NEWS
MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
A7
Positively 4th Street
REV Center research to help rural economies
Two wall alternatives
presented to repair
road leading to airport
By Sabrina Thompson and
Ronald Bond
EO Media Group
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
Two wall designs for the
Fourth Avenue repair project
were presented to the John Day
City Council with a consider-
able difference in the price for
the designs.
Canyon Creek has slowly
eroded the hillside above it,
which holds a part of Fourth
Avenue, and the erosion mani-
fested after the flooding of 2019,
according to a geotechnical anal-
ysis presented by John Day City
Manager Nick Green.
“They’re concerned that the
entire hillside is moving and not
just the portion that’s immedi-
ately in Canyon Creek,” Green
said.
GHD Engineering proposed
two different designs for a wall
to address this issue.
GHD recommended the sol-
dier pile wall design, which is
estimated to cost $1.3 million,
or the mechanically stabilized
embankment design, which is
estimated to cost $872,123.
Green said both designs will
have a reinforced soil embank-
ment, which looks similar to
what Oregon Department of
Transportation did upstream on
Canyon Creek in Canyon City.
“These are boulders and rein-
forced rock that begins inside
the creek bed and comes up at an
angle to give a reinforced slope,”
Green said.
The soldier pile wall design
would drive steel into the ground
until it reaches bedrock to where
the soldier piles are stable and a
concrete slab could be placed on
top. A portion of the road base
would have to be cut back.
The MSE design is less
expensive, but would require
more excavation below the depth
of Canyon Creek and require
less special materials. This
design would take out the slope
of the hill and then backfill with
Eagle file photo
Spring flooding in Canyon Creek
eroded the steep embankment
on Fourth Avenue Southwest in
John Day leading to the Grant
County Regional Airport, creat-
ing a serious road hazard.
retained soil and compaction as
the ground is reworked to the
height of the road according to
Green.
While the MSE design is
cheaper, the concern is that if the
upper slope continues to move,
it will slowly move the reworked
soil as well.
The Federal Emergency
Management Agency is cov-
ering 75% of the cost and will
weigh in on the options. John
Day would have to cover the
25% match of the construction
cost.
The council hopes Grant
County will be able to cover
some of the cost of the match
since it is the main road used
to access the Grant County
Regional Airport and the indus-
trial park.
“We definitely need to have
a follow-up meeting with the
county to have engineers walk
us through the pros and cons,”
Green said.
Councilor Dave Holland said,
if the county wasn’t willing to
provide cash, the city could see
if the county could provide the
machinery necessary to complete
the project to cut down on costs.
FEMA will review the
designs and cost estimates and
then the city plans to meet with
county officials to review the
project.
Local economies will
receive a boost in data that
could benefit them and pro-
vide vital information to the
U.S. Forest Service and its
effort to create a multi-use
plan for the national forests
in the Blue Mountains.
The Rural Engagement
and Vitality Center, a part-
nership between Eastern Ore-
gon University and Wallowa
Resources, is working to col-
lect data to better understand
the the economic effects of
the U.S. Forest Service’s
Blue Mountains Forest Plan.
The Blues Intergovernmental
Council, a subcommittee of
the Eastern Oregon Counties
Association, is spearheading
the project.
The Forest Service and
Eastern Oregon Counties
Association are finalizing the
plans for collecting the data.
Two Eastern Oregon
University economics pro-
fessors, Peter Maille and
Scott McConnell, are lead-
ing the socioeconomics por-
tion of the research with a
rotating intern each quarter.
Nils Christoffersen, director
of Wallowa Resources, and
REV Center Program Man-
ager Julie Keniry are also
helping in these efforts for
Wallowa County.
“We came together to
create a plan specific to our
regions and local econo-
mies,” McConnell said.
One of the factors that
led to the REV formation
was an objection to the way
the Forest Service conducted
an economic analysis of the
redrawn forest plan revision.
The analysis didn’t give a full
scope of the impact of loca-
tions not on a main thorough-
fare and failed to take into
account specifics of local
economies.
“The economic analysis
was done down the (Inter-
Contributed photo/Julie Keniry,The Rural Engagement and Vitality Center
Quincy Backes and Sarah Buddingh, Eastern Oregon Universi-
ty student interns at the Rural Engagement and Vitality Center,
visit with Jim Zacharias, owner of Jayzee Lumber in Joseph in
August. The visit gave the students a chance to learn about the
timber industry as part of a project to gather data on how the
Blue Mountains Forest Plan could affect local economies.
state) 84 corridor. If that is
where you are going for your
economic analysis you are
missing a lot of the econ-
omy. That is where we had
pushed and that is where
we got started,” said Wal-
lowa County Commissioner
Susan Roberts. “(We want)
to do an economic analysis
of the affected counties and
the communities within those
counties.”
Union County Commis-
sioner Paul Anderes said the
research will provide a more
accurate depiction of how
forest policies effect the local
economy.
“In the original forest
service plans, the socioeco-
nomic impact was too broad
and generalized,” Ande-
res said. “This new plan can
include the countywide pro-
file of socioeconomic status,
specifically for communities
within rural Eastern Oregon.”
The research and data will
provide more context for the
impact of the plans.
“The Forest Service can-
not get into each community,
but we can,” McConnell said.
The project will include
data from 10 counties in
Oregon and four in South-
east Washington, according
to a press release from EOU.
The updated analysis plan
will include counties, such as
Wallowa County, that do not
have a main traffic vein, and
Union County, which is full
of communities that will be
impacted by the forest plan.
The intent is for the anal-
ysis to be more than just a
glance at the counties as a
whole. Maille said the plan
also is to involve counties
and communities in the dis-
cussion so the data will be an
accurate reflection of how the
people living in these areas
feel about and experience use
of the forest.
Anderes said Union
County
commissioners
selected cities in the county
where timber mills continue
to run or have closed down,
including Elgin, Union, North
Powder and La Grande.
Christoffersen also spoke
about the importance of a
more in-depth analysis for
the counties, noting it would
prevent viewing the eco-
nomic impact of forest man-
agement decisions through
one lens.
“The desire was to create
a system to get more local-
ized analysis of what would
be the impact of increasing
or decreasing timber har-
vest on national forest land,
(or) increasing or decreasing
the grazing activities,” he
said. “(It’s) trying to under-
stand the relative economic
importance of the national
forest system land and their
management to the econom-
ics of the Eastern Oregon
counties.”
He explained that coun-
ties with a diverse economy
— such as Umatilla County,
which has, he said, industrial
activity along the Columbia
River, farming, the Pend-
leton Round-up and Blue
Mountain Community Col-
lege, for example — are
going to experience differ-
ent effects than a county that
has a large portion of land in
the forest system. He noted
58% of Wallowa County
land is national forest land
and the county has a strong
ag, ranching and forest sec-
tor, plus a number of small
businesses related to for-
est management and forest
contracting.
“You have, in one sense,
winners and losers in any
decision like that, or sec-
tors that would benefit,” he
said. “If they, for example,
decided to increase timber
harvest as a hypothetical,
those counties that still have
sawmills would benefit the
most, and those counties that
have a strong forest service
would still have a benefit.”
He said this process is to
inform the Forest Service
about the values and prior-
ities in Northeast Oregon
that can then help inform the
future management.
“At the same time, we’re
going to try to be creative
and promote innovation
about how our communi-
ties try to take advantage of
the opportunities that differ-
ent management decisions in
the National Forest Service
offer,” Christoffersen said.
McConnell said this proj-
ect also is a good way to dis-
cover a county’s ability to
resist or reduce shock to its
system through management
tactics.
According to Keniry,
the U.S. Forest Services
and Eastern Oregon Coun-
ties Association provided
$105,000 in funding. The
plan is to complete the proj-
ect within that funding
amount in one to two years.
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