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
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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