ANOTHER DAY IN HISTORY | PAGE A10
GO! EASTERN OREGON MAGAZINE | INSIDE
Wednesday, October 5, 2022
154th Year • No. 40 • 20 Pages • $1.50
MyEagleNews.com
On the street
County
to get
$4.36M
in aid
By TONY CHIOTTI
Blue Mountain Eagle
Tony Chiotti/Blue Mountain Eagle
Brooklyn Adams, 8, shows off her knitted wares at the John Day Street Fair on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022.
Grant County’s fi nal street fair of the year
held at the Pit Stop in John Day
By TONY CHIOTTI and JUSTIN DAVIS
Blue Mountain Eagle
W
ell, that’s all she
wrote. The fi nal Grant
County street fair of
the year took place at
the Pit Stop in John
Day on Friday, Sept. 30, and featured
some of the best local bakers, artisans
and craft makers showcasing their wares.
Event participants were out enjoy-
ing coff ee and eating fry bread and Chi-
nese street food while visiting the vendor
stalls that had a wide array of products
available for purchase.
The collection of products avail-
able showed just how diverse the inter-
ests and talents are in Grant County. You
could fi nd T-shirts with original art, tra-
ditional challah bread, natural tinctures
and Ethiopian fi re opals — all at the
same stall.
Also on display were a wide range
of succulent plants off ered for sale by
Becky Stonerod-Pereira and her mother,
Judy Kerr. Their vendor stall, Primitive
Upcycling & More, also off ered brightly
painted cow skulls in addition to the suc-
culent plants.
Together, they bring the stall to
events around the area, with Stonerod-
Pereira creating the handicrafts and
Kerr propagating the cacti and succu-
lents. “My mom does the plants,” said
Stonerod-Pereira, “but mostly she cracks
the whip.”
Tony Chiotti/Blue Mountain Eagle
See Fair, Page A20
A pair of vendor booths at the John Day Street Fair at the Pit
Stop on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022.
CANYON CITY — Grant
County is set to receive over
$2.18 million each year for fi s-
cal years 2022 and 2023. This
money is part of Local Assis-
tance and Tribal Consistency
Fund put forward by U.S. Sen.
Ron Wyden Oregon and Rep.
Joe Neguse of Colorado.
“I’m glad this work to
secure these investments in the
fi rst COVID relief act has paid
off as Ore-
gon coun-
ties
con-
tinue their
recovery
and rebound
from this
p u b l i c
health cri-
Myers
sis that cre-
ated such a devastating eco-
nomic fallout,” said Wyden
in a Thursday, Sept. 29, press
release announcing the funds.
The money has some stipu-
lations regarding how it can be
spent, but leaves much discre-
tion to the Grant County Bud-
get Committee. The commit-
tee comprises the three county
commissioners and three
at-large members of the com-
munity, who will meet to dis-
cuss the best way to use the
funds.
Scott Myers, county judge
and a member of the budget
committee, said the appropri-
ation of the money was not a
surprise, but the timing was.
“We knew the announcement
was due on or before the 30th
of the month, but we got the
announcement at 1:30, so 4:30
D.C. time, on the day.”
Myers says the next step
will be to get a quorum of
budget committee members
together, a process he describes
as “a bit like herding cats.”
He imagines a priority will be
in setting a large chunk of the
money aside to restore hours
for county employees.
In June, the Grant County
Budget Committee voted
to trim all but a few county
departments from a 40-hour to
a 32-hour work week after dis-
covering an $800,000 shortfall
in the budget, attributed to a
“miscalculation.” Most county
offi ces are currently closed
Fridays as a result. The cut-
backs have aff ected all county
departments except for the
fairgrounds, sheriff ’s offi ce,
airport and road department.
Farmers, regulators struggle to address nitrate contamination
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
BOARDMAN — It started last
January with a multimillion-dollar fi ne
levied by the Oregon Department of
Environmental Quality against the Port
of Morrow.
The port, situated along the Colum-
bia River in northeastern Oregon, has
for years collected nitrogen-rich waste-
water from food processors and other
businesses at its industrial park near
Boardman and used it to irrigate neigh-
boring farmland under a permit from
DEQ.
Between 2018 and 2021, regulators
found the port violated its water quality
permit more than 1,000 times by regu-
larly over-applying the recycled water
on fi elds growing crops such as corn,
potatoes and onions.
DEQ initially fi ned the port $1.3 mil-
lion and later increased it to $2.1 million
George Plaven/Capital Press
Jake Madison, president of Madison Ranches in Echo.
after fi nding additional violations. Fear-
ing potential health risks to the area’s res-
idents, Morrow County commissions
declared a local state of emergency.
The episode — overloading
of groundwater with nitrates —
brings to light an issue that is nei-
ther new to agriculture nor unique
to only that part of Oregon.
Nitrogen from fertilizer, compost
or manure is critical for farmers, who
apply it to their fi elds, but too much can
have unintended consequences. Crops
can only absorb so much of it, allow-
ing excess nutrients to leach down into
groundwater.
Combined with oxygen, the nitro-
gen becomes what is known as a
nitrate, a colorless, odorless compound
that experts say can cause serious
health problems if consumed in excess.
Though some nitrates occur natu-
rally, the over-application of fertilizer
or wastewater by farmers has been
identifi ed as a major source of nitrates
beyond what the Environmental Pro-
tection Agency considers safe for
drinking water.
In Morrow County, attempts to
regulate contamination have so far
netted frustratingly slow progress.
“To date, there’s been a ton of time
and resources spent pointing the fi n-
ger at whose fault this is,” said J.R.
Cook, founder and director of the
Northeast Oregon Water Association,
known as NOWA. “We’re all at fault.
Now, what’s the solution?”
See Nitrate, Page A20