Image provided by: Morrow County Museum; Heppner, OR
About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 24, 2011)
Ground breaking held for new Fairgrounds picnic shelter Il I ^ I .. . tugene.OR 97403 Left to right: Rod Taylor, Boardman Mayor Chet Phillips, Bryce Fowler, Heppner Mayor Les Paustian, Hanna Lovgren, Zech Hintz, Rhonda Hamby, Heppner Chamber Director Sheryll Bates, Karen Pettigrew, Boardman Chamber Director Diane Wolfe VOL. 130 NO. 33 8 Pages Wednesday, August 24, 2011 Pedal Power The M orrow County Ford Leadership program held a ground breaking for the new picnic shelter at the Fairgrounds last week. Since the in ception of the Leadership program in 2003 more than 2500 residents of rural Or egon and Siskiyou County, California from ages 13-86 Morrow County, Heppner, Oregon have completed the class. The ultimate pur pose of the program is to help “enhance the vital ity of ruralcommunities”. Twenty nine people from Ir- rigon, Boardman and Hep pner participated in the five month program. Each class that completes the course must select a class project to complete the requirements. The local group selected a covered picnic shelter at the Morrow County Fair grounds. “Since we have participants from through- out Morrow County we wanted to select a project that would benefit all of us. We have received a grant from the Ford Foundation — now we must raise the matching funds,” said a program spokesperson. The 30x40 cov ered picnic shelter, with a concrete floor and electric ity, is expected to be com pleted by spring of 2012. $22 million facility that turns cow manure into electricity getting close to operation Three Mile Canyon Farms near Boardman now installing generators that will burn methane gas produced from 23,000 dairy cows Orem family represented at the 2011 RDO Tractor Pull during fair & rodeo Back to school Monday for lone and Heppner students School starts on Monday, taken on Sept. 14. August 29, for all students The first HHS football in Morrow County. game will be September 2 Heppner: Student registra at Culver. Football Labor tion is scheduled for Hep Day practice will be at 6 pner Jr./Sr. High School p.m. on Sept. 5. Football Wednesday and Thursday, sports photos are Septem A ugust 24-25. Student ber 13. Volleyball sports fees are as follows: student photos will be Sept. 14 for body fee-$ 15, computer lab high school and Sept. 26 fee-$5, towel fee-$2, year for junior high, book (optional )-$40. Meal lone: A band rental meet prices for seventh-12,h ing will be held on Aug. 31 grade are: breakfast-$ 1.25, at 6:30 p.m. lunch-$2.35. The first lone volleyball Student photos will be game will be held on Sept. 2, starting at 4 p.m. at home. Volleyball games are planned for Sept. 9 at Joseph and Sept. 10 at the Summit Springs Tournament at Condon at 10 a.m. The first football game will be held Sept. 2 vs Liberty Christian at Hanford High School, Richland, WA. Football games will be held on Sept. 9 at Joseph and Sept. 16 vs. Dayville at lone. Local FFA group receives $200 from Pfizer i fm ■ . The local chapter of Future Farmers of America was presented with a $200 check during fair week. The money is given out to local FFA groups by the Pfizer Animal Health Company as a percentage of what local farmers buy in Pfizer products. The local Pfizer dealer is Dr. Dick Temple who owns the veterinarian clinic in Lexington, and presented the check to chapter President Zech Hintz Saturday during Fair. Pictured above receiving the funds are left to right: Beth Dickenson, FFA advisor, mem bers Kyle Harrison, Zach Yocom, Mich a Hintz, Makenzie Correa, Zech Hintz and Dick Temple, veterinarian. “This is a really good program and I am glad to be able to bring some of this money back to our local FFA program," said Temple in presenting the check. By David Sykes Three Mile Can yon Farms, which operates a 23,000 head dairy near Boardman, is entering the final phase to build a facil ity which uses manure to produce methane gas and run electrical generators. The facility has been in the planning stages for some time, but last month the Morrow County Planning Com mission approved a permit for the power generation facility that will allow fi nal construction to move forward. A permit for the digester to process the ma nure had been issued to the company some time ago. TMF Biofuels LLC, the company that will develop the facility, hopes to have generating facilities in stalled and start producing electricity in April of 2012. Both Three Mile Canyon farms and TMF are affili ates of the R.D. Offutt Com pany, a national diversified agricultural business and the largest potato producer in the United States. When completed, the facility will process manure and other agricul ture residues in anaerobic digesters and bum the re sulting methane in three 1.6 MW Caterpillar engine gen erators. The power will be sold exclusively to Pacific Power. As a by product, bedding for the dairy cows will also be produced. Three mile Can yon Farms operates a dairy with 23,000 milking cows, a 21,000 heifer facility, and a 4,000 head nursery. In addition the farm operates 30,000 acres o f irrigated crops and a potato storage facility in the area. The B ack facility represents 20 per cent of the dairy manure produced in Oregon each year. The Three Mile cows reportedly produce over 1,000 cubic yards of ma nure daily. The manure will first be placed in large stor age buildings with a bladder type material over the top. As the manure gets warm, using heat from the genera tors, it will put off methane gas that will be collected and piped to the generators. The process is similar to the facility at Finley Buttes Landfill in Morrow County. Finley collects methane from underground in the decaying garbage, which in turn powers electrical generators. The Three Mile facility will be operated by the same company that runs the Finley operation. C onstruction o f the Three Mile facility is very capital intensive, costing over $22 million to build but relatively in expensive to operate after construction. Much of the mon ey to build the plant comes from tax incentives and gov ernment grants. The com pany received $5,600,000 in stim ulus funds from the federal government, which was in lieu of invest ment tax credits that would have been available to the company. Also used was $1,515,391 in Oregon BETC tax credits (Business Energy Tax Credit) which have in the past been used extensively on windmill projects. The credit can be up to 50 percent credit on the cost of the project. Also used was an available bonus depreciation tax write off o f 50 percent of eligible capital costs. According to the minutes of the Renewable Advisory Council Meeting held June 22, 2011, con struction of this facility will be completed by Andgar Corp. located in Femdale, Washington. Andgar is a full-service construction and project management firm that has constructed seven GHD digesters oper ating in the northwest. They also provide operations ser vices for two projects. Day to day operation and maintenance o f the power production facility will be provided through a contract with G. Friesen and Associates (GFA). The contract in cludes all power production costs including monitoring digester operation, regular engine maintenance and an nual accruals for overhauls. GFA’s primary business focus is designing landfills and operating landfill gas to energy projects. GFA pres ently operates the Finley Buttes Bioenergy facility. Operation of the manure handling equipment and effluent from the digest er will be provided by Three Mile Canyon Farms. The project will be owned and operated by a special purpose entity. TCF Biofuels, LLC, an affiliate of R. D. Offutt Company. R.D. Offutt is the largest potato grower in the United States with over 50,000 acres o f potatoes grown annually for the frozen pro cessing and fresh markets. R.D. Offutt Company is also involved in 11 potato processing facilities in four -See THREE MILE C AN YON FARMS page FITE to regular hours ! H arvest hours end A ugust 2 6 th 7 a m - 5 p m M o n day - F r id a y 7 a m - 1 2 p m S a tu r d a y M o r r o w C o u n t y G r a in G r o w e r s IL*xlngtor^89-822^^T|800^452^7396^o^jra»qyipmMt^w^«^»^ujiM»*wnKg^if^ \
