Image provided by: Morrow County Museum; Heppner, OR
About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 26, 1978)
BEGS! S Y," ET2ELL U OF OkE ti E W S i" A P !- R L I 9 EUGEKE OR 97403 ECOAC to send protest letter to Corps of Engineers over lone flood plain designations JOL. 96, NO. 43 OMlCPlIlillg 7:30 p.m. .; s' "T j - ;J;- lone 1 7 . : 1 1 ' : High If i i Vj I School ; f; IV x Court V, 4 U , Teena Lindstrom Lori Edwards Arietta Aldrich Margaret Doherty Janet McElligott Heppner High School Court Maureen Healy Barbara Devine Wendy Meyers M V Janice Sherman ' mj Jackie Gentry if A A Vf HEPPNER VS. WASCO f Morrow THURSDAY, OCT. 26, 1978 FRIDAY NIGHT The East Central Oregon Association of Counties has authorized its executive di rector to send a "strongly worded" letter of protest to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Walla Walla office to state objections to the Corps' controversial updated flood plain survey of lone. The action came during a regular meeting of the five county agency last Thursday in Heppner. The Corps of Engineers recently released Ione's new flood plain map, which places more than a half of the city in either "floodway" or "flood plain" areas, in which a new construction would either be prohibited or restricted. Data has been compiled for similar flood plain updates for Lexington and Heppner, with results expected to be releas Hie Ileppnes? County's 1978 Public is invited Lounty W heat League to convene m ov. i ; renowned wheat scientist Kronstad to speak A banquet, cocktail hour, and a taljt by an internation ally known plant breeding specialist will highlight the . annual meeting of the Morrow, County Wheat Growers Lea gue next Wednesday, Nov. 1 at the Heppner Elks Club. Jim Swanson of lone, president of the county organization, em phasized that the non-wheat growing public is invited to take part in the program. Dr. Warren Kronstad, head of the plant breeding depart ment at Oregon State University, will speak on agriculture's role in facing the world population issue, tieing in the part new food plant $22 million to be A second major natural gas pipeline spanning the length of Morrow County may be opera tional by late 1983, if work proceeds on schedule for the San Francisco-based Pacific Gas Transmission Corp. The proposed new gas line would carry natural gas from Alaska's North Slope petro leum fields to the Bay area near San Francisco. The new line would for the most part parallel an existing line Paci fic Gas Transmission currently operates through the area. The new line would enter Morrow County from the Stanfield area, proceed south to a point just west of lone, pass through the Wolf Hollow area on the way to Condon and points south. The pipeline would veer from the parellel path with the existing line in ' making a crossing of the John Day River. Entering the U.S. at the Idaho-Canada border, the line would cross southeastern Washington, enter Umatilla County and proceed to Stan field, before sweeping south to the Bend area and into California. Work on the link from the Idaho frontier to Stanfield is scheduled to begin first. The Stanfield to Idaho "probuilding loop" is tentativ ely scheduled to begin ed at the end of this month. Morrow County and ECOAC officials anticipate that surveys for the two other Willow Creek towns may be as restrictive to potential growth as the lone survey. While ECOAC officials are upset over what the Corps flood plain designations could mean to Ione's future, they also expressed anger over what the flood plain updates would do to comprehensive planning efforts for the three municipalities. Comprehensive plan draft technical reports were recent ly completed for the three towns, and accepted by the county. But with the dramatic changes listed by the Corps for Ione's flood plain, with similar results expected for Heppner and Lexington, the compre hensive planning process is Award-Winning Weekly Newspaper HEPPNER. OREGON strains will play in meeting the demands made by the population upsurge. Dr. Kronstad, who has done ...research ..w.ith , .Nobel Prize winning agronomist Dr. Nor man Hnrloug, is responsible for developing several new varieties of high-yielding Northwest wheat, including the Stephens, McDermid and Hyslop strains. His research has been performed in several nations, including Mexico and India. The county Wheat League's business meeting will start at 1:30 p.m. The meeting will include the presentation of proposals on a variety of spent here New gas line to span carrying gas in late 1980. This section of the pipeline would . carry surplus Alberta-produced natural gas to Northwest markets from Stanfield until the North Slope gas comes on line, a Pacific Gas Transmis sion spokesman said. The majority of the North Slope gas is earmarked for market ing in California. President Carter gave con ditional approval to Pacific Gas Tranmission's new pipe line in 1974, when the Alaska Pipeline Project was approv ed. The San Francisco firm, a subsidiary of Pacific Gas and Electric, has received a condi tional permit for construction from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The Pacific Gas spokesman said full permission for the pipeline will be sought from the federal agency soon, probably within the next week. Total cost for the Western Leg of the project from the Idaho-Canada border to Calif orniais estimated at $385 million. The pipeline woujd have a capacity of carrying just under a billion cubic feet of gas per day. The spokes man said $22 million is expected to be spent , for construction in Morrow , County alone. No new compressor stations are ex pected to be built within the countv. set back almost to square one. ECOAC has been coordinating the area's comprehensive planning efforts. "We've been waiting for this information for the past two years," said ECOAC Execu tive Director Wayne Schwandt. "They told us it was a 'sure thing' that we'd have it by last spring.. .We might never have seen the information if lone hadn't pressed for it to plan for their sewer system." Schwandt noted that the Corps has been receiving information on the planning efforts of the three cities, but has failed to provide input on flood planning. lone pressured the Corps for an update on the town's flood plain, after the city's rating on an enviromen tal Protection Agency funding priority list slipped several topics developed during a statewide Wheat League workshop. Reporting on marketing proposals will be , committee , chairman Gene, Majeski and vice chairman Herman Blettel; on product ion and land use, Eric Anderson and Kenny Turner; on federal programs, Brock Tucker and Bob Jepsen; on taxation and legislation, Steve Peck and Ed Martin; on transportation. Chuck Nelson and Paul Tews; on wheat use and research, Jerry Myers and Harold Rietmann; on public affairs, Mark Miller and Tom Martin; on member ship, Keith Rea and Joe Last year, Pacific Gas Transmission's existing gas line brought $66,000 in prop erty tax reciepts to the county treasury. The Federal Bureau of Land Management is currently making a survey of property it owns along the route of the proposed new transcontinent al line, to check for possible wilderness characteristics. The wilderness inventory is an outgrowth of the 1976 Federal Land Policy Manage ment Act, which requires the Secretary of the Interior, through the BLM, to deter mine which BLM lands should be recommended to Congress for wilderness designation. The BLM will start a survey of all the . agency's lands in Oregon next month, but the pipeline route check will begin earlier to complete a study of the project's possible impacts. State BLM Director Murl Storms will then determine whether BLM lands along the route have sufficient wilder ness characteristics to warrant designation as wild erness study areas. Storms will announce his decisions on the wilderness study of the pipeline route in mid-November, followed by a 60-day public review, after which he will make final decisions. Nearly all the BLM land involved along the route is notches due to the unavailabi lity of the Corps survey. lone was on the priority list to receive funding for a proposed sewer system. With the new Corps designation, the future of the project becomes a bigger question mark. Last week, ECOAC staff members attending a meeting of the Morrow County Inter governmental Council announced that , they had applied for a $9,691 grant from the Land Conservation and Development Commission to re-do comprehensive planning for the three communities set back by the Corps of engineers study. The Morrow County Inter governmental Council has asked Corps of Engineers officials to meet with them during the agency's next meeting early next month. TWO SECTIONS McElligott; on safety, Kenny Nelson and Kenny Peck; on Wheathearts, Lisa Nelson and Birdine Tullis. . Joe McElligott, current first vice-president of the county organization, will be elevated to the president's office, and a new first vice-president will be elected during the banquet. Secretary for the organization is Harold Kerr. -- County Wheat League offici als point out that several of the "proposals that have been brought out during past busi ness meetings have been adopted as policy at the national level of the Wheat League organization. length of located in the Prineville District, with isolated tracts in the Lakeview and Baker districts. In Morrow County, nearly all the pipeline route passes through privately own ed land. No right-of-way purchases will be made in the county, MCGG slates Nov. 6 for annual meeting Richard Baum, executive director of the Western Wheat Associates, will be the featur ed speaker during the annual meeting of the Morrow County Grain Growers on Nov. 6, starting at 6:30 p.m. at the fairgrounds in Heppner. Baum, who was instrument al in establishing the Oregon Wheat Commission, has been involved with developing Asian wheat markets since the mid-1950's. His Asian market ing work has led to extensive travels through such nations as Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and India. The business portion of the meeting will include financial reports and the election of new directors to fill four three-year terms (hat are expiring, plus 20 PAGES A happy hour will follow the business meeting, starting at 5:30 p.m., sponsored by the Morrow County Grain Grow ers. The banquet starts at 7 p.m. Cost will be $3 per person. "Everyone's welcome to take part," stated Swanson. "We want the people who aren't involved with wheat production to be aware of some of the problems we're facing..." In addition, he noted, wheat production af fects the economy of the entire county, and thus has at least an indirect bearing on every one's pocketbook. Morrow since the right-of-way for the existing pipeline is wide enough to accomodate an additional line, the company spokesman said. Pacific Gas Transmission is the nation's largest importer of natural gas. five associate director posi tions. Directors whose terms ex pire this year are John Ledbetter, Lyle Peck, Roy Martin, and Gary Grieb. Weather By Don Gilliam Wred., Oct. 18 ' 69 39 Thurs., Oct. 19 70 42 Fri., Oct. 20 ee 40 Sat., Oct. 21 59 30 Sun., Oct. 22 58 27 Mon., Oct. 23 68 35 Tues., Oct. 24 61 47
