BAKER CITY HERALD • TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2022 A5
LOCAL & STATE
Merkley sees federal role in solving local issues
BY ERICK PETERSON
East Oregonian
HERMISTION — Sen. Jeff Merk-
ley on Friday, June 17, advocated for
using the federal government to find
solutions to local problems in the
wake of the pandemic.
“It’s been a tough two years,” he told
the crowd after he stepped onstage
during the second day of the 2022
Eastern Oregon Economic Summit in
Hermiston.
Sen. Ron Wyden and U.S. Rep.
Cliff Bentz also participated, but they
streamed in via video.
Merkely spoke of the difficulty of
the pandemic years, the pains of lock-
downs and the struggles of school
children who suffered isolation. He
also mentioned the recent flooding
in Echo, which he was planning to
visit later in the day, as well as supply
chain problems, inflation and global
warming.
Still, he maintained, there were
solutions to our problems. Rising
gas prices, for example could be ad-
dressed by reducing “our addiction to
oil.” By opening more ports, we can
fix supply chain woes. And earmark-
ing government funds for various
government projects also can help.
Merkley said we are planning for a
Yasser Marte/East Oregonian
Hermiston City Council Roy Barron
shares his thoughts on the East Oregon
Economic Summit on Friday, June 17,
2022 and discusses the future of Eastern
Oregon.
Yasser Marte/East Oregonian
Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley spoke at the Eastern Oregon Economic Summit in
Hermiston High School on Friday, June 17, 2022.
brighter future.
The Eastern Oregon Women’s Coa-
lition organized the event June 16 and
17 in Hermiston. The general ses-
sion was June 17 at Hermiston High
School and open to the public.
Following his speech, Merkley re-
tired to a classroom at the school,
where he met with individuals and
talked more.
“Economic development is on ev-
erybody’s minds, as well as the imme-
diate economic issues of gas prices,
food prices and drug prices,” he said.
He called it “shocking” that hous-
ing and gas prices have risen quickly.
Drugs, too, are expensive, he said,
which worries people. He said he is
fighting in Congress for solutions, in-
cluding for a windfall profits tax.
“I hope we’ll be in a better place in
a year,” he said.
Merkley also said he was aware
of issues in Umatilla and Morrow
counties. He said he helped secure a
$500,000 community-initiated proj-
ect grant for Echo for water infra-
structure and was visiting the town to
see flooding damage.
“What I’m anticipating is that
they’re going to need a lot of repair
work that will involve the Corps of
Engineers,” he said. “I’ll be looking to
their guidance, but if they are seeking
to apply, Sen. Wyden and I, and I’m
sure Cliff Bentz, will advocate to get
help from the Corps of Engineers and
hopefully funding to improve their
protection from the next big rain im-
pact.”
Merkley also discussed groundwa-
ter pollution in Morrow County.
“It’s a very big deal,” he said. “Ni-
trate pollution has a lot of health im-
plications.”
Merkey said he was planning to
meet with Morrow County Commis-
sioner Jim Doherty, who has been
getting surveys of wells in his county
and has been discovering dangerous
levels of nitrates in well water.
Merkey called this a problem that
has been known for decades. It is only
now, he said, that local officials are
taking it seriously.
“I’m looking forward to seeing how
I can help them out,” he said.
And he left a message for the peo-
ple of Eastern Oregon.
“Our future depends on our in-
vestment in infrastructure and our
investment in education,” he said. “In
the meantime, though, we have a lot
of problems from the droughts, from
the fires, from the conditions in our
forests, and I’m going to be working
with local communities on tackling
those problems from every direction
I can.”
Oregon DEQ increases Port of Morrow fine to $2.1 million
East Oregonian
BOARDMAN — Oregon Depart-
ment of Environmental Quality has
increased the penalty against the Port
of Morrow from $1.3 million to a lit-
tle more than $2.1 million.
State environmental regulators lev-
ied the initial fines in January, accus-
ing the port of excessively spreading
nitrogen-rich wastewater as fertilizer
on area farmland for years. DEQ an-
nounced in a statement Friday, June
17, the additional $800,000 is “for
additional violations involving over
application of wastewater containing
nitrogen to agricultural fields in the
Lower Umatilla Basin, an area with
longstanding groundwater contam-
ination.”
The Port of Morrow has been ap-
pealing the $1.3 million in fines.
“The Port of Morrow recognizes
groundwater contamination is a se-
rious problem, and has been for de-
cades,” port Executive Director Lisa
Mittelsdorf said. “The port believes
this is a community problem that will
require a community solution. By
the DEQ’s own analysis, the port’s in-
dustrial wastewater reuse program is
responsible for less than 5% of the ar-
ea’s nitrates. We will continue to work
with DEQ to collaborate on a solu-
tion that will address what happens to
industrial wastewater during winter
months without shutting down the in-
dustries generating that wastewater.”
According to the statement from
DEQ, the Port of Morrow is one of
many sources contributing to nitrate
contamination in northern Morrow
and Umatilla counties — an area
Firefighters
munity,” he said. “We’re not al-
lowed to do what we’re trained
to do. We’re playing second
fiddle. It’s painful.”
Johnson said he probably
would violate the callout pro-
tocol if, for instance, he heard
an emergency call regarding a
person in cardiac arrest.
He said he doubts he could
simply sit in the fire station
knowing someone’s life was
threatened.
That protocol, besides the
clauses in the county’s con-
tracts with its temporary
ambulance providers desig-
nating them as the first call
ambulance, is reiterated in a
June 1 memo from Lee, the
fire chief.
It reads: “Baker City Fire
Departments will not self-dis-
patch to any emergency call of
other emergency agencies. All
emergency response agencies
have mutual aid request abili-
ties to request Baker City Fire
responders.”
Continued from Page A1
Prompted by the City Coun-
cil’s March 22 notice, county
commissioners released a re-
quest for proposals for a new
ambulance operator and re-
ceived two responses from pri-
vate companies — Metro West
Ambulance of Hillsboro, and
Victory EMS of Boise.
Commissioners voted unan-
imously on June 8 to hire
Metro West to run ambulances
in both the Baker ambulance
service area, which includes
Baker City and about two-
thirds of the rest of the county,
as well as the Huntington area.
(The county’s other ambu-
lance service areas are in the
Richland and Halfway/Oxbow
areas.)
Baker City’s proposed bud-
get for the fiscal year that starts
July 1 cuts staffing in the fire
department from 16.25 full-
time equivalents to 10.5.
The City Council is sched-
uled to adopt that budget June
28.
But Johnson said that with
three employees recently leav-
ing, along with another fire-
fighter/paramedic slot that
has been vacant for several
months, it appears the city
might achieve the cuts through
sheer attrition.
The recent defections have
left the fire department unable
to respond to multiple simulta-
neous calls.
The county declared a local
emergency on May 24, a week
after the Baker City Fire De-
partment notified the county
about the staffing shortages.
“When we receive fire call
and medical call simultane-
ously, we will have to triage the
calls as they come and deter-
mine the greatest threat to life
and property,” Baker City Fire
Chief Sean Lee wrote in an
email to the county. “My hope
is that this will give you an op-
portunity to find a provider for
the interim that will be able to
maintain the existing level of
service.”
In response, the county con-
tracted with a private com-
pany, American Medical Re-
sponse, to have an ambulance
temporarily available for calls
in the Baker ambulance ser-
vice area starting Friday, May
27, the beginning of Memorial
Day weekend.
AMR operated an ambu-
lance through June 10. The
county paid the company
$3,700 per day.
The county subsequently
approved a short-term con-
tract with Metro West, which
will also provide one advanced
life support ambulance for the
Baker and Huntington ambu-
lance service areas prior to the
company fully replacing the
Baker City Fire Department.
known as the Lower Umatilla Basin
Groundwater Management Area.
The primary source of contamina-
tion in the area, about 70%, is from
fertilizer used on irrigated farmland,
according to the management area’s
action plan. Additional contribu-
tors are dairy and cattle farms (about
20%), food processing facilities
(about 5%) and residential septic sys-
tems and other sources (about 5%).
The Port of Morrow collects waste-
water from food processors, storage
facilities and data centers in its in-
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald
Baker City firefighter/paramedic Casey Johnson, left, president of the
local union chapter that represents Baker City firefighters, and Ron
Morgan, a district vice president for the Oregon State Firefighters Coun-
cil, went door to door in Baker City on Tuesday morning, May 3, 2022,
to urge residents to oppose a city proposal to end ambulance service
Sept. 30, 2022, forcing Baker County to find a different provider.
The county is paying Metro
West $1,000 per day. The con-
tract also states that Metro
West will reimburse the county
for $500 for each “paid trans-
port,” to a maximum reim-
bursement of $7,000 per week.
Metro West is charging
$1,500 for each transport,
along with $21 per mile with a
patient on board.
The contract runs through
July 31.
City fire department
‘playing second fiddle’
Johnson said that although
he understands the need for
more ambulances given the
fire department’s shrinking
workforce, he points out that
this is largely the product of
the City Council’s decision to
concur with Cannon’s conten-
tions about the department’s
financial situation.
He considers it an affront
to his and his colleagues’ pro-
fessionalism that the county’s
contract with Metro West, in
common with the contract
with AMR, designates the con-
tractor, not the city, as the first
call ambulance.
That means the Baker City
Fire Department responds
with an ambulance only when
the contract ambulance is al-
ready on a call.
Johnson said it’s frustrating
to listen to the emergency ra-
dio and hear a contract am-
bulance handling calls that he
and his co-workers are accus-
tomed to responding to.
“We care about our com-
Don’t text and
drive... you
won’t have to
come see us!
More resignations coming?
Although the city’s budget
calls for the fire department
to continue to respond to fire
calls after the ambulance ser-
vice ends, Johnson said he’s not
certain that enough firefight-
ers will stay to meet even the
reduced workforce level the
city is planning. The city might
need to hire replacements for
firefighters who leave even
though their jobs aren’t on the
layoff list, he said.
“There are guys whose jobs
are safe who are having a long
hard look at what they want to
do with their lives,” Johnson
said.
He’s one of those guys.
“I love this job — it’s my
identity,” he said. “But I’ve been
considering getting out of the
dustrial park outside Boardman. The
port has a DEQ water quality permit
that allows it to use the nitrogen-rich
wastewater for irrigation on nearby
farms, but the permit includes limits
on how much nitrogen the port can
apply to the farmland and how much
nitrate and moisture can be present
in soil prior to applications.
The new notice requires the port to
“develop and implement an approval
plan to achieve compliance with both
the nitrogen loading and moisture
content limits in the permit.”
fire service altogether.”
Johnson, who has worked
for the fire department since
December 2017, said the stress
has been accumulating since
the City Council sent its notice
to the county March 22.
He’s lost sleep.
Johnson said he would
strongly consider taking a
job in a larger city with a sin-
gle-role fire department, where
firefighters respond to fires but
don’t also operate ambulances.
But he said a job in Baker
City, once the fire department
ends ambulance service, is
much less appealing because
there are relatively few fires.
Ambulance runs account
for about 85% of the depart-
ment’s calls.
Johnson said a 24-hour shift
last week was something of a
preview of what he might ex-
pect once the city’s ambulances
are parked for good.
He said there wasn’t a single
ambulance or fire call during
the shift. Metro West handled
all the requests for an ambu-
lance.
Johnson thinks the city, if
it needs to hire firefighters to
maintain the workforce bud-
geted for the coming fiscal
year, might find that a tough
task.
“What firefighter would
want to move to a town where
this is going on?” he said.
Johnson contends that the
city’s planned fire department
schedule, with two firefighters
per shift, is not sufficient, pos-
ing a threat to firefighters and
to the public.
In particular, he fears that
with just two firefighters on
duty, they wouldn’t be able
to enter a burning building
unless there are at least two
other firefighters available to
serve as a backup.
City officials dispute that.
In the ambulance service
information page on the city’s
website, bakercity.com, the city
states that “Our skilled Fire
Department staff will still be
able to enter a burning build-
ing to save lives per OSHA reg-
ulations and laws, even with
the proposed staff model. The
City also has mutual-aid agree-
ments and great partnerships
with other departments such
as North Powder and Baker
Rural Fire Department. They
all can assist when we have a
larger fire if needed.”
Jobs with the new ambulance
provider?
As required by state law,
Metro West’s proposal to the
county states that the company
“would also offer to hire any
fire Paramedics or EMT’s that
lose employment with Baker
City.”
The law requires that a new
ambulance provider give hir-
ing preference to qualified
employees from the previous
provider for at least six months
after the change.
Johnson calls that clause
“laughable” and a “terrible
consolation prize.”
He said he would never
consider working for the com-
pany that replaced the fire de-
partment as local ambulance
provider — although Johnson
said he knows a Metro West
paramedic who is stationed in
Baker City now, saying he is a
“super nice guy.”
Johnson said that although
he can’t speak for all fire de-
partment employees, “I don’t
see anybody at our fire depart-
ment entertaining that idea,”
meaning taking a job with
Metro West.
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