BAKER CITY HERALD • TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2022 A3
LOCAL
Ian Crawford/Baker City Herald
Volunteers carry the American flag during the Shrine parade on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2022, in downtown Baker City.
Scenes from the Shrine Parade
Ian Crawford/Baker City Herald
A classic car from the Hillah Shriners in Douglas County rolls down
Baker City’s Main Street during the Shrine Parade on Saturday,
Aug. 6, 2022.
Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald
Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald
Both Shrine queens are from the Baker City area. Poppy Ann Jones, left, was the West queen, and Hannah Cartwright was the East queen for
the 2022 game.
Baldwin, a steer raised by Harley Coburn of Durkee, was auctioned at
halftime of the East-West Shrine All-Star football game on Saturday,
Aug. 6, 2022, raising about $21,000 for the Shriners Hospital for Chil-
dren in Portland.
House
Continued from A1
The lot, which covers almost
5,000 square feet, has a market
value of $31,330, according to
the Assessor’s Office.
The police department, not
the building department, deals
with property maintenance vi-
olations.
But earlier this year, Police
Chief Ty Duby applied for and
received an administrative
search warrant that allowed
Kitzmiller and other city offi-
cials to inspect the interior of
the home.
Kitzmiller said that inspec-
tion happened on April 7.
She said the home is in “ter-
rible” condition.
Walls have been removed,
and the ceiling is failing, with
insulation and electrical wiring
falling through the ceiling.
“At some point that struc-
ture would have failed,” Kitz-
miller said. “It was in terrible
shape.”
Kitzmiller said she met with
Gwin soon after and told him
she would be sending an offi-
cial letter declaring the home
unsafe to occupy.
She gave him until mid May
to submit a plan for either re-
pairing the house — which
Kitzmiller said she didn’t think
was feasible given the likely
cost — or dismantling it.
That didn’t happen, and
as a result the city hired Lost
Soul Contracting, a Baker City
business, to tear down the
home and haul away the rem-
nants.
The business’ owner, Eric
Swanlund, is charging the city
$125 per hour, Kitzmiller said.
She said Swanlund expected
the work would take one or
two days.
Water
Continued from A1
straight days and topped 100
on the last three days of July,
the city was using about 5.7
million gallons per day.
The city was still diverting
about 5 million gallons per
day from streams and springs
in its watershed on the east
slopes of the Elkhorn Moun-
tains west of town.
But Owen said the city has
also started to use a very small
amount of water from Go-
odrich Reservoir, the alpine
reservoir at the base of Elk-
horn Peak that holds about
200 million gallons of water.
Goodrich filled this spring.
“We haven’t had to tap into
Goodrich, which is really in-
credible, again because of the
wet spring we had, it kept the
Samantha O’Conner/Baker City Herald
Work began on Monday, Aug. 8, 2022, to dismantle a home in east Baker City that the city’s building offi-
cial declared unsafe to occupy.
Kitzmiller said the city
will seek to attach a lien to
the property so that even if
it’s sold, the city will be reim-
bursed for the cost of disman-
tling the home.
Kitzmiller said on Monday
that she wasn’t celebrating that
it became necessary to tear
down the home.
“I’m sorry for Mr. Gwin,
but he’s been given so many
chances,” she said.
Gwin could not be reached
for comment by press time on
Monday.
He declined to comment on
the situation earlier this year
after Kerns designated the
home as a chronic neighbor-
hood nuisance.
Kitzmiller said she would
have preferred that Gwin ar-
creeks flowing,” Owen said.
Last summer, by contrast,
the springs and streams pro-
duced less water, forcing the
city to use more water from
Goodrich.
The city has been using
water recently from Marble
Springs, Salmon Creek, and
Mill and Little Mill creeks,
Owen said.
“We’re trying to spread the
wealth, if you will. We’re not
drawing everything from Elk
Creek, we’re not drawing ev-
erything from Salmon Creek.
We’re kind of taking bits and
pieces across the mountain,”
Owen said.
The city’s second supple-
mentary water source, in addi-
tion to Goodrich, is a well.
(A second well, which was
drilled in the fall of 2020,
should be available later
this year.)
Samantha O’Conner/Baker City Herald
A worker loads debris into a dumpster at 1975 Birch St. on Monday,
Aug. 8, 2022.
Neighbors react to
removal of home
Over the years, several
people who live near Gwin’s
home have expressed their
disgust with the condition of
the home. Some have lobbied
the Baker City Council to do
something about the situa-
tion, telling councilors that
their own homes had been in-
fested with mice they believed
spread from Gwin’s property.
Carmen Ott who lives on
Washington Avenue near
Birch, said she has lived with
the situation since 2013.
“We are thrilled to death
with this,” Ott said on Mon-
day morning as workers filled
multiple dumpsters with de-
bris and began tearing down
the house. “We’ve had to live
with this garbage.”
“We’ve seen it all,” Ott said.
Ralph Grimmer, who lives
on Washington across from
the Gwin home, was also
happy about the work.
Angie Stewart, who headed
the neighborhood watch pro-
gram in the area, said she is
ambivalent after six years of
having to deal with the prop-
erty.
“You don’t want to celebrate
the fact they’re doing this but
six years is a lot,” Stewart said.
Stewart, who with her hus-
band, John, lives at the corner
of Plum Street and Wash-
ington Avenue, just west of
Gwin’s house, said earlier
this year that the recurrent
accumulations of trash, and
associated problems, have
left them and some of their
neighbors as “basically hos-
tages to the inside of our
homes.”
Angie Stewart said un-
pleasant odors emanate from
Gwin’s property, and she has
seen people urinating in the
yard.
“We can’t go out and use
our decks and backyards in
the summer,” Stewart said. “It’s
just awful.”
She said the local neighbor-
hood watch, which includes
42 homes in the area, was
started due to conditions at
the Gwin property.
She said homeless people
have stayed on the property
at times.
“He’s had every opportunity
to become a good neighbor,”
Stewart said of Gwin.
Like Ott, Stewart said she’s
relieved that the house will be
gone, but sad that dismantling
it was necessary.
Owen said the city has used
small amounts of well water
during the recent hot weather.
The city’s existing well,
which was drilled in the late
1970s, is augmented by water
from the watershed. During
the winter and early spring,
the city diverts tens of mil-
lions of gallons of water from
the watershed into the well,
a process known as Aquifer
Storage and Recovery. In 2009
Baker City was the first Ore-
gon city to receive a state per-
mit to use that tactic.
“The mountain is pro-
ducing well for us. That’s
great, we like the gravity wa-
ter whenever we can get it,”
Owen said.
She was referring to the wa-
tershed, which, because it’s at a
higher elevation than the city,
supplies water through gravity,
with no pumping needed.
Although the city has not
enacted stage 2 of the water
curtailment ordinance, Owen
urges residents to be careful
with their water use — water-
ing gardens and lawns during
the evening and early morn-
ing, for instance, and making
sure sprinklers aren’t wasting
water on streets or sidewalks.
Owen said the city might be
able to get through the sum-
mer without moving to stage
2 of the water curtailment or-
dinance, depending on the
weather.
“Our supply is doing as well
or better than I had antici-
pated,” she said.
The high use levels that led
to the city enacting phase 2 of
the water curtailment ordi-
nance in early July 2021 also
prompted Owen to talk about
the possibility of the city mov-
ing to phase 3 for the first time
ever. Under that stage, all out-
door watering with city water
is banned.
But the city’s water use
dropped by 23% in August
2021 compared with July, and
the city never advanced to
stage 3.
range to have his home torn
down, but she said that didn’t
seem likely to happen.
She said she decided to
have the city hire a contrac-
tor in part because an asbes-
tos assessment was negative,
meaning the city didn’t have
to remove asbestos, which can
be expensive, before tearing
down the home.
Kitzmiller said siding and
flooring that often contain
asbestos were mostly gone,
so there weren’t the usual
sources of asbestos in older
homes.
May we take this method of thanking our neighbors for
their many kind expressions of sympathy in our
bereavement. Words cannot express our gratitude, and
these expressions have been deeply appreciated.
Thank you,
The family of
Gerald Goodwin