News
Blue Mountain Eagle
FOREST
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“The fire funding fix is
coming on board next year, so
that is going to provide some
additional funding across the
Forest Service to address some
of these critical issues,” Bev-
erlin said. “So we’re excited
about that.”
Timber harvest
One oft-cited issue is the
sheer amount of timber and
undergrowth building up in
the forests, feeding ever-larger
wildfires such as the 110,000-
acre Canyon Creek Complex
near John Day in 2015.
Warness, with Boise Cas-
cade, said the Umatilla, Wal-
lowa-Whitman and Malheur
forests grow about 800 million
board-feet of timber every year,
of which approximately 400
million board-feet — enough
for 30,000 houses — is left to
deteriorate.
As a result, Warness said the
situation has compounded over
the last 20 years and left the
woods severely overstocked
and prone to massive wildfires,
as well as insect and disease
outbreaks.
“We believe that logging is
an important tool that can be
used on this landscape,” War-
ness said.
Doubling timber harvest
would provide some certainty
for the industry, Warness said,
but the plan does not offer any
guarantees the Forest Service
will be able to meet those tar-
gets each year.
Lawson Fite, an attorney
with the American Forest Re-
EO Media Group/George Plaven
Todd Nash, a rancher and Wallowa County commissioner,
looks at a map showing grazing allotments within the
Wallowa Valley Ranger District of the Wallowa-Whitman
National Forest. The areas in green show active
allotments, while the areas in pink are vacant allotments
and the areas in yellow are closed allotments.
source Council in Portland,
agreed the plan does not pro-
vide a clear enough direction
for timber harvests that would
maintain the mill infrastructure
in Eastern Oregon.
“It’s not a directional docu-
ment, like a forest plan should
be,” Fite said. “There’s no get-
ting from A to B in there.”
Fite said the organization is
still reviewing all 5,000 pages
of documents, but is “seriously
considering” filing an objec-
tion.
“So many mills have closed,
and the level of timber that’s
being processed in Eastern
Oregon is just a fraction of
what it used to be,” Fite said.
“What we have now is a level
of infrastructure that is really a
minimum for what the Forest
Service will need to manage the
landscape for forest health and
fire resilience.”
Livestock grazing
The national forests are like-
wise critical for Eastern Oregon
ranchers, who are a vital cog in
the region’s economy.
John Williams, a recently
retired livestock agent for Ore-
gon State University Extension
in Wallowa County, said local
agriculture is a $60 million a
year business, and the vast ma-
jority comes from raising cattle.
“It’s the economic base for
our county,” Williams said.
“We want to produce as much
as we can.”
Alternative
E-Modified
does call for potentially adding
51,600 animal unit months, or
AUMs, associated with vacant
allotments for livestock across
the three forests. An AUM de-
scribes the amount of forage
one cow and her calf, one horse
or five sheep or goats would eat
during a month.
Todd Nash, a longtime
rancher and a Wallowa County
commissioner, remains skep-
tical whether that will come to
fruition. He said the plan lends
itself to more stagnation, and
appears to favor vacant grazing
allotments as “grass banks,”
rather than issuing new grazing
permits.
At the same time, grazing
restrictions continue to get
tighter for riparian protections
and threatened plant species,
Nash said. He specifical-
ly mentioned a lawsuit filed
in January to block grazing
around Spalding’s catchfly, a
summer-blooming member of
the carnation family, on 44,000
acres within the Hells Canyon
National Recreation Area.
“Cattle are always pointed
at as the villain,” Nash said.
“We think that they have a role
here in Wallowa County, one
of which is reducing fine fu-
els availability. ... All the fire
managers will tell you that fine
fuels, a.k.a. grasses, are what
carry the flames.”
Matt McElligott, owner of
LM Ranch in North Powder
and public lands chairman of
the Oregon Cattlemen’s As-
sociation, said ranchers made
significant progress on easing
some restrictions in the plan
last year. Watershed health is
now linked to trends in individ-
ual allotments, he said, which
in turn dictate grazing stan-
dards such as stubble height
and stream bank alterations.
“What they had placed in
there earlier, it wasn’t going to
work,” McElligott said. “It was
just too restrictive for grazing.”
McElligott said he does still
worry that biological opinions
WATER
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town and look for green lawns,
Hamsher said. City meter re-
cords also show who’s using
water for sprinkling.
The city sent warning notices
to about 40 customers who are
known to use 20,000-100,000
gallons per month, City Record-
er Bobbie Brown said. If they
don’t restrict usage, they’ll face
a stiff fine, she said.
Irate public
Water customers expressed
their displeasure with the situ-
ation during heated discussion
at the city council’s Aug. 8
meeting. City officials sought
to dispel rumors about the water
situation, but they got an earful
of complaints in an election year
with the mayor and three coun-
cil positions on the ballot.
Heidi Cearns asked why the
city has experienced water prob-
lems every year for the past five
years and demanded the coun-
cil, as elected officials, do their
job. This elicited a sharp rebuke
from Councilor Les Church.
“You want my job?” he
asked.
Jeannine Sibley told the
council people should be al-
lowed to grow food crops in
their gardens if other people are
allowed to water their cattle. She
later criticized the council meet-
ing on Facebook.
“Tonight was a train wreck,”
she said, adding, “I was appalled
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
for endangered fish issued by
federal agencies will supersede
the Forest Plan. One such opin-
ion on the Malheur National
Forest, he said, is “more an-
ti-grazing than anything else
I’ve read.”
“I’d like for the Blue Moun-
tains plan to be the plan that
everybody runs under,” McEl-
ligott said.
Access, wilderness
On the other hand, some
environmental groups say the
plan places too much empha-
sis on resource extraction, and
does not do enough to protect
old-growth trees and wildlife.
Doug Heiken, conserva-
tion and restoration coordi-
nator for the Portland-based
Oregon Wild, said untouched
wilderness areas have become
increasingly fragmented over
the years, and the Forest Plan
now overemphasizes logging
and grazing at the expense of
habitat.
“We’re really afraid the For-
est Service is going to lose sight
of the entire reason we had pro-
tections for these large trees,”
Heiken said. “That’s especially
important in light of climate
change. Those trees are big res-
ervoirs for carbon.”
Species such as wolves,
goshawks, pileated woodpeck-
ers and Endangered Species
Act-listed fish would all do
better in greater unmanaged
wilderness, he said. He agreed
there is a need for more active
forest management, but argued
that should take the form of
thinning, using fire as a man-
agement tool when the weather
is favorable, and perhaps most
controversially, closing roads.
at the way a couple city council
members spoke (or) yelled at
concerned citizens in tonight’s
meeting.”
One man said the expensive
landscaping he installed since
moving to Prairie City three
years ago is nearly dead. He and
several other residents said they
were willing to pay $10-15 more
per month for water if necessary.
That position is not repre-
sentative of the city as a whole,
Hamsher told the Eagle, recall-
ing how upset residents were
when presented with a 50 cent
per month increase for water
and sewer just three years ago.
He also noted that elderly peo-
ple and people on fixed incomes
cannot afford a rate increase like
that.
Systemic problems
The problem with the city’s
water system is supply and debt
— it’s not leaks in the pipes,
Hamsher said.
“If we know where a leak is,
we fix it,” he said.
Some residents confuse
water problems with sewer
problems, Public Works Di-
rector Chris Camarena told the
council. Plans are in the works
to address leaking sewer mains
and faulty sewer pumps, but the
problem with the water system
is supply hampered by drought,
he said.
The city borrowed $2 million
to build a slow-sand filtration
unit in 2008 to treat water drawn
from Dixie Creek by infiltration
galleries. But Dixie Creek typi-
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“Nobody needs all of those
roads,” Heiken said. “We do
need reasonable access to our
forests, obviously. ... We can
have reasonable access to lands
and still conserve our water
quality, conserve our salmon
and save our big game from
disturbances.”
Road closures remain a
major source of contention
in the plan. The three for-
ests have a combined 23,421
miles of roads, while the pro-
jected annual maintenance
of roads is just 2,007 miles,
creating a backlog of mainte-
nance needs.
The Forest Service has
repeatedly said the plan does
not close any roads, and those
decisions will be made at a
project-specific level. Howev-
er, Bruce Dunn, a forester for
RY Timber in Joseph and a
Wallowa County commission-
er-elect, said the plan does set
the stage for roads to be closed,
cutting off a vital link to resi-
dents’ way of life — from wild-
life viewing to accessing fire-
wood and picking mushrooms
and berries.
“You add all that together,
and that’s why we have this op-
position to it,” he said. “I think
this is going to be a big thing
when we get back into travel
management.”
The Forest Service said it
received its first two objections
to the plan last week. Beverlin
said the agency looks forward
to working with the public to
bring the plan across the finish
line and start accelerating resto-
ration in the forests.
“We’re optimistic we’re go-
ing to be able to do that across
the Blues,” Beverlin said.
cally runs dry this time of year
in severe drought conditions.
Brown said the creek has run
dry every year in the 11 years
she’s lived in Prairie City.
The city needs to recognize
that Dixie Creek is not a viable
water source anymore, Camare-
na told the council.
The project saddled the city
with debt and made finding
money for water projects dif-
ficult. Perforation work on the
No. 2 well boosted output from
50 gpm to 100 gpm, and the city
spent about $55,000 drilling the
No. 3 well about 60 feet deeper,
which increased production by
about 60 gpm.
With those improvements,
the wells are putting out 175 gal-
lons per minute under drought
conditions, but they’re not keep-
ing up with demand, Camarena
said. The city could drill the No.
3 well to 800 feet, but there’s
no guarantee they’ll hit a bigger
aquifer, he said. In any case, the
drilling can’t be done now be-
cause the well is needed to keep
up with demand.
A new well site
Hamsher has long supported
establishing a new well site at
Fainman Springs. The $900,000
project calls for running about
two miles of pipe and electrical
power, but the well could pro-
duce up to 600 gpm — about
twice what the city uses.
The council directed Ham-
sher to continue negotiations
with John Combs, who owns
Fainman Springs. Hamsher said
Joe Hitz at Sisul Engineering
was looking at several routes in-
volving different landowners to
access the site.
The Grant County Road De-
partment could assist with the
road work, Hamsher said, but
he wants to conduct well tests at
Fainman Springs before invest-
ing in pipes, power and roads.
Finding money for water
projects is difficult compared to
sewer projects, Hamsher said.
He said he’s talked to Scott
Fairley at Business Oregon, the
governor’s office and Rep. Lynn
Findlay about help without suc-
cess.
A U.S. Department of Agri-
culture grant for small, impov-
erished communities that have
declared an emergency could
offer hope, Camarena told the
council. The grant could provide
up to $150,000 for water mains
and up to $1 million for wells.
But negotiations with the
property owner and infrastruc-
ture construction means the
Fainman Springs option is
months away from completion.
In the meantime, the city is
looking at emergency options
— using water from wells at the
Prairie Wood Products mill and
the Depot RV Park to supply fire
trucks, calling in the National
Guard to truck water from John
Day and restarting the city’s No.
1 well.