GRANT UNION GIRLS FIGHT TO FIRST IN LEAGUE The – PAGE A9 Blue Mountain EAGLE Grant County’s newspaper since 1868 W EDNESDAY , F EBRUARY 8, 2017 Webb questions validity of road ordinance • N O . 6 • 18 P AGES • $1.00 www.MyEagleNews.com A in the bottle By Rylan Boggs Blue Mountain Eagle Former county judge Mark Webb is questioning the legal validity of an ordinance that requires county approval for any public road closures. Ordinance 2013-01 re- quires any agency wishing to close roads in the county to fi rst consult with the county court and sheriff. The ordi- nance states “...for the safety and well being of Grant Coun- ty citizens all roads, trails, stock driveways and by-ways over and across public lands within the boundary of Grant County, Oregon shall remain open as historically and cus- tomarily utilized consistent with the Grant County plans and policies, unless otherwise authorized for closure by the Grant County Court and the Grant County Sheriff.” The ordinance is unen- forceable and unconstitution- al because it confl icts with state and federal law, Webb claimed at a Feb. 1 Grant See ROAD, Page A18 City manager calls for increased 911 funding from state By Rylan Boggs Blue Mountain Eagle John Day City Manager Nick Green is calling for com- prehensive 911 tax reform as well as a special appropria- tion to bridge fund the city’s emergency dispatch center. Bridge funding the 911 center with additional short- term funding from the state would provide relief for lo- cal taxpayers while the city and county can evaluate the feasibility of maintaining the facility. To 72-year-old Long Creek resident Nancy Morgan, hav- ing a reliable dispatch center is a matter of life and death. The Long Creek volunteer ambulance team has saved her life on multiple occasions after she’s called 911. “It gives me peace of Contributed photos Harsh Patel, center, stands with his TigerLaunch entrepreneurship teammates, Jared Praino and Kaopod Chantapakul. The group is developing a machine that dispenses purified drinking water. After winning a first-round competition, the team is advancing to the regional contest Friday, Feb. 10, in Seattle. H2O impact: Former Grant Union student makes a pitch for clean drinking water Harsh Patel’s team competes in Princeton entrepreneurship competition By Angel Carpenter Blue Mountain Eagle A John Day resident Harsh Patel and his college teammates are redesigning this water filtration and dispensing machine to provide clean, affordable drinking water in developing countries. former Grant Union High School student is on his way to making a positive global impact with a water-dispensing machine that could bring clean, affordable drinking water to developing countries. Harsh Patel attended Grant School District No. 3 schools, including his freshman year at Grant Union, then transferred to Ridgeview High School in Redmond, where he graduated in 2015. Currently, he is a soph- omore at Boston University, majoring in computer science. The entrepreneurship opportu- nity came about for Patel and his two teammates, who attend Uni- versity of Washington, through a contest called TigerLaunch. Their project, called Drop: Trusted H2O, upgrades the de- sign of a water-dispensing ma- chine currently on the market. “Our goal with Drop is to reduce the demand on water bottles, which are responsible for a massive amount of pol- lution in tourist cities, and to provide clean water quickly to tourists and locals,” Patel said. TigerLaunch is the nation’s largest student-run inter-colle- giate entrepreneurship compe- tition, put on annually by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club at Princeton University in New Jersey. They cleared one hurdle, as one of 15 out of 45 teams to advance to make their pitch at TigerLaunch’s regional com- petition scheduled for Friday, See WATER, Page A18 See 911, Page A18 Brown signs orders to thwart Trump immigration policies By Paris Achen Capital Bureau Gov. Kate Brown signed an executive order Thursday barring the use of any state re- sources to enforce federal immi- gration policy and called on the state Attorney General’s Offi ce to sue the Trump administration over the president’s executive order on immigration. “The president’s recent ex- ecutive orders that divide and discriminate do not refl ect the values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution or the principles we stand for as Oregonians or Americans,” Brown told report- ers Thursday. “I want to make it very clear that here in Oregon, where thousands have fought for and demanded equality, where millions have put down roots and become integral to our econ- omy and to our culture; we will not retreat.” The governor said her order was a response to Trump’s tem- porary ban on refugees and visa holders from several predom- inantly Muslim countries, but also a proactive step in antic- ipation of further action by the Trump administration. “We are hearing rumors of the fact that the federal govern- ment may consider creating a Muslim registry,” Brown said. “This would forbid our state agencies and our state agency workers from participating in that.” On Monday, Attorney Gener- al Ellen Rosenblum announced Oregon has signed on with 15 other states to an amicus brief in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Wash- ington state’s federal lawsuit against the Trump administra- tion over the immigration order. In addition to joining the amicus brief, Oregon justice of- fi cials will ask the Washington judge to allow an amendment to add Oregon to the lawsuit, ac- cording to a press release from the Attorney General’s Offi ce. “I am pleased that Wash- ington Attorney General Bob Ferguson has invited us to join their lawsuit against the fed- eral government,” Rosenblum See BROWN, Page A18 Pamplin Media Group/Paris Achen Gov. Kate Brown announced efforts to resist Trump administration’s executive order temporarily barring refugees and visa holders for several predominantly Muslim countries.