SATURDAY
AUTO PARTS STORE HAS NEW OWNERS, LOCATION IN BAKER CITY: PG. A6
In OUTDOORS, B1
Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com
July 10, 2021
Local • Oregon • Outdoors • TV
IN THIS EDITION:
QUICK HITS
Good Day Wish
To A Subscriber
A special good day to
Herald subscriber William
Hanks of Baker City.
BRIEFING
Road over Hells
Canyon Dam
closed part of the
day July 13
$1.50
Baker City’s Water Usage Staying High While Supply Dwindles
‘We Can’t Do This
The Whole Summer’
OXBOW — The road
across Hells Canyon Dam
will be closed from 8 a.m.
to noon, PDT, on Tuesday,
July 13 while Idaho Power
Company maintenance
crews clear vegetation
from the face of the dam.
The schedule could
change depending on the
weather. Visitors planning
to travel over the dam can
confi rm the road status by
calling 541-785-7251.
The Baker High School
Class of 1961 will have a
reunion July 17 at 5 p.m.
at Lefty’s, 1934 Broadway
St. Other BHS alumni and
friends are invited to join
the group at 8 p.m.
Today
98 / 52
Sunny
Sunday
95 / 48
Sunny
Monday
95 / 50
Sunny
Correction: A story in
the July 6 issue about a
grant for renovations at
Churchill School contained
two errors. The grant is
for repairing windows
only, not windows and
the roof. And the building
was designed by Charles
B. Miller, not Charles Lee
Miller.
The space below is for
a postage label for issues
that are mailed.
Jubilee
parade
needs
entries
By Joanna Mann
jmann@bakercityherald.com
Miners Jubilee will return
next week after a one-year
hiatus due to the pandemic,
but one of the event’s top
draws, the downtown pa-
rade, might not.
With just a dozen entries
signed up as of Thursday,
July 8, the parade is in
jeopardy, said Shelly Cutler,
executive director of the
Baker County Chamber of
Commerce, which puts on
Miners Jubilee.
She needs at least 30
entries to have the parade,
which traditionally hap-
pens Saturday morning of
Jubilee.
Baker High School
Class of 1961
planning reunion
on July 17
WEATHER
Gravel
road
bicycling
See Parade/Page A5
Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald
Baker City offi cials are asking residents to cut back on outdoor watering during this summer’s drought.
By Jayson Jacoby and
Samantha O’Conner
“We cannot run all summer at 5 million gallons a day.
That’s what it comes down to.”
Baker City Herald
Michelle Owen is worried about
water, and she wants Baker City
residents to worry too.
More to the point, she wants them
to keep their outside faucets closed
more often than they have been doing
during this summer of drought.
Owen is the city’s public works
director.
And for the past couple weeks, since
a historic heat wave started smother-
ing the region (see related story below,
at right), Owen has been tracking two
troubling trends in the city.
We’ve been using a lot of water at
the same time the city’s supply of that
most precious commodity has been
dwindling.
The math is pretty simple, she said.
“We can’t do this the whole sum-
By Jayson Jacoby
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
— Michelle Owen, Baker City public works director
mer,” Owen said on Thursday, July 8.
“This,” meaning going through
close to 5 million gallons of water
each day.
For the fi rst fi ve days of July, the
city’s use averaged 4.88 million gal-
lons per day.
That followed a June in which
the city’s overall thirst amounted to
129.9 million gallons, a 45% increase
over the use during June 2020, and
a daily average of 4.3 million gal-
lons.
The usage rate so far in July is
not sustainable, through the end of
summer, based on the city’s water
supply, Owen said.
“We cannot run all summer at
5 million gallons a day,” she said.
“That’s what it comes down to.”
If current trends continue, city of-
fi cials might need to enact the third
stage of the city’s four-stage water
curtailment ordinance, something
that’s never been done, Owen said.
Under the third stage, the city
would prohibit residents from using
city water outdoors — for watering
lawns or gardens or washing cars.
The city could fi ne violators $500.
See Water/Page A3
Cause of power outage a mystery
OTEC, concedes that the
mystery might continue
Charlie Tracy and a
to stymie the cooperative’s
team of Oregon Trail Elec- sleuths.
tric Cooperative employees
“Given where we are, it’s
spent much of Wednesday, unlikely that we’ll know
July 7, trying to solve an
what caused (the outage),”
electrical mystery.
Tracy said on Thursday
But the investigation
afternoon.
has so far proved fruitless.
The outage, which
And Tracy, who is the
lasted for about two hours
director of engineering for on Wednesday morning,
By Jayson Jacoby
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
affected around 8,000
OTEC members, including
all of Baker City, Baker
Valley, Haines and North
Powder.
Although a precise
solution remains elusive,
here’s what Tracy and
other OTEC offi cials know:
The power went out
when a circuit breaker
opened at the Quartz sub-
station, near the landfi ll
off Highway 30 a few miles
southeast of Baker City.
That breaker, like the
ones in the electrical panel
in homes and businesses,
is a safety measure,
designed to cut the fl ow of
power when there’s a short
circuit.
Baker City Herald
Republican gubernatorial can-
didate Jessica Gomez’s campaign
claims Suzan Ellis Jones, chair of
the Baker County Republicans and
mother of one of Gomez’s rivals, told
Gomez’s campaign director that
Gomez should consider not attend-
TODAY
Issue 26, 12 pages
ing Miners Jubilee because a local
candidate is also in the race.
Gomez made the claim in a press
release on Friday, July 9.
Jones’ daughter, Baker City may-
or Kerry McQuisten, announced on
June 29 that she would seek the
Republican nomination for gover-
nor in the May 2022 primary.
Gomez, of Medford, announced
Classified ............. B2-B4
Comics ....................... B5
Community News .... B3
Crossword ........B3 & B4
Dear Abby ................. B6
Horoscope ........B3 & B4
A rare morning lightning
storm touched off a wildfi re
in northern Malheur County
on Wednesday morning, July
7, that could easily have
turned into a major blaze
fanned by gusty winds.
But fi refi ghters, aided by
good road access for bull-
dozers and by an armada
of eight airplanes and one
helicopter, contained the fi re,
at an estimated 100 acres,
before dusk Wednesday.
“The winds on that fi re
were incredible,” said Al
Crouch of the Bureau of
Land Management’s Vale
District. “There were sus-
tained winds of at least 20
miles an hour.”
See Wildfi re/Page A3
Heat wave
misses
record by
1 degree
By Jayson Jacoby
See Outage/Page A3
Candidate says Baker GOP chair
suggested she not attend Jubilee
By Joanna Mann and
Jayson Jacoby
Fast work
douses
wildfire
her campaign on June 8.
Jones disputes the implication
that Gomez is not welcome in the
GOP booth at Geiser-Pollman Park
during Miners Jubilee.
“The Gomez campaign was offered
a Sunday time slot,” Jones wrote in
an email to the Herald.
See Candidate/Page A6
Jayson Jacoby ..........A4
News of Record ........A2
Obituaries ..................A2
Opinion ......................A4
Outdoors ..........B1 & B6
Sports ........................A6
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
Baker City’s bid to break
another heat wave record
ended Wednesday, July 7.
But it was a near thing.
As near as it could pos-
sibly be, in fact.
The high temperature
at the Baker City Airport
Wednesday was 89 degrees.
That snapped a streak
of 11 straight days when
the temperature topped 90
degrees — the longest such
stretch in almost four years,
and the sixth-longest in at
least the past half century.
See Heat Wave/Page A2
Senior Menus ...........A1
Turning Backs ...........A2
Weather ..................... B6
TUESDAY — WORK CONTINUES ON BAKER CITY’S BIG SEWER PROJECT