Image provided by: Morrow County Museum; Heppner, OR
About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 5, 2012)
11 ■ I • i I ■ • 1 1 • I > I II 1 .... 11 1 1 1 11 Bessie Wetzell Newspaper l.ihrarx LJniversitN of Oregon Eugene. OR 97403 Feds shut down Buttercreek wind farm construction Little-known agency sites national security concerns and blocks Chinese- backed wind farm; 20-tower project too close to Navy Bombing Range By David Sykes A little-known commit tee of the federal govern ment, the Committee on HEPPNER 5 < K ette VOL. 131 N O. 35 8 Pages Wednesday, Septembers, 2012 Morrow County, Heppner, Oregon NOAA issues Aug. climate summary for Heppner August warmer than normal, data says According to prelimi nary data received by NO- AA’s N ational W eather Service in Pendleton, OR, temperatures in Heppner averaged slightly warmer than normal during the month of August. The average temper ature was 71.1 degrees, which was 1.6 degrees above normal. High tem peratures averaged 87.9 degrees, which was 2.4 degrees above normal. The highest was 98 degrees on the Aug. 7. Low tem peratures averaged 54.2 degrees, which was 0.8 degrees above normal. The lowest was 41 degrees, on the 24“'. On 12 days, the temper ature exceeded 90 degrees. Precipitation totaled 0.00 inches during August, which was 0.39 inches be low normal. Precipitation this year has reached 11.37 inches, which is 1.99 inches above normal. Since October, the water year precipitation at Heppner has been 13.17 inches, which is 0.27 inches below normal. The outlook for Septem ber from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center calls for near-normal temperatures and near- to below-normal precipitation. Normal highs for Heppner fall from 82 degrees at the start of Sep tember to 71 degrees at the end of September. Normal lows fall from 50 degrees to 43 degrees. The 30-year normal precipitation is 0.56 inches. The National Weather Service is an office of the National Oceanic and At mospheric Administration, an agency of the U.S. Com merce Department. Mustang football kicks off Main Street convoy shows Heppner pride Mustang football kicked off its season last Friday with a game against Waitsburg-Prescott. Though the Mustangs lost their first contest of year, they started the 2012 season with plenty of Mustang pride, as shown with the convoy down Main Street on Friday (above). Heppner’s first home game is Sept. 14 against Willamina. -Photo by Andrea Di Salvo Oregon public safety orgs endorse Smith Rep. Greg Smith (R- Heppner) last week an nounced six additional endorsements for his re- election campaign for State Representative in House District 57. Smith has earned the support o f the O regon Chiefs o f Police, Oregon Council o f Police Asso ciations, Sheriffs of Oregon PAC, and the Oregon State Police Officers Association. Other public safety groups that have endorsed Rep. Smith include the Associa tion of Oregon Corrections Employees and AFSCME, which also represents se curity guards at local cor rectional facilities. “I appreciate the work o f Oregon’s law enforce ment and corrections of ficers, and I ’m proud to receive their support,” Rep. Smith said. “As State Rep resentative and member of the Joint Ways and Means Committee, I’m committed to giving our public safety community the tools and resources they need so they can effectively accomplish their jobs and keep our communities safe.” D uring his c u rre n t term, Smith voted to give law enforcement greater ability to prosecute repeat drunk drivers, sexual preda tors and metal thieves. As Co-Chair of the Ways and Means Public Safety Sub committee, he also worked to prevent budget cuts to Oregon’s corrections sys tem and other public safety programs. ALL NEWS AND ADVERTISEMENT DEADLINE: MONDAYS AT 5:00 P.M. Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS, com monly pronounced “sifius”) has shut down a 20-tower wind farm construction project on Kent Madison’s property on Buttercreek near the Naval Bombing Range in North Morrow County, the Morrow Coun ty Planning Commission learned last week. CFIUS, which moni tors foreign investm ent in the U.S. for national security implications, last month ordered the project halted and all contractors, equipment and personnel removed from the site. No public explanation for the shutdown was given, and local officials were appar ently under a gag order not to discuss the shutdown with the public. The Heppner Gazette emailed CFIUS for com ment on the order, and the committee, which is chaired by the Secretary of the Trea sury, refused comment. Requests by this news paper for information on the shutdown were also submitted to Representative Greg Walden’s and Senator Ron Wyden’s offices, nei ther of which would return phone calls. However, the Gazette-Times was able to piece together some infor mation on the shutdown, but with only speculation as to the reason. The Buttercreek proj ect is owned by a Chinese company called the Sany Group, which, among other things, builds wind towers. It is one of the largest pri vate companies in China. According to sources, the company insists it has no connection to the Chinese government. Speculation has in creased that, because o f the proximity to the Naval Bombing Range, the towers could somehow be used to monitor electronic or other aircraft activity at the range. Hie closest wind towers are approximately five miles from the edge of the Navy’s restricted airspace at the Bombing Range. According to sources, Sanya has denied this, and apparently brought a rep resentative from Beijing on July 11, 2012 to answer questions to CFIUS con cerning the project, with no resolution. According to sources, Sany reportedly agreed to all conditions to assure the U.S. government that it has no malicious intent, including inspection of the equipment and wind farms on a 24/7 random basis. The government reportedly did not respond, only to state that it believes that Sany’s ownership of the wind farm presents a “national securi ty threat.” Sources say that CFIUS has not disclosed to The federal government says towers like these will not be go ing up on the Buttercreek project. project owners, landown ers or developers what that threat is, despite repeated requests from them for such information. To shut down construc tion on the 20-tower project, CFIUS issued a “cease and desist order” and ordered that Sany and its contrac tors cease construction im mediately and remove all construction equipment, and not put any new equip ment on the site. At least one Heppner contractor was reportedly ordered off the site. Ken Madison of Madi son Farms, who is land- owner where the wind farm was being built, was con tacted for comment by the Gazette-Times. Madison declined and referred the new spaper to developer Bob Guertin of Kirkland, WA. Guertin also declined to comment and directed all inquires to Todd Guerrero, an attorney in Minneapolis, MN who specializes in the wind energy. Repeated at tempts to contact Guerrero for comment also went un answered. In an earlier related matter, at a J une 2012 meet ing of the Morrow County P lanning C om m ission, project developers—at the request of the U.S. Navy, which operates the nearby Bombing Range— asked that one string of five wind towers on the same Butter creek project be relocated. The planning commission approved moving the Low er Ridge Project string of towers 1.5 miles south of its original permitted location. The original permit for the entire Buttercreek wind project had been approved by the planning commission in the summer of 2010. Changing the location o f one o f the strings o f towers on the project was done to satisfy the Navy’s concern that the towers in terfered with flight patterns at the Bom bing Range. The changes reportedly cost the developers around $ 200 , 000 . Since then, complete shutdow n o f the entire 20-tower project has sent speculation ram pant in Morrow County, with some -See WIND FARM SHUT DOWN/PAGE EIGHT What is CFIUS? According to Wikipeda, the online encyclopedia. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS, commonly pronounced “sifius”) is an inter-agency committee of the United States Government that reviews the national security impli cations of foreign investments in U.S. companies or operations. Chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury, CFIUS includes representatives from 16 U.S. depart ments and agencies, including the Defense, State and Commerce departments, as well as (most recently) the Department of Homeland Security. CFIUS was established by Gerald Ford’s Executive Order 11858 in 1975. Following is the email received by the Heppner Gazette-Times after requesting information on the Buttercreek project: “By law, information filed with CFIUS may not be disclosed by CFIUS to the public. Accordingly, the Department does not comment on information relating to specific CFIUS cases, includ ing whether or not certain parties have filed notices for review.” New wolf pack found A new wolf pack was discovered by ODFW wolf program staff in northeast Oregon on Aug. 25 when a pair o f gray-colored adult wolves with five gray pups was observed in the Upper Minam River drainage. ODFW has received irregular wolf reports in the larger general area over the past several years. ODFW had been monitoring wolf activity in the Lower Mi nam River area since a photo of a black lactating female was taken on June 4. However, these new wolves appear to be unrelated to the lactating female, as they were all gray-colored. 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