SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
4A
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EDITORIAL
Reversing
the surge
in COVID
The numbers are real and so are the likely effects.
Real, and depressing.
Baker County’s success at limiting the spread of
COVID-19 was temporary.
After slashing the daily average of new cases by
more than half in February compared with Decem-
ber, the county held on to that progress during the
fi rst three weeks of March.
But since then the virus has spread with greater
rapidity that at any time since December. During
December the county recorded 196 total cases, an
average of 6.3 per day.
The daily average dipped to 3.4 in January and
to 2.5 in February before rising a bit, to 3.1 per day,
during March. The March increase was driven by
cases in the fi nal 10 days of the month.
During the 24-day period from March 22 through
April 14, the county had 131 new cases, an average
of 5.5 per day. The recent trend has been even worse,
with 16 cases on Wednesday, April 14 and 14 the pre-
vious day. The two-day total of 30 cases is the most in
any two-day period since the pandemic started.
Although the public is hamstrung somewhat by
not having a lot of detail about the source of the new
cases, according to the county health department the
biggest culprit, as it was during previous surges, is
people attending parties and other gatherings. It’s
hardly a stretch to say that some of the people pres-
ent either aren’t vaccinated or they weren’t taking
precautions that can reduce the risk of spreading the
virus.
On Wednesday, April 14, a 71-year-old Baker
County woman died in a Boise hospital, a week after
testing positive. She was the 14th county resident to
die after contracting the virus.
Besides the obvious and tragic health effects, this
surge is likely to move the county back to the high
risk level starting April 23. That’s a cruel blow to res-
taurants, the Eltrym Theater and other businesses
that have already suffered so much from restrictions.
We managed to hold this virus largely at bay
during a time when relatively few residents were
vaccinated. Surely now, with 31% partially or fully
inoculated, we can do it again.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
Congress needs to involve the
county in River Democracy Act
The River Democracy Act is not
democracy at all. It is a small group
of people trying to impose their will
on all of Oregon.
The Law of Coordination states
that the Forest Service and BLM
shall coordinate with local county
government in all public land natural
resource plans and revisions. With this
proposal, there has been no communi-
cation directly with Baker County.
32 CFR §219.1(b) states:
“(9) Coordination with the land and
resource planning efforts of other fed-
eral agencies, state and local govern-
ments and Indian Tribes;
“(10) Use of systematic, interdisci-
plinary approach to ensure coordina-
tion and integration of planning activi-
ties for multiple use management.”
There is only approximately 30% of
general forest remaining for multiple
use in Baker County. The County and
the citizens cannot afford any ad-
ditional loss of public lands, includ-
ing waterways, riparian areas, and
forestlands. Any further reductions
in the rightful use of public lands will
constrict access and use of natural re-
sources for the health, safety, general
welfare, and economic viability of our
County’s citizens.
The River Democracy Act not
BILL HARVEY
only removes more waterways from
multiple use, it also adds greatly to
the potential of wildfi res by removing
another ½ mile of forest from manage-
ment and fi re protection along each
side of designated waterways. By
doing this, it creates an additional fi re
hazard/threat by making the riparian
area 1-mile wide that can no longer be
accessed for fuels control or fi refi ght-
ing.
Baker County’s economy is strongly
based on access to natural resource
areas on public lands. The use of
resources such as timber, grazing,
mining, fi rewood gathering, hunt-
ing, fi shing, camping, and just riding
on motorized vehicles is curtailed
through reduced access. Every activity
provides for the local economy which
is vital for the stability and sustain-
ability of Baker County communities.
Enough is enough! We are very tired
of having to defend our County from
attacks from outside entities, govern-
ment agencies, or private environmen-
tal groups. They all want to restrict
the use of public lands, even after
taking control of more than 70% of the
public land already.
When Congress wrote and passed
the Law of Coordination in 1976, it
was to protect the local government
from being overrun by regulations and
restrictions imposed against our coun-
ties’ needs and economic viability.
The current attempt is another
effort to bypass statutory mandates
that force federal agencies to work
directly with the local governments.
Baker County is the local government
and we have established Coordination
within the County since 2001 by ordi-
nance. By not involving Baker County
with any action on public lands, the
proposal is in violation of the Federal
Land Policy and Management Act and
the National Forest Management Act,
both from 1976.
Baker County strongly encourages
that this effort to remove multiple use
from wide swatches of public lands be
stopped, then restarted by following
the Law of Coordination, working with
each affected County directly.
When Coordination is used through
the proper process, it works for all the
citizens not just a select few.
Bill Harvey is chairman of the Baker
County Board of Commissioners.
Worn down by the wicked winds of the spring
I decided last Sunday that my
arid, ailing lawn needed a good
dousing, but my enthusiasm for
completing this simplest of tasks
withered rapidly.
The hose was attached to the bib,
the water fl owing freely and with
no leaks.
But I couldn’t fi nd the sprinkler.
I suppose I hadn’t thought of this
item since September.
But this span of time hardly
seemed suffi cient to explain where
the sprinkler had gotten off to
while I was otherwise occupied.
Perhaps to whatever purgatory
my snow shovels get themselves
banished to every year between
April and August, leaving me to
fumble around out by the shed dur-
ing a November squall.
I’d like to believe inanimate,
immobile objects would be more
reliable, but there you go.
Eventually I tracked the sprin-
kler to a spot that, with hindsight,
seems logical, even obvious.
It was on top of the electric me-
ter, beside the coiled garden hose,
no doubt precisely where I left it six
months or so earlier.
I was treated to this unpleasant
reminder about the condition of
my memory — every year it comes
closer to the cranial equivalent of
a kitchen colander — because the
grass on our place is more tan than
green. This is, to be sure, not an
JAYSON
JACOBY
atypical situation for the second
week of April, what with the some-
times disagreeable climate of our
mountain valley.
And yet it has hardly been a
normal spring, to the extent that
such a thing exists.
The season thus far is notewor-
thy both for what it lacks — rain
— and for what it has brought to
Baker County in a great gritty
abundance — wind.
Scarcely any rain has fallen since
February.
Instead we have been besieged
by a series of dry cold fronts, the
meteorological version of the un-
wanted houseguest who barges in,
unannounced, drinks all the beer in
your refrigerator and leaves boot-
prints on the carpet that defy even
the sort of stain remover which is
banned in several states due to its
curious effects on laboratory mice.
Some cold fronts have redeeming
qualities.
They often bring rain or snow.
Precipitation is a valuable com-
modity in any season given the
desert-like climate that prevails in
much of Baker County, but espe-
cially so during spring, when crops
are beginning to gain a roothold in
the slowly warming soil.
A cold front can also usher in
a refreshingly brisk breeze that
cleans the air of wildfi re smoke or
other annoying contaminants.
But the fronts that have been
nearly metronomic over the past
month or so were largely malevo-
lent.
They’ve yielded at best a brief
spat of rain, snow or soft hail, the
proverbial diminutive drop in an
already empty bucket.
What the fronts have spawned
is wind.
Wind that at times seems om-
nipotent.
Persistent wind is the most
depressing of weather phenomena,
it seems to me.
People can adapt to extreme
temperatures more readily, I think,
in part because donning or doffi ng
clothing can ameliorate the ther-
mal effects.
The problem with wind is that it
gusts.
It isn’t predictable in the way
that a hot or a cold day is. Once
you’ve adjusted your attire to the
temperature, it’s usually possible
to reach something approaching
comfort.
But the variety of wind we’ve
been subjected to on many days
recently is a different matter.
It pummels you at all times, but
then, with a frustrating irregular-
ity, a gust will temporarily worsen
the assault. It’s akin to being
punched lightly but consistently
and then taking an uppercut every
couple minutes and having no way
to block the blow.
Wind is uniquely annoying.
I have stumbled indoors from
my afternoon walk several times
recently feeling as though I had
just endured the sort of ordeal
that served as entertainment for
medieval lords when they tired of
fl ogging the serfs and watching the
knights joust.
My eyes squinted, the contact
lenses resting about as comfortably
on my corneas as 30-grit sandpa-
per.
My hair was contorted into
strange new shapes.
I felt both dishevelled and
drained of energy. It was as though
the gusts, by impeding my prog-
ress so that I had to lean into the
wind, like a TV weather personal-
ity reporting on a tropical storm,
had leached away more than the
normal number of calories.
It’s been a strange spring in
other ways.
The parade of cold fronts, in
addition to turning Baker Valley
into a topographic wind tunnel, has
created ideal conditions for abnor-
mally frigid nights.
The combination of clear skies
and low humidity maximizes what
weather experts call “radiational
cooling.” In the most simplistic
sense — which is the only sense
in which I can hope to understand
scientifi c principles — both clouds
and water vapor in the air (re-
fl ected in the relative humidity) act
rather like blankets, holding heat
near the ground. When skies are
cloud-free and the air is dry, heat
that the ground absorbs during
the day will rise (or radiate, hence
“radiational cooling”) more easily,
allowing temperature near the
ground to plummet.
Low temperatures at the Baker
City Airport were below average on
18 of the 23 days between March
21 and April 12. That stretch
included new record lows on three
days and a tie on another.
None of this, needless to say, has
been much help to my grass.
Like most plants it needs sun-
light, warmth and water to thrive.
Of that trio, only the fi rst has been
anything like abundant.
The warmth, at least, seems to
have gained a bit of momentum.
And if nature continues to hoard
the latter element, I can at least
serve as a surrogate, presuming I
don’t misplace the sprinkler again.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.