing through
dual-credit enrollment and advanced-place-
ment courses. Under this model, motivated
high school students could continue to earn
enough credit for an associate’s degree
upon graduation from high school.
The Baker City Center could be
acquired by the Baker School District
and the center could be converted into the
Baker Technical Institute, which has been
discussed in the past.
Again, the funding would be under the
mandatory umbrella of K-12 or K-14.
Similar discussions could take
place with respect to facilities and ser-
vices in Hermiston, Boardman and
Milton-Freewater.
The Hermiston School District could
acquire all of the BMCC facilities associ-
ated with the Hermiston Higher Education
Center and function as K-14.
A possible merger or acquisition of
assets could be that Oregon State Univer-
sity takes over the facilities and instruc-
tional responsibility of the Precision Agri-
culture building located at the Hermiston
Agricultural Research and Extension Cen-
ter outside of Hermiston.
The Pendleton campus and facili-
ties could be acquired by Eastern Oregon
University.
State funding would become mandatory
instead of discretionary, bachelor’s and
master’s degrees could be awarded from
the local university satellite, and Pendleton
would become a “university” town instead
of a “college” town overnight.
Sports teams and associated scholar-
ships would become four-year instead
of two-year, and each of these proposals
might better fit contemporary needs based
on what falling enrollment has demon-
strated over the past decade.
I’m not an expert in the matters I have
suggested herein, but as a private citizen, I
would like to see conversations take place
around these proposals by those who are
closer to the delivery instruction and the
management of these public services and
assets.
I think it’s conceivable that a collabo-
rative approach to rectifying what I have
described as a flawed system might gen-
erate sufficient interest to lobby for funds
to conduct a thorough, comprehensive and
detailed feasibility study of these sugges-
tions and myriad other matters that may or
may not be viable under closer scrutiny.
I openly call upon officials in K-12,
higher education, BMCC, governing
boards, and elected officials to consider
a more viable educational future for the
region.
———
Kim Puzey lives in Hermiston and is the
general manager of the Port of Umatilla.
He is a member of the Blue Mountain Com-
munity College Board of Education.
White House ignores border chaos
OTHER VIEWS
Joe Guzzard
T
he daily Southwest border updates
are generating nationwide concern,
except in Washington, D.C., where
indifference reigns.
The latest Department of Homeland
Security report showed that in February,
more than 100,000 people were either
apprehended by or surrendered to federal
immigration officials on the U.S.-Mex-
ico border. Those totals, a 14-year
high, include about 9,460 unaccompa-
nied minors and more than 19,240 fam-
ily units, which reflect 62% and 38%
increases, respectively, when compared
to January’s statistics.
Nonetheless, President Joe Biden,
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro
Majorkas and Press Secretary Jen Psaki
refuse to even hint that the administra-
tion’s lax border policies need immedi-
ate reining in. For his part, Biden has not
spoken officially about what his admin-
istration calls a border challenge. But
Psaki refused to call the border rush a cri-
sis, instead labeling it “an enormous chal-
lenge.” Mayorkas, when asked a similar
question about whether the border events
represented a crisis, answered with a flat
out “no.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott didn’t hes-
itate to call the growing border chaos a
crisis. Abbott has a better perspective on
the border influx than White House oper-
atives, and the governor formed Opera-
tion Lone Star to deploy personnel from
the Texas Department of Public Safety
and the Texas National Guard to the bor-
der to secure the area. Abbott said Opera-
tion Lone Star’s goal is to “deny Mexican
cartels and other smugglers the ability to
move drugs and people into Texas.”
While the White House border rhetoric
has focused almost exclusively on what
it describes as the need for a humanitar-
ian response to migration, it’s ignored the
undeniable connection between open bor-
ders and human smuggling. Ohio Sen.
Rob Portman is the Senate Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Com-
mittee’s top Republican who has over-
seen three separate committee inves-
tigations that date back over several
administrations.
Portman’s 2016 investigation, “Pro-
tecting Unaccompanied Alien Children
from Trafficking and Other Abuses,”
uncovered that the Department of Health
and Human Services failed to adequately
vet or to conduct in-depth background
checks on the Ohio adults to whom it
released minor children. The adults
turned out to be human smugglers. The
2018 report, “Oversight of the Care of
Unaccompanied Minor Children,” came
to similarly shocking and dangerous con-
clusions. HHS and DHS didn’t make the
recommended post-2016 changes to traf-
ficking crimes and to tracking whether
released aliens report for their designated
immigration court dates.
Biden appears either under-informed
or indifferent to the growing human traf-
ficking trade that his administration
encourages. After ending the Remain in
Mexico policy, the latest federal gov-
ernment’s inducement for more unac-
companied children to rush the border is
that HHS will pay for minors in its cus-
tody to be flown to their sponsor or fam-
ily member’s home, often illegal immi-
grants, when, as is invariably the case,
the receiving adult cannot pay. Further-
more, Biden’s DHS submitted a notice to
the Federal Register to withdraw an exist-
ing proposed rule that would require the
receiving immigrant to sponsor and care
for an arriving migrant once the migrant
becomes a lawful permanent resident.
While Biden and those close to him
debate semantics, last week DHS reached
its breaking point, and begged ICE
deportation officers to travel to the bor-
der ASAP to help with what the agency
called “security operations” for the ille-
gal immigrant children and families that
have overwhelmed a swamped Border
Patrol. Michael Meade, Immigration and
Customs Enforcement acting director,
pleaded for “immediate action.” Volun-
teers would include civilians with medi-
cal or legal experience as well as drivers
and food servers.
Officials on the scene won’t spec-
ulate on when the emergency request
for increased border assistance might
be called off. The Biden administra-
tion is in full denial, and the president
refuses to travel to the border to evaluate
conditions.
As the surge with its associated crim-
inal and COVID-19 risks intensifies
daily, an educated guess is that the exist-
ing calamitous circumstances will remain
unchanged well into the peak summer
months.
———
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immi-
gration Reform analyst who has written
about immigration for more than 30 years.
Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
Give Oregonians a bright future
OTHER VIEWS
Kevin Frazier
U
rban Oregonians are nearly twice
as likely than rural residents to
say Oregon is headed in the right
direction (41% vs. 22%), according to a
recent survey by the Oregon Values and
Belief Center. That’s a difference that
should grab headlines, seize our attention
and steer our policy.
We need a statewide vision that
inspires urban and rural Oregonians alike
to see a better future for themselves, their
community and the state as a whole.
How you see your future is how you
act in the present. When you’re optimis-
tic, you make long-term investments,
you make long-term plans and you try
to improve on the efforts and initiatives
that are in place. These are all the sorts
of activities that make a strong commu-
nity even stronger. They result in folks
going back to school, launching small
businesses and getting involved in their
community.
When you’re pessimistic, you’re not
looking forward to tomorrow. In fact,
you’re likely to be more anxious and
stressed, tired and sick. Pessimism is
unhealthy. I think we can all agree that
we would rather avoid the sort of gloom
associated with thinking that the best days
have come and gone.
It’s not surprising that rural Orego-
nians feel less than cheery about the
future of Oregon. On the economy, 51%
of rural Oregonians think economic con-
ditions in the state are getting worse,
compared to just 43% of their urban coun-
terparts. What’s more, 25% of rural Ore-
gonians are very worried about their per-
sonal finances, whereas just 20% of urban
residents feel the same.
A simple goal for all statewide lead-
ers, then, should be to give Oregonians a
future to look forward to.
What investments from Salem are
going to lead to better tomorrows in Adel
and Astoria? What new programs are
going to lift up families in Baker City
and Bandon? What regulations will be
removed or restored to uplift small busi-
nesses in Condon and Coos Bay?
A detailed vision that specificity calls
out how Oregonians across the state will
realize a better tomorrow is what our
state deserves and needs. It’s no secret
that “moonshots” can compel people into
action and spark innovation. If Orego-
nians see a tomorrow worth fighting for,
then they’ll sacrifice today.
———
Kevin Frazier was raised in Washington
County. He is pursuing a law degree at the
University of California, Berkeley School
of Law.