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.