Spilyay Tymoo
Coyote News, est. 1976
Concert,
car show
coming up
at casino
Two of the biggest American
rock bands of the 1980s will head-
line a concert coming up in June
at Indian Head Casino. T he
bands—Great White and Slaugh-
ter—each had platinum-selling
records in the mid- and late 1980s.
They will perform on an outdoor
stage by the casino on Saturday
evening, June 10.
A week later, Saturday, June 17,
the casino will host the Seventh
Annual Indian Head Car Show.
The colorful and popular show,
with a $500 prize for Best in Show
car or truck, will benefit the Boys
& Girls Clubs.
The casino is again open seven
days a week, starting at 9 a.m. daily.
Indian Head meanwhile is get-
ting ready for the Cottonwood Res-
taurant to re-open full-time within
the next couple of months. The
Cottonwood is currently open on
Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. to 9
p.m. The partial closure of the Cot-
tonwood Restaurant has been be-
cause of staffing, and the need to
keep the Tule Grill and Plateau
Travel Plaza restaurants open dur-
ing their regular hours, said Indian
Head Casino general manager
Shawn McDaniel.
“We want to make sure the Tule
Grill and Plateau are at full staff,
so we we’re not spread too thin,” he
said. Mr. McDaniel, the finance
staff and board of directors met
recently with Tribal Council for
these and other updates.
Both the casino and Plateau
Travel Plaza are doing well finan-
cially and employment-wise, Mr.
McDaniel said. Like other casinos,
and business in general, Indian Head
had to make major adjustments
during the pandemic years of 2020-
22. The casino and Travel Plaza
are now bouncing back to their pre-
pandemic popularity. The rock
show, upcoming car show, being
open every day, and the upcoming
Cottonwood full-time re-opening
are great examples.
The casino now has 120 employ-
ees, McDaniel reported. The Pla-
teau Travel Plaza employs about 40.
Close to 50-percent of the casino
employees are Warm Springs tribal
members, as are more than half of
the employees at the Plateau. Count-
ing employees who are married-into-
the tribes plus other Indians, 64-
percent of casino employees are
tribal affiliated.
The casino offers the most com-
petitive pay rate among casinos for
its employees, as hiring continues
back to the pre-covid standard. At
Indian Head there are 53 vacan-
cies in all areas of the operation.
At the Plateau there are 16 vacan-
cies. You can learn more at the ca-
sino Human Resources Department
at their Plaza office by the casino,
or on the website under ‘Careers’
at indianheadcasino.com
Tickets to the June concert, in-
cluding for the VIP area, are also
on sale now at the website.
April 19, 2023 - Vol. 48, No. 8
April – Hawit`an – Spring - Wawaxam
PO Box 489
Warm Springs, OR 97761
ECR WSS
Postal Patron
U.S. Postage
PRSRT STD
Warm Springs, OR 97761
For excellence in water management
Chico Holliday oversees one
of the most challenging, and at
the same time important services
on the reservation. This is be-
cause safe drinking water is
among the foundations of any
community. Public safety, health
care, education, food, business—
all are made possible by the wa-
ter, the chuush that opens all
tribal feasts. So when there is a
problem with the water, it’s an
emergency for everyone.
Mr. Holliday is the general
manager of tribal Public Utilities.
He has been the front-line per-
son managing the water situa-
tions on the reservation for the
past several years, during some
of the worst drinking water
events in recent history on the
reservation.
The actual cause of these wa-
ter problems, of course, began
some decades ago, in some in-
stances even longer: The water
infrastructure had aged over time
to a point when a few years ago
the system began to fail badly,
requiring the mandatory boil-wa-
ter and water outages of recent
summers.
Large pipes and valves—all
decades old and no longer large
enough to serve the popula-
tion—had to be replaced. The
courtesy Utilities
Utilities general manager Chico Holliday at OAWU
conference with the Water Manager of the Year Award.
water treatment plant itself required
major and expensive equipment re-
placements. Mr. Holliday worked
with the previous and current Tribal
Councils to secure tribal, state, fed-
eral and other funding to help ad-
dress the problems.
And after these recent years of
constant attention, the Environ-
mental Protection Agency recently
signed off on its emergency safe-
drinking water orders regarding to
the tribes’ Agency drinking water sys-
tem. “That’s huge for us,” Chico says.
“For the water we’re fully in compli-
ance with the EPA, and no longer
under the compliance orders.”
Each year the Oregon Associa-
tion of Water Utilities—the
OAWU—holds its annual meeting
of water managers from across the
state. The OAWU is an indepen-
dent association of water managers,
with hundreds of members who take
care of large water systems such as
for cities and towns, water districts,
schools, industry, tribal reservations,
etc. The Confederated Tribes have
been a member for twenty years.
For their 2023 meeting the
OAWU met in Sunriver. The con-
ference is a chance for the water
managers to share knowledge and
experience, catch up on the latest
developments, and also to present
various awards to individual water
managers, such as the Rookie Wa-
ter Manager of the Year, and Of-
fice Manager of the Year.
The top award this year—Water
Manager of the Year—went to
Warm Springs Public Utilities Gen-
eral Manager Chico Holliday, and
the vote was unanimous. Mr.
Holliday had been nominated for
the award by state and federal wa-
ter agencies.
WATER continues on 6
New reader
board for
Recreation
The Warm Springs
Recreation team for many
years has seen the need
for a bright and
informative reader board
outside the Communtiy
Center. There are all
kinds of activities going on
there all the time, and the
reader board is a most
convenient way to share
the schedule of upcoming
events, as well as other
community information.
“This has been in the
works for 23 years,” said
Austin Greene Jr.,
Recreation director. When
the budgeting was
secured this year, “It’s
finally became a reality,
and it turned out very
nice.”
Earlier this week (right),
Recreation staff and youth
check out the new reader
board, a great new
addition to the community!
D.McMechan/Spilyay
Very large maintenance project at Pelton-Round Butte
The Pelton-Round Butte
hydro-dams are the largest such
system within the state of Or-
egon. The dams are several
decades old, having been built
in the 1950s and ‘60s. Ongoing
maintenance keeps the various
parts of the system running,
generating power revenue for
the tribes and ownership-operat-
ing partner PGE.
One of the largest maintenance
projects in recent years is currently
happening at hydro system. This
is the replacement of the turbine
shut-off valves at the Round
Butte Dam powerhouse.
The new valves will replace the
current leaking turbine shut-off
valves.
The leakage through the current
valves has continued to worsen
over time, and the current mitiga-
tion effort of pumping wood chips
into the seal at some point will no
longer be enough to allow de-wa-
tering of the turbine. This will then
prevent maintenance activities
from occurring in the area, ex-
plained Cathy Ehli, executive direc-
tor of Warm Springs Power and
Water Enterprises. The valves in
questions are very large, and have
been shipped to the U.S. from Eu-
rope, where they were built.
DAMS continues on 6