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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (March 28, 2018)
LADY PROS BLOW OUT LAKEVIEW SATURDAY – PAGE A10 The Blue Mountain EAGLE Grant County’s newspaper since 1868 W edNesday , M arch 28, 2018 • N o . 13 • 18 P ages • $1.00 www.MyEagleNews.com Sheriff Glenn Palmer Eagle file photo A new torrefaction plant run by Restoration Fuels LLC and partially funded by the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities is planned at the Malheur Lumber mill site. An Economic Boost Torrefaction plant planned in John Day Facility turns biomass into jobs and fuel Sheriff Palmer sues county Attorney fees sought for public records lawsuit By Sean Hart By Richard Hanners Blue Mountain Eagle Blue Mountain Eagle Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer is suing Grant County for attorney fees relat- ed to a public records lawsuit filed in 2016. Palmer and Civil Deputy Sally DeFord filed a com- plaint in Grant County Circuit Court March 16 against the county and the Grant County Court, asking a judge to de- clare that Palmer and DeFord are not liable for attorney fees from a lawsuit filed by The Oregonian newspaper, which first reported this story. The Oregonian sued Palm- er, DeFord and the sheriff’s office to compel the dis- closure of public records in May 2016. The suit was dis- missed when the records were G ood economic news for Grant County is coming from the timber industry, with a new torrefaction plant in John Day expected to bring 13-17 full-time jobs, according to Matt Krumenauer, vice president for special projects for the U.S. En- dowment for Forestry and Communities. “We’ve spent three years working on this proj- ect,” he said. “The Endowment has invested a lot of money in trying to create markets for small-di- ameter material coming from stewardship projects in area forests.” According to a January 2016 report from the Or- egon Employment Department, the total expected economic impact from a torrefaction plant of this size could be 39 jobs and $6.8 million per year, including plant employment, business purchases and induced impacts through employee purchases. The total economic impact during the construction phase could be 63 jobs and $9.1 million. Torrefaction is a process in which biomass is baked into a fuel that resembles coal and can be used by utilities at electrical generating plants. A plan to use torrefied wood at the power plant in Boardman, however, fell through last year after Portland General Electric announced it would shut down the plant in 2020. Krumenauer said construction of the torrefaction plant on the Malheur Lumber Co. mill site could start in July, with the plant beginning production under the name Restoration Fuels LLC in early 2019. Some of the plant’s main components will be prefabricated and brought to John Day by truck, he said. The Endowment board voted to invest in the 100,000-ton-per-year plant Tuesday. Created in 2006 using $200 million from a U.S.-Canada tim- ber settlement, the Endowment plans to pay half the cost of the $15.5 million plant. Krumenauer said ne- gotiations continue for the rest of the funding. Small-diameter wood from thinning and other forest restoration projects will be chipped at the John Day plant and then dried in an 80- to 100-foot- long dryer heated by steam from a new boiler fired Contributed photo Briquettes of torrefied biomass. See PLANT, Page A18 See PALMER, Page A18 911 User Board leans toward local dispatch By Richard Hanners Blue Mountain Eagle Contributed photo/Oregon Torrefaction In order to use as biomass, woody debris must undergo a process called torrefaction, described as a ‘half-step below making charcoal.’ School discipline policies questioned Avoiding the ‘pipeline to prison’ By Richard Hanners Blue Mountain Eagle Questions about suspension and ex- pulsion policies were raised at the March 21 meeting of the Grant School District 3 Board of Directors, with claims that extreme disciplinary measures negative- ly impacted Grant Union High School students. Baker City attorney Kyra Rohner-In- gram told the board she was hired to represent a student who was suspended from Grant Union High School follow- ing an Oct. 4 incident involving mari- juana use and possession. Rohner-Ingram said the student end- ed up being suspended for 70 days be- fore being allowed to return to the high Eagle file photo Grant County School District No. 3 Superintendent Curt Shelley has been directed by the school board to review the district’s disciplinary policies and present a report at the next school board meeting April 18. school campus. Citing language in a 2014 House bill that says a student can- not be suspended for more than 10 days, Rohner-Ingram said the school district’s action constituted expulsion, which triggers rights of students to additional review. She noted that the law, which is man- datory for schools in Oregon, states that school boards must ensure that disci- plinary policies “provide opportunities for students to learn from their mis- takes.” The revised law was enacted with the goal of keeping students in school and out of a “pipeline to prison,” she said, where students who are removed from school end up heading in the wrong di- rection, with worse outcomes. Grant Union High School Principal Ryan Gerry responded to Rohner-In- gram in a Jan. 9 letter. The student was only suspended for 10 days, he said. At the end of the 10-day suspension, it was See SCHOOL, Page A18 An informal vote by the 27 public entities attending the 911 User Board meeting held at the Oregon Department of Forestry building in John Day March 20 leaned in favor of keeping a lo- cal dispatch center. A tally by John Day City Manager Nick Green counted about 16 in favor of maintain- ing a local dispatch center, with about six in favor of outsourc- ing dispatch service to Frontier Regional 911 in Condon. Many representatives at the meeting from the county, eight cities, 11 city or rural fire de- partments, three law enforce- ment agencies, one state agen- cy, two federal agencies and Blue Mountain Hospital said they needed to speak to their councils or boards before stat- ing a definitive decision, and some were undecided. The User Board will meet again at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 26. Green asked the represen- tatives to come back with their decisions. Rising 911 costs The city of John Day is the lead agency for the John Day 911 Emergency See 911, Page A18