A6
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Providing an outlet for electric vehicles
OTEC opens new
charging station in
John Day
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
A new electric vehicle
charging station in John Day
is available for travelers this
year.
The Oregon Trail Elec-
tric Cooperative opened a
charging station for public
use in John Day in March.
The charging station on
South Canyon Boulevard
near the fire department still
requires pavement work to be
finished, but the site is fully
operational and available to
use.
Charlie Tracy, OTEC’s
director of engineering,
spearheads their electric vehi-
cle program and said they
are starting to see the mar-
ket around electric vehicles
improve in recent years. He
said they noticed the trend
two years ago as technology
progressed.
“We started to see that
technology become via-
ble around electric vehicles
so we started to research on
what we can do with EVs,”
Tracy said.
Tracy said, when conver-
sations around proposed cap
and trade legislation started,
OTEC researched how the
advancement of technology
would play into the issues on
climate change and the cost
of transportation.
“Grant County is heav-
ily dependent on transporta-
tion to have a strong econ-
omy,” Tracy said. “We were
seeing that we were in kind of
a blank spot in the landscape.
If you wanted to charge a
vehicle in our region, there
really wasn’t anything avail-
able in terms of high-speed
charging.”
The lack of charging sta-
tions also created a concern
for OTEC because the mar-
ket share was low for EVs as
the economy for his region
became more dependent on
tourist dollars.
“We certainly didn’t want
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
Contributed photo
The new electric vehicle charging station in John Day is fully op-
erational.
Former Eastern Oregon Trail Alliance board member Wade Tait provided a trail-building clinic
for North Fork John Day Watershed Council youth crew members and Malheur National Forest
recreation program employees at the site of the Magone Trail in July 2018.
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
The new electric vehicle
charging station is next to the
substation.
to give travelers a reason to
avoid our region by not hav-
ing charging stations,” Tracy
said. “That was a reason why
we thought it was important to
get involved. As an energy pro-
vider, we had a role to play in
making sure that the market
was met.”
OTEC worked with the
city of John Day in choosing
a location for the charging sta-
tion. Tracy said it takes 51 min-
utes to charge an EV on aver-
age, so OTEC wanted to work
with cities to install a station
that would bring people into
the community.
The station in John Day
is within walking distance of
Main Street businesses and
restaurants. They applied
the same method when they
installed the charging station
at the chamber of commerce
office in Burns.
Tracy said they saw about
seven charges last month at the
station in John Day, but they
are anticipating to see more as
summer begins and COVID-
19’s impact on life hopefully
declines.
“The station at John Day
is fairly new so it’ll take a lit-
tle while to see how many peo-
ple the station is really pulling
in,” Tracy said. “I’m optimis-
tic that, as we get out of the
pandemic, we will see more
recharging.”
The station in John Day is
designed with enough capac-
ity to add up to three addi-
tional stations if usage goes
up, according to Tracy. There
is also a Tesla charging sta-
tion available at the Grant
County Chamber of Com-
merce’s office.
“Our vision doesn’t neces-
sarily include OTEC being the
prime commercial charging net-
work in the area,” Tracy said.
The Oregon Department
of Environmental Quality’s
Oregon Clean Fuels Program
helped fund the charging sta-
tions and the electricity
“It’s not all member dollars,
and we’re not raising rates to
put these in,” Tracy said. “We
are using all available fund-
ing sources for the charging
stations.”
Tracy said, along with the
money that can be saved by
using an EV, there are also
environmental benefits as well
with OTEC’s power supply.
“OTEC’s power supply is
an almost entirely carbon-free
energy source,” Tracy said.
“From a perspective of climate
change, it’s locally generated
power, it’s 95% carbon free
and electric vehicles have a
lot to offer.”
Work continues on mountain biking trails
Trail alliance
hosting volunteer
workdays this
summer
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
COVID-19 halted many
activities, but work on Grant
County mountain biking
trails continued.
The Eastern Oregon Trial
Alliance, a Grant Coun-
ty-based nonprofit group
focused on cultivating out-
door recreation in Eastern
Oregon, continued their work
to improve mountain bik-
ing opportunities in Grant
County.
“We’re kind of build-
ing from the ground up,”
said EOTA member Darin
Toy. “There hasn’t been a
big mountain bike presence
here.”
A bike park and pump
track installed at the Seventh
Street Complex were the first
projects for the organization.
Toy said the projects were
geared toward beginners and
local kids to show them other
recreation opportunities in
the county.
Toy said COVID-19
affected their ability to host
large events last year, but
despite that, they continued
to improve the pump track in
John Day and brought a pro-
fessional from Central Ore-
gon to help with the improve-
ments last spring. They also
finished installing a bicycle
work station at the bike park
last year.
EOTA also worked on
the Magone Lake project
along with the Forest Ser-
vice, which is a big prior-
ity this year. They completed
one of the trails at Magone
Lake, which is 3.8 miles
long, called the Tinker Trail
according to Toy.
“Those were our two
big accomplishments even
despite the COVID-19 pan-
demic,” Toy said.
Another benefit of hav-
ing the trail system is giv-
ing people another reason to
visit Grant County. The new
trails help promote recreation
locally while creating inter-
est with visitors looking to
mountain bike and visit the
area, according to Toy.
Toy said they are near-
ing a crucial point with the
Magone Lake trail network.
“As community stake-
holders, we are responsible
for completing a certain num-
ber of miles (at the Magone
Trails network) for our grant
match,” Toy said. “This year
we’re trying to make a push
out there to complete our
mileage for the match.”
He said the grant fund-
ing for the Magone Lake
project came from the rec-
reational trails program pro-
vided by the State Oregon
Parks and Recreation Depart-
ment. The development part
of the match is to complete
roughly 10 miles between
EOTA’s volunteers and the
Forest Service.
There are monthly vol-
unteer workdays, avail-
able to everyone, scheduled
from May to October —
with uncertainties about the
May event due to COVID-
19 numbers. A “big event” is
also an overnight volunteer
trail work event scheduled
for June 5-6 at Magone Lake.
There will be monthly
trail work days throughout
the rest of the season cur-
rently scheduled for May 15,
July 17 and Aug. 21. EOTA
will continuously update
their Facebook page regard-
ing their monthly events.
Toy said residents can
help EOTA by participat-
ing in the workdays, buy-
ing a $25 membership or
sponsorships.
“We are a local nonprofit,
and we are a small family-ori-
ented organization looking to
promote healthy recreation in
our community,” Toy said.
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