A6 — BAKER CITY HERALD
TUESDAY, JULY 13, 2021
Informal track meets
planned at Baker High
By Corey Kirk
ckirk@bakercityherald.com
Every other Tuesday for the next fi ve
to six weeks, track and fi eld athletes are
welcome to gather at Baker High School
to make friends, compete and have fun.
“It’s an open event to anybody, most
of it is being able to get some practice so
the high schoolers can come practice the
high jump or pole vault and even the ju-
nior highers can do the same,” said Suzy
Cole, BHS track and fi eld coach and the
lead organizer for this summer’s open
events. “For the younger kids we do
some warm ups and some fun runs, and
have whatever races they want to run.”
She hopes the summer open track
Tuesday events will become a staple
during summer vacation.
“We’ve tried different things over the
years, we’ve tried having more formal
track meets, and that didn’t work as
well and we tried having formal prac-
tices,” Cole said. “This is the fi rst year
we’ve tried having things like this. We
Samantha O’Conner/Baker City Herald
Ray Scott, left, and Bill Harmon, center, in the ditch, work on installing a pipeline that
will extend seven miles between Baker City’s existing wastewater storage lagoons and
a new lagoon under construction northeast of the airport.
Djokovic wins 20th grand slam
Matteo Berrettini, and,
perhaps, by the weight of
WIMBLEDON, England the milestone he was pursu-
— The Wimbledon fi nal was ing, Djokovic shrugged all of
locked up at a set apiece
that off and steeled himself,
after nearly 2 1/2 hours, and as he’s done so many times
Novak Djokovic’s bid for a
at so many moments on so
record-tying 20th Grand
many stages.
Slam title was at a critical
On each of the next two
juncture, when he faced
points, Djokovic, known
two break points while
for his baseline supremacy,
thousands in the full-capac- charged forward. On each,
ity crowd at Centre Court
Berrettini’s passing attempt
chanted his opponent’s fi rst found the net.
name.
An hour later, the match
Bothered, perhaps, by
was fi nished — Djokovic
the challenge he was facing won 6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 —
between the lines Sunday,
and so, too, was his stated
and, perhaps, by the sup-
desire to equal the total of
port being thrown behind
major championships col-
By Howard Fendrich
AP Tennis Writer
BIG DIG
Continued from Page A1
The city had to choose a
lagoon site more than 10,000
feet from the Baker City
Airport, because the lagoon
could attract fl ocks of geese
and other birds that can pose a
danger to aircraft.
The city bought the 51-acre
property in 2019 for $123,000.
The site is at the eastern
end of Baker Valley, south of
Highway 203. The city also
paid $37,900 for an easement
across another property that
the pipeline will cross.
Construction on the pipeline
leading from the current
lagoons to the new lagoon is
underway on Lee Lane, north
of the airport.
The seven-mile pipeline will
have to dip beneath both the
Powder River and Interstate
84. The pipeline will be about
10 feet beneath the freeway,
said Jeremy Wilson of Ander-
son-Perry and Associates, the
city’s engineering fi rm on the
project.
Wilson expects the pipeline
to be fi nished by this fall based
on current installation rates.
Owen said the pipeline
will be gravity-fed from the
current lagoons to the new
lagoon.
“When it comes to irrigation
season, this pipeline that we’re
constructing can be pressur-
ized so it can go either way
because there’s an irrigator
on the lagoon end and on
the storage pond end,” Owen
said. “So the pipeline can be
pressurized so it can serve
those irrigation needs during
that irrigation season.”
That will allow wastewa-
ter to fl ow by gravity from
the current lagoons to the
new lagoon, and also to be
pumped the opposite direc-
tion.
Owen said treated wastewa-
ter will be used for irrigation
at both sites.
In November 2020 the City
Council agreed to have the
city borrow as much as $7.5
million from the state to pay
for the wastewater project. The
city will repay the loan over 30
years with a 1.36% annual in-
terest rate. Annual payments
would be about $300,000.
The loan agreement is for
up to $8 million, but Owen
said the program includes a
loan forgiveness of $500,000,
so the maximum the city
would actually borrow and
fi nance is $7.5 million.
Based on the bid amount
from Gyllenberg Construc-
tion, the city likely won’t
need to borrow the full
amount.
Owen said the city initially
had hoped to fi nish the work
in October or November of
this year.
But delays in obtaining
permits and some materials
— including the pipe issue
related to the Gulf Coast win-
ter storms — have pushed
back the estimated comple-
tion date to next spring.
Some parts of the construc-
tion, including installing the
liner for the new lagoon, can’t
be done during cool weather,
she said.
“So the goal was to have
it done this fall,” Owen said.
“If we had a really warm No-
vember, maybe. But I think
more realistically we say it’ll
be May of 2022.”
thought we would give it a try, see how
it goes doing an open event every other
Tuesday.”
Cole said she fondly remembers
similar events in La Grande, where she
grew up, and how they helped spark her
interest in running.
“I think I was six and seven when I
ran them and I loved them,” she said.
“That was the introduction to track for
me and that’s what I want the kids to
know, it could be fun for all ages.”
Open track Tuesdays will start
around 7 p.m. and continue through the
third week of August. The events are
free. The next is set for July 20.
“It’s a great opportunity to meet other
people in the community for parents, it’s
a great opportunity for kids to socialize
with all the different age levels with the
different kids that come together,” Cole
said. “It’s just a positive event socially,
emotionally, and physically.”
For more information, email Cole at
suzy.cole@bakersd.org.
lected by his biggest rivals,
Roger Federer (who reached
20 in 2018) and Rafael
Nadal (who did it last year).
No other male tennis player
has more than 14.
“I consider myself best,
and I believe that I am the
best, otherwise I wouldn’t
be talking confi dently about
winning Slams and making
history,” said Djokovic, a
34-year-old from Serbia
who is ranked No. 1 and
has spent more weeks in
that top spot than any other
man. “But whether I’m the
greatest of all time or not,
I leave that debate to other
people.”
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