A6
News
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
WATER
LAW
Continued from Page A1
Continued from Page A1
“Mother Nature doesn’t flood
this property, it’s man,” he said.
He estimates the excess water
has cut the value of one of his South
Fork Road properties in half.
He points to draws on private
property that were dry in the past
and are now swamps. Some land-
owners are over-irrigating and run-
ning sprinklers for a week straight at
times, he said.
“The damage is done and I want
damage to stop so I can do some-
thing to those properties,” Boren
said. “At this time I can’t do any-
thing with them.”
The statutes deprive certain de-
fendants of equal protection under
the law and deny them the right to
have accusations confirmed by a
jury of 12 of their peers, according
to Lambert’s petition.
“This law essentially eviscer-
ates the idea that you are entitled to
a jury of your peers when you are
a black person who resides in Ore-
gon, because statistically speaking,
you are lucky if you get even one
juror who is black, and that juror’s
voice may just not count at all,”
said Mat dos Santos, legal director
of ACLU of Oregon.
Lambert was convicted of sec-
ond-degree murder by a 10-to-2
guilty verdict in connection with
the fatal shooting of a man in Lou-
isiana’s Orleans Parish on March
22, 2013.
His lawyers supported their pe-
tition to the Supreme Court with
research by Professor Aliza Ka-
plan and law student Amy Saack
of Portland’s Lewis & Clark Law
School.
Louisiana’s majority verdict
system was introduced in the 1898
Constitution as part of measures
designed to “establish the suprem-
acy of the white race,” according
to the researchers’ February article
in the Oregon Law Review.
Likewise, Oregon’s law, passed
by voters in 1934, was an anti-Se-
mitic reaction to one juror holding
out on convicting a Jewish man of
first-degree murder in the death of
Jimmy Walker, a Protestant white
man, in 1933, the researchers as-
sert. Instead, the Jewish man, Ja-
cob Silverman, was convicted of
manslaughter and spared a death
sentence.
The U.S. Supreme Court up-
held Oregon and Louisiana’s jury
laws in 1972, but since then, the
understanding of the detrimental
effect of non-unanimous jury ver-
dicts, especially on people of color,
has increased, said Kaplan, direc-
tor of the Criminal Justice Reform
Clinic at Lewis & Clark.
“All of the social science
points to why unanimous juries
work out better and more fair and
demonstrate why all voices need to
be heard,” she said.
Clatsop County District Attor-
ney Josh Marquis, a frequent critic
of criminal justice reforms in Ore-
gon, dismissed the researchers’ as-
sertion that Oregon’s law is based
on racism. The law offers benefits
that criminal justice reformers
overlook, such as fewer hung ju-
ries, he said.
And the law can mean a defen-
dant no longer faces subsequent
trials if a jury votes 10-to-2 for
acquittal.
“In other words, in federal court
what would be a hung jury could
end up being an acquittal in Ore-
gon,” Marquis said.
The law has a protection requir-
ing a unanimous vote for a guilty
verdict in the case of aggravated
murder, while a defendant charged
with the same crime can be acquit-
ted with a vote of 10-to-2, he said.
The Supreme Court is sched-
uled to consider whether it will
take the case Sept. 25.
Reasons unknown
“The Oregon Water Resources
Department knows that some resi-
dents are concerned about subsur-
face water in the South Fork Road
area in Dayville,” Diana Enright,
Public Information official for the
Oregon Water Resources Depart-
ment, said. “We have been to the area
and talked to the landowner a number
of times.”
She said the reason for the subsur-
face water is unknown, but said they
were willing to work with watershed
councils and soil and water conserva-
tion districts to find a solution.
“Unlined ditches, such as the
Cummings Ditch, do leak, but the
amount depends on soil conditions
and ditch maintenance,” Enright said.
“Piping or lining ditches reduces wa-
ter loss.”
The ditch doesn’t appear to be
using more water than is allocated
either.
“The measuring device on the
ditch indicates that the ditch com-
pany is within their legal limits of
water use,” Enright said. “The last
water use report submitted for the
Tim Briggs measures water draining from his property in Dayville. On Wednesday, Aug. 2 there were
roughly 3 gallons per minute draining off his property.
Rich Boren gestures at an
irrigation ditch in Dayville on
Wednesday, Aug. 2.
Cummings Ditch shows annual use
of 2,130 acre-feet of water, which
is within the city’s authorized water
right.”
Soggy soil
Dayville resident Mary MacAr-
thur said it’s hard to pinpoint what
is causing the saturation. Without a
study conducted by experts, she said
Eagle photos/Rylan Boggs
Sprinklers run in Dayville on
Wednesday, Aug. 2.
it would be hard to say if the problem
came from over-irrigating, the ditch
or something else.
She said the water is something
that’s been dealt with without a prob-
lem for the last 50-60 years.
“If it’s on your property, fix it,”
she said.
Boren isn’t the only resident deal-
ing with soggy property. Tim Briggs
lives across the street from Boren,
and his lot is heavily saturated.
To demonstrate the saturation,
Briggs dug a 6-foot-deep hole in his
lawn. It was a matter of days until the
hole was overflowing with ground
water.
On a hill at the edge of Briggs’
property, a pipe drains water from his
property. There are about 3 to 6 gal-
lons per minute coming off the prop-
erty, according to Briggs.
However, it doesn’t appear any
laws are being broken.
“We are not aware of any water
laws that we enforce being broken
on the Cummings Ditch,” District
Four Watermaster Eric Julsrud said.
“OWRD checks to make sure wa-
ter is being put to beneficial use and
meets the terms of water right certif-
icate. We do not tell authorized wa-
ter users how to irrigate.”
NITRO
Continued from Page A1
Warfighter Made is a nonprofit
providing recreational therapy to
ill, injured and combat wounded
service members and veterans, also
adapting and customizing the veter-
ans’ vehicles to their injuries.
“We had some awesome military
vets come ride along with us,” Row-
land said.
Rowland, a Tennessee resident,
is known as the engineering master-
mind behind most of the stunts on
MTV’s “Nitro Circus,” and he’s the
mechanic for Travis Pastrana, a pro-
fessional motor-sports competitor
and stunt performer who is the main
personality on the show.
Haberly joined the crew for part
of the trip, showing them the way
from John Day to Prineville.
Oregon State Police Sgt. Tom
Hutchison gave the group an escort
on the highway portion of the trip,
from John Day to Laycock Creek
Road.
“I wish Oregon was a little more
lenient like the rest of the states,”
Haberly said. “The side-by-sides and
ATVs are as safe or safer than bicy-
cles, motorcycles and Smart cars.”
Haberly said he’s been working
with Salem for three years to try to
relax the law that prohibits ATVs
The Eagle/Angel Carpenter
Gregg Haberly, left, meets with Pleasant Cook, Hubert Rowland, Shana Lester and Steve McCann at his
John Day Polaris business.
and UTVs on highways.
He was happy with the trip to
Prineville.
“It was a lot of fun, and we’d like
to do it again with a local group,”
he said.
Hubert said he was glad to meet
up with Haberly.
“Riding with him was awesome
as well,” he said. “Being with some-
one that knew the area, and showing
us some places he knew was great.”
Hubert and his crew, including
cameraman Steve McCann, mon-
ster truck driver Pleasant Cook, also
known as 4x4 Barbie, and Shana
Lester made it to the coast Sept. 1.
“We went 5,000 miles in 29
days,” Hubert said. “(We saw) many
beautiful parts of the country that
no one sees except those that live
there.”
06147
Pleasant Cook “4x4 Barbie” is
behind the wheel with Shana
Lester in the passenger seat.