LOCAL A2
SPORTS A6
OUTDOORS B1
BHS grad’s coff ee
shop, bakery honored
Baker volleyball wins
its season opener
A moving memorial
atop a mountain
IN THIS EDITION: LOCAL • OUTDOORS & REC • SPORTS
QUICK HITS
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Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 2022 • $1.50
Idaho
Power to
pay $1.5M
for 2 fires
WAR
to
Good Day Wish
To A Subscriber
A special good day to Herald
subscriber Darlene Rambo of
Fruitland, Idaho.
PEACE
BRIEFING
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Company denies
that its local
transmission line
sparked blazes in
2014, 2015
Concert series in the
park wraps up Sunday
The Powder River Music
Review concert series wraps
Baker City Herald
up Sunday, Aug. 28, with Baker
Folk, a self-described “geriatric
garage band” featuring Marilyn
Shollenberger (keyboard and
vocals), Wayland Harman
(guitar, vocals and unusual
instruments), Rick Anderson
(vocals, guitar, bass guitar) and
Lindianne Sarno (vocals, fi ddle
and guitar).
The opening act features
Harman and Ron Yarnell.
The music starts at 4 p.m.
at the Powder River Pavilion
in Geiser-Pollman Park. This
concert is dedicated to Barbara
Wilbur, a longtime supporter of
the Powder River Music Review
Convoy of military vehicles rolls through Baker City
Idaho Power Company will
pay $1.5 million to the federal
government to settle allega-
tions, which the company de-
nies, that an equipment fail-
ure on one of its transmission
lines sparked two wildfires in
Baker City several years ago.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in
Portland announced the settle-
ment on Thursday, Aug. 25.
Federal officials alleged that
a failure of structures on the
138-kilovolt transmission line
between Ontario and near
Baker City caused the Lime Hill
fire, which burned about 12,000
acres in early August 2015, in-
cluding 2,592 acres of public
land, and the 5-acre Powerline
fire in late May 2014, which was
solely on public land.
See Fine / A3
who passed away Aug. 23.
ANTHONY LAKE
Attendance is free, and raffl e
tickets are sold to support the
music series, which is organized
by Baker City Events. A silent
auction of various items will
continue through September
— make bids at the Aug. 28
concert, or send an email to
bakercityevents1@gmail.com.
WEATHER
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Today
77/43
Sunny
Sunday
79/40
Sunny
Monday
86/47
Sunny
Full forecast on the back
of the B section.
The space below is for a postage label
for issues that are mailed.
Photos by Clayton Franke/Baker City Herald
Above: Led by Dan McCluskey, convoy commander, and his wife, Janine, the 2022 Motor Vehicle Preservation Association Northwest
Parks Motor Convoy drive down Baker City’s Main Street on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022. Top: Kenny Adams fills his two-and-a-half-ton
1951 M35 Command Center vehicle with gas on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022, in Baker City.
BY CLAYTON FRANKE
cfranke@bakercityherald.com
Ann Adams recalled, while
sitting in the driver’s seat of
her 1982 International mili-
tary bus at the Baker County
Fairgrounds, the photo of
a Navy LST (Landing Ship,
Tank) that hung on the living
room of the Ohio farm house
where she grew up.
“It was a beautiful LST,”
Adams said of the ships that
carried armored vehicles to
shore during amphibious in-
vasions.
Her father was a radio man
on a ship as it crept toward
the beaches of Normandy on
June 6, 1944, on its way to lib-
erate France from Nazi Ger-
many’s control and turn the
tides of World War II.
Ann’s bus, in its heyday,
served a slightly less glam-
orous purpose — to carry
troops around bases.
It wasn’t meant to travel
hundreds of miles at a time,
as she’s doing now with the
Military Vehicle Preservation
Association’s Northwest Parks
Motor Convoy.
Fish deaths
are under
investigation
A couple hundred
hatchery-raised
rainbow trout died
in July soon after
being released
BY JAYSON JACOBY
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
gon Trail Routes.
Dan McCluskey, the convoy
commander, said the convoy
serves as a “moving museum,”
displaying the retired military
vehicles in action.
Adams bought the bus
last year for $1,200 in an
A state fish biologist is trying
to figure out what killed about
200 of the 2,000 hatchery rain-
bow trout released in Anthony
Lake in late July.
The incident was unfortunate
because the alpine lake, at an el-
evation of 7,100 in the Elkhorn
Mountains northwest of Baker
City, “is one of those places
where people really enjoy going
to fish during the hot summer
months,” said Joe Lemanski, dis-
trict fish biologist at the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wild-
life’s (ODFW) La Grande office.
The trout are considered “tro-
phy” fish, as they average about
a pound and a half, he said.
See Convoy / A3
See Fish / A3
Ann Adams said she and her son worked on making this International military bus livable, putting in
a kitchen, washer and dryer, and a bed. They also painted the front steps.
The convoy rolled through
downtown Baker City at
around 1:30 p.m. on Wednes-
day, Aug. 24, and then as-
sembled and rested at the
fairgrounds Wednesday night
before rolling out to head
to Enterprise the following
morning.
Wednesday was day 11 of
15 for the convoy, which is
in the midst of completing a
1,600-mile route through Or-
egon, Idaho and Washington
that retraces portions of the
original 1924 National Park-
to-Park Highway and parts of
the Lewis and Clark and Ore-
School district’s $4M bond DEQ fines Baker County
projects hit financial hurdle mine owner $57,000
Agency contends
mine diverted
wastewater into
Clarks Creek
Cafeteria at
middle school,
other projects
more expensive
than projected
BY JAYSON JACOBY
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
BY JAYSON JACOBY
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
The Baker School Dis-
trict’s plan to construct a
cafeteria/multipurpose
building at Baker Middle
School, the biggest project
under the $4 million prop-
erty tax bond measure that
voters passed in May 2021,
has hit a financial snag.
Rising construction costs
have made the cafeteria
project considerably more
expensive than the district
TODAY
Issue 46
12 pages
Samantha O’Conner/Baker City Herald
The Baker School District hopes to use money from a $4 million
property tax bond that voters approved in May 2021 to build a
cafeteria/multipurpose building on the west side of the Baker
Middle School.
expected, and more than it
had budgeted for the work.
But Erin Lair, the district’s
new superintendent, said she
remains optimistic that the
Classified ....................B2-B4
Comics ..............................B5
Community News.............A2
district will still be able to
complete the middle school
cafeteria, what she called the
“visual beacon of the bond.”
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Dear Abby .........................B6
Horoscope ..............B2 & B4
See School / A3
The Oregon Department
of Environmental Quality has
fined the operator of a mine in
south Baker County $57,387
for several alleged violations,
including discharging waste-
water from a settling pond into
Clarks Creek without a permit.
The DEQ issued the fine
last week to K&E Excavating
Inc. of Salem.
The company has 20 days
from the date it received a no-
tice of the fine to file an appeal.
According to a DEQ no-
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Opinion .............................A4
Outdoors .................B1 & B6
Senior Menus ...................A2
Oregon Department of Environmental
Quality
A wastewater pond at the Buck-
land mine along Clarks Creek in
southern Baker County.
tice, the company owns and
operates the Buckland mine
on Clarks Creek Road about
3 miles east of Bridgeport.
The area is about 22 air miles
southeast of Baker City.
The placer mining opera-
tion is seeking gold from de-
posits along Clarks Creek, a
tributary of the Burnt River.
See Mine / A3
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