WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2018
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3
NEWS
Dehydration plant
catches fire again
By JADE MCDOWELL
STAFF WRITER
STAFF PHOTO BY JADE MCDOWELL
Rep. Greg Walden, left, listens to retired Pendleton physician Dan Marier, right, talk about
his experience seeing patients with opioid addiction as Carrie Sampson and Amy Ashton-
Williams listen.
Rep. Walden holds
opioid roundtable
By JADE MCDOWELL
STAFF WRITER
Rep. Greg Walden was
busy taking notes and ask-
ing questions at Good
Shepherd Medical Center
in Hermiston last week as
Eastern Oregon residents
on the front lines of the opi-
oid crisis shared their ideas
for change.
“We’re very concerned
about the situation locally
and nationally,” Good
Shepherd CEO Dennis
Burke told Walden.
The Republican con-
gressman from Oregon is
the chairman of the Com-
mittee on Energy and Com-
merce, which begin hear-
ings on the opioid addiction
epidemic this week. Walden
said finding solutions to
the crisis is his “top prior-
ity” for the committee right
now. They plan to start by
investigating case studies
in West Virginia, where tiny
towns have been receiving
millions of highly-addic-
tive pain pills per year —
in total enough for every
man, woman and child in
the state to have 433 pain
pills apiece.
“We think that’s been
replicated elsewhere, but
we can figure out the sys-
tem here,” Walden said.
The system has failed
Oregonians, too, the round-
table participants told
Walden. Dr. Joel Rice, a
psychiatrist who operates
the Grande Ronde Recov-
ery Center anti-addiction
clinic in La Grande and
Pendleton, said the highly
dangerous fentanyl is “very
common in Hermiston
now,” and he is seeing more
of a problem with another
drug called Kratam.
Rice said he doesn’t
believe any doctors in the
area are “pill pushers” who
are knowingly profiting off
of feeding others’ addic-
tions, but instead are sin-
cerely trying to help their
patients manage pain.
“Ninety-five percent of
the people they give opioids
to don’t have a problem, so
they don’t think it’s a big
deal, but I’m working with
the five percent,” he said.
Rice said one thing that
would really help in pre-
venting overdoses is hav-
ing more providers who
have a waiver to prescribe
Suboxone, an opioid that
can help addicts transi-
tion away from more harm-
ful opioids as they work
to get clean. The certifica-
tion takes about 10 hours to
complete, and would only
apply to a small number
of patients a provider sees,
so Rice said he has seen
good success with convinc-
ing a Union County hospi-
tal to offer a $1,000 incen-
tive to get certified. He
suggested to Walden that a
similar government-spon-
sored incentive could be
useful nationwide, some-
thing Dan Marier, a recent-
ly-retired Pendleton physi-
cian, agreed with. Walden
said he was interested, and
would look into it.
Marier, Rice, Umatilla
County Director of Human
Services Amy Ashton-Wil-
liams and Bart Murray,
a consultant from Baker
City, all agreed that a major
problem in treating addic-
tion is that mental health
services, addiction treat-
ment and physical health
care are all separated out,
often with very little com-
munication between three
different entities working to
help the same person.
Ashton-Williams said
the system was so “silo’ed
and segmented” that there
are many patients who have
physical health problems,
mental health issues and an
addiction that are all inter-
connected and yet they are
getting talk therapy with-
out medication, or medica-
tion without counseling —
even though the research is
clear that integrated care is
“Ninety-five
percent of the
people they give
opioids to don’t
have a problem,
so they don’t think
it’s a big deal, but
I’m working with
the five percent.”
Dr. Joel Rice,
Grande Ronde Recovery
Center
cheaper and more effective.
Carrie Sampson, qual-
ity director of Yellowhawk
Tribal Health Center, said
the clinic on the Umatilla
Indian Reservation does
offer a more integrated care
system, and it has been
helpful for a physician to
be able to walk someone
with a mental health prob-
lem right next door to a
behavioral health specialist
instead of giving a referral
and hoping the patient fol-
lows up.
She also said that they
don’t prescribe opioids on a
longterm basis, and patients
given addictive painkill-
ers in the short term have
to sign a pain management
agreement that involves
safeguards to make sure
they get off the drugs as
soon as they can.
Short term pain man-
agement can morph into
a full-blown drug addic-
tion, something that Good
Shepherd COO Jim Schlen-
ker said he knows well.
His brother-in-law died
of an overdose in a park-
ing lot after initially being
prescribed painkillers for a
knee surgery.
“My sister was shocked,”
Schlenker said. “She didn’t
see anything that was out
of the ordinary until after,
when she started putting the
pieces together, and by then
it was too late.”
He said patients need
more education about the
dangers of what they’re
being prescribed and more
safeguards. He couldn’t
speak to exactly how his
brother-in-law’s initial pre-
scription had been handled,
but all the pieces of the sys-
tem “didn’t come together
right for him.”
The group also pointed
to a dwindling number
of physicians and mental
health professionals in parts
of Eastern Oregon, low sal-
aries for crisis workers and
funding/billing structures
that don’t allow Rice, for
example, to bill the Oregon
Health Authority for men-
tal health services at his
clinic even though he is a
psychiatrist.
“There is a brain drain in
Eastern Oregon because the
people with brains can’t get
paid,” he said.
Walden thanked the
group for their stories and
suggestions, and at sev-
eral points during the meet-
ing said he would follow up
with what was being pro-
posed. He also shared some
things he would like to see.
That includes closing loop-
holes that allow people to
sell fentanyl and other syn-
thetic drugs legally if they
adjust the formula slightly,
holding drug companies
accountable for their role,
developing new non-opi-
oid pain management drugs
and coming up with better
ways to monitor prescrip-
tions without sacrificing
privacy or the ability to get
opioids when they are legit-
imately needed.
The 3D Idapro Solutions
dehydration plant in Stan-
field caught fire again on
Monday.
The fire — one of at least
four at the plant in about a
year — started in the scrub-
ber unit, which is used to
mitigate odors.
“It was exactly where
the fire was last time,” said
Scott Stanton, chief of Uma-
tilla County Fire District 1.
The
fire
district
responded to a call at 11:38
a.m. and personnel were
on scene until about 2
p.m. Stanton said the dam-
age was mostly kept to the
scrubber area and no one
was injured. He said the
cause was not yet confirmed
but was possibly related to
some maintenance work
taking place on Monday.
The plant’s first scrub-
ber unit burned up in Feb-
ruary 2017. The company
brought in a new scrub-
ber — which representa-
tives later admitted was
undersized for the plant —
and experienced two more
fires in June and July 2017.
One worker was injured in
the July fire, caused by an
explosion in the bag house.
3D Idapro Solutions pur-
chased the plant on Hoo-
sier Lane in the summer of
2016 to use for dehydrating
potato products used in dog
food. After the fire last Feb-
ruary, Stanfield residents
began complaining to the
city council that a strong
rotten smell, described as
“vomit” and “dead flesh”
was keeping them indoors
and causing them to retch
and gag.
The company prom-
ised to install a new scrub-
ber in the fall of 2017 that
would better capture odors,
and also took other mitiga-
tion steps such as re-routing
trucks and grading the site
so that potato product did
not spill out of trucks.
The company did not
respond to a request for
comment on Monday.
Weekend fires
The fire in Stanfield on
Monday added to what
had been a busy weekend
for UCFD1. On Saturday
about 8:40 p.m. the district
responded to a house fire in
the 300 block of Southeast
9th Street in Hermiston.
Stanton said a wood
stove chimney caught the
roof on fire. While the roof
had substantial damage,
Stanton said the rest of the
home was able to be saved
in part because of a fast-act-
ing neighbor who called
9-1-1 and the homeowner
who used a garden hose on
the roof while waiting for
fire trucks to arrive.
A caller had reported
another roof fire earlier in
the day, about 3 p.m., but
that one turned out to be a
false alarm. Stanton said
the fire district was con-
ducting a flammable liq-
uids training in the Herm-
iston High School parking
lot and someone had mis-
taken the “large” flames
that were part of the train-
ing for a building with its
roof on fire.
UCFD1 also put out a
barn fire in the 33000 block
of Punkin Center Road out-
side Hermiston Sunday.
Stanton said the cause
of the fire was still under
investigation, but by the
time the department was
called out at 5:58 a.m. the
metal roof of the barn had
already collapsed.
“It had been going for a
while,” he said.
The department also
responded to four motor
vehicle crashes over the
weekend, including a semi-
truck that tipped over near
exit 188 on Interstate 84.
SHOP ONLINE 24/7 HERMISTONCDJR.COM
NEW 2018 JEEP
CHEROKEE
LATITUDE 4X4
9 Spd Auto, Sirius Sat Radio,
Cold Weather Grp
MSRP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $28,190
Combined Factory Rebate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -$4,250
Hermiston CDJR Discount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -$1,543
$
NEW 2017 RAM
1500 TRADESMAN
QUAD CAB 4X4
NEW 2017 RAM
2500 LONGHORN
MEGA CAB 4X4
EcoDiesel , 8 Spd Auto,
Chrome Pkg, Popular Equip. Grp
Diesel , Auto, Laramie, Limited,
Leather, NAV, Pwr Sunroof
SAVE
$9,776 off
MSRP
SAVE
$6,293 off
MSRP
22,397 *
$
21,897 *
SAVE
$11,820 off
MSRP
MSRP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $43,265
Combined Factory Rebates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -$5,250
Hermiston CDJR Discount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -$4,026
$
33,989 *
MSRP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $74,315
Combined Factory Rebate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -$3,250
Hermiston CDJR Discount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -$8,570
Chrysler Capital Bonus Cash . . . . . -$500 1
Chrysler Capital Bonus Cash . . . . . -$500 1
$
STK#
T2178T
33,489
*
$
62,495 *
STK#
T2302
STK#
T2128T
OVER 600 NEW AND USED VEHICLES
2007 TOYOTA
RAV4
2016 CHEVY
SPARK ILT
2012 TOYOTA
COROLLA
2014 JEEP PATRIOT
SPORT 4X4
4 Cyl, Auto
4 Cyl, Auto, 40k Miles
5 Spd, 4 Cyl, 69k Miles
Low Miles, Great Condition
WE HEAR YOU!
$
LOCAL, INDEPENDENT AUDIOLOGIST
Working within the community of Pendleton,
our clinic provides a variety of hearing healthcare
services including hearing assessments and
rehabilitation, education, and counseling.
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Umatilla County Fire District 1 responded to multiple fires
over the past three days, including this barn fire in the 33000
block of Punkin Center outside Hermiston early Sunday.
4,992
$
10,348
T5888P
T2176TA
2017 CHEVY
CRUZE LT
2016 JEEP
RENEGADE 4X4
4 Cyl, Auto, 11k Miles
Fully Equipped!
$
10,753
$
T5894P
2006 CHEVY
SILVERADO 4X4
11,494
T2458A
2017 KIA
SPORTAGE LX 4X4
Fully Equipped! Must See!
FULL SERVICE CLINIC
Our clinic also fi ts and dispenses sophisticated
hearing aids and related devices to suit all types
of hearing loss and life styles. Renata Anderson
is a certifi ed licensed audiologist with over
twenty years experience.
SERVICE YOU CAN RELY ON!
You can trust Renata to provide a complete
hearing evaluation and a professional diagnosis
of your specifi c hearing loss. Call for an
appointment with Renata today and start
hearing what you’ve been missing.
$
15,688
$
16,999
T5841P
T5885P
Pam Wagenaar,
Administrative Assistant
2237 SW Court, Pendleton
541-276-5053 • www.renataanderson.com
17,488
$
T2122TA
17,822
T5884P
2017 JEEP
CHEROKEE 4X4
2017 DODGE
CHARGER AWD
2006 DODGE
RAM 2500 4X4
2014 FORD
F-150 4X4
Fully Equipped! Must See!
SXT, 26k Miles, Must See!
162k Miles, Auto
Leather, SuperCrew, Lariat
$
18,988
T5815P
$
20,988
T5835P
(541) 701-3482
Renata Anderson, MA
$
$
23,777
T2139B
$
28,988
T2121A
Mon.-Sat. 8am-7pm | Sun. 11am-5pm
81143 N. Hwy 395, Hermiston, OR
“WE ARE YOUR NO PROBLEM SALES
& SERVICE DEALER”
*Only one at this price. HURRY! Rebates expire 2/28/18. 1 Must finance with Chrysler Capital Credit, OAC
All photos are for illustrative purposes only. All prices plus license, title and up to $150 doc fee .
Full VIN ID number available from dealer upon request. Offers expire 3/2/18.