LOCAL
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
herMIsTOnheraLd.cOM • A3
Forest Service withdraws Blue Mountains Forest Plan revision
By GEORGE PLAVEN
EO MEDIA GROUP
PORTLAND — After 15
years of preparation, the U.S.
Forest Service was on the
cusp of updating manage-
ment plans for three national
forests covering 5.5 mil-
lion acres in the Blue Moun-
tains of Eastern Oregon and
southeast Washington.
Instead, the agency is
again taking a step back
as it tries to resolve deep-
rooted concerns of residents,
industry and environmental
groups.
Northwest Regional For-
ester Glenn Casamassa
announced the Forest Ser-
vice is scrapping the pro-
posed Blue Mountains For-
est Plan Revision, which
includes the Umatilla, Wal-
lowa-Whitman and Malheur
national forests. A final draft
of the plans was released in
June 2018.
The three forest plans —
which together total more
than 5,000 pages — contain
guidelines for everything
from grazing and timber
harvest to wilderness protec-
tions. While the plans do not
authorize specific projects,
they do set goals and desired
conditions for the forests,
and are ripe for scrutiny.
Forest plans are due to be
revised every 10 to 15 years
to account for changes in the
landscape and to keep up
with the latest science.
Casamassa, who joined
the Forest Service Pacific
Northwest
Region
in
August, said he was invited
by U.S. Rep. Greg Walden,
R-Ore., to meet with the
staff photo by e.J. harris
The Blue Mountain Forest Plan has been withdrawn.
Eastern Oregon Counties
Association in October,
where county commission-
ers said the plans fell short
of meeting economic, cul-
tural and social needs.
More than 300 people
also spoke against the plans
during objection resolu-
tion meetings held across
Eastern Oregon in Novem-
ber and December. Objec-
tions mostly centered on
road closures, forest access
and restoring landscapes to
improve wildfire resilience,
while also providing eco-
nomic benefit to communi-
ties, Casamassa said.
Environmental groups,
too, worry about the increas-
ing fragmentation of forest
habitat for vulnerable wild-
life species, such as wolves,
birds and endangered fish.
“These lands are import-
ant. They mean a lot to a lot
of different people,” Casa-
massa said. “We need to get
it right. If it means taking
(more) time to do that, that’s
what we’re going to do.”
This is not the first time
the Forest Service has hit the
reset button on the planning
process.
A draft version of the
plans was completed in 2014,
and received so much back-
lash the local forest supervi-
sors decided to develop new
plan alternatives.
The result was a new
alternative favored by the
Forest Service that officials
said would have provided
for thinning up to 33 percent
of dry upland forests, and
more than doubled the cur-
rent timber harvest from 101
million board-feet per year
to 205 million board-feet.
The proposal also iden-
tified 242,800 animal unit
months, or AUMs, of live-
stock grazing. An AUM is
the amount of forage one
cow and her calf, one horse
or five sheep or goats eat
during a month.
In total, the feds claim the
plans would have created up
to 1,173 new jobs in forest
products, ranching and rec-
reation, with $59.5 million
in added income.
The decision to withdraw
the revised plans came from
Chris French, the review-
ing officer and acting deputy
Forest Service chief. While
the review did not iden-
tify any specific violations
of law, regulation or policy,
French said the plans were
difficult to understand and
“do not fully account for the
unique social and economic
needs of local communities
in the area.”
“Many factors com-
pounded to produce revised
plans that would be difficult
to implement,” French said.
The current Blue Moun-
tains forest plans, which
were last updated in 1990,
will remain in effect for the
time being. Casamassa said
the Forest Service will be
reaching out again to stake-
holders to determine the next
steps toward the long-over-
due revisions.
Despite the setback,
Casamassa insisted the last
15 years of work have not
been wasted, and the les-
sons they learned will play
a role in helping the agency
to come up with Forest Plans
that are implementable, and
written in plain English.
“To be quite honest, we
can’t obviously do this on
our own,” he said. “We need
everyone working together.
Walden thanked the
Trump administration for
restarting the process and
listening to local input.
“While it is unfortunate
to have to begin again, I’m
hopeful we can move for-
ward in a manner that ensures
the needs of our local com-
munities are finally being
heard and reflected in the
plan,” Walden said. “Get-
ting this plan right is import-
ant to improving the health
of our forests and our com-
munities, reducing the threat
of wildfires and maintaining
access to our public lands
that is part of our way of life
in rural Oregon.”
Obesity grows in Umatilla County
Hermiston School District sets
budget parameters for next two years
By KATHY ANEY
STAFF WRITER
By JAYATI RAMAKRISHNAN
STAFF WRITER
Umatilla County fell and
Morrow County improved
in a national report that scru-
tinizes health behaviors.
Umatilla
County
dropped from 15th to 20th
of Oregon’s 36 counties in
the annual County Health
Rankings, released Tues-
day by the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation and
the University of Wiscon-
sin Population Health Insti-
tute. Morrow County rose
from 19th to ninth.
The report is a snap-
shot in time in health out-
comes such as premature
death, low birthweight and
poor physical/mental health
days.
Along with outcomes,
researchers
considered
health factors such obesity,
smoking, binge drinking,
physical activity, sexually
transmitted diseases, teen
births and other behaviors
to discover which counties
are healthy and which are
lagging behind. In that part
of the report, the results
were more grim. Umatilla
remained at 32nd and Mor-
row dropped one to 21.
Both counties are get-
ting fatter.
In Umatilla County, 35
percent of residents are
obese, up from 33 percent
in 2018 and 26 percent in
2012. A third of Morrow
County residents are obese,
up from 31 percent last
year. The state averages 28
percent.
“Obesity has crept up,”
said Ericka Burroughs-Gi-
rardi, a spokeswoman
for the Healthy Counties
Rankings.
In Umatilla County, sex-
ually transmitted diseases
are a cause for concern,
with 395 cases of newly
diagnosed chlamydia for
The Hermiston School
Board is planning for slight
growth over the next year
but remained conservative
in its spending limits after
approving budget planning
parameters March 11.
The board assumed a
growth of 50 Average Daily
Membership
weighted
(ADMw). The ADMw is
different than simple enroll-
ment numbers, referring to
the number of students in
the district with the added
consideration of how much
money will be allocated per
student based on various
needs, such as special edu-
cation or English language
learners.
The board also approved
a state school fund estima-
tion of $8.871 billion, and
$8,155 per ADMw.
Katie Saul, the district’s
director of business services,
said the legislature sets
the state budget as a total
amount for the two years of
the biennium, and then has
to decide how to split the
funding over two years. For
many years, 49 percent of
the funding was allocated to
the first year, and 51 percent
aP Photo/Patrick sison, File
A closeup of a beam scale in New York.
every 100,000 people.
Twenty percent of Uma-
tilla County children live in
poverty, compared with the
state’s 17 percent.
Smoking stayed steady
at 18 percent of adults.
The percentage of driv-
ing deaths that involved
alcohol rose from 26 to 30
percent.
The
county
saw
improvement in other cate-
gories. Teen births dropped
from 44 births (per 1,000
females aged 15-19) to 41,
though even with the drop,
Umatilla is second-highest
in the state.
The percentage of unin-
sured residents dropped
from 11 to 10 percent. The
high school graduation
rate climbed from 71 to 76
percent.
There is one doctor for
every 2,180 residents in
Umatilla County.
In Morrow County, the
ratio is one-to-3,760.
Those numbers worry
Umatilla County Pub-
lic Health Director Joe
Fiumara.
“I have a sense that this
number is actually higher
than when the data was col-
lected,” he said. “We have a
hard time getting and keep-
ing providers.”
About the full report,
Fiumara said Umatilla
County has stayed pretty
level since last year. He
suspects that other coun-
ties’ improvements actually
caused the drop in Umatil-
la’s health outcome rank.
“There’s not anything
here that’s a surprise to us,”
he said. “We just keep plug-
ging along and keep trying
to improve these metrics.”
This year’s report also
studied housing and its
relationship to health.
In Oregon, many house-
holds spend more than half
of their income on hous-
ing costs. That leaves fewer
dollars to use for health.
“Seventeen percent of
families in Oregon spend
more than 50 percent of
their income on rent or
mortgage payments,” Bur-
roughs-Birardi said. “Black
families are more impacted
at 34 percent. These fam-
ilies have less money to
spend on other necessities
like utilities, health care,
healthy food and other sup-
ports for a healthy life-
style. There is a direct tie to
health outcomes.”
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The board approved an
ending fund balance min-
imum of 10 percent. That
money is set aside as a safety
net, to meet various mainte-
nance needs, and allow them
to continue funding pro-
grams and staff in the event
of an economic downturn.
That allocation would put
them at about $7.78 mil-
lion with reserves, and $6.64
million without reserves.
The board voted to be
able to access about half
of its reserve dollars for
funding shortfalls — up to
$650,000 of its current bien-
nial balance of $1.3 million.
The PERS reserve bal-
ance is $2.57 million, and
the board elected to have
access up to $500,000. In
the 2019-21 biennium the
PERS rate will increase by
4.88 percent, and more rate
increases are expected in the
future.
Saul said the district fore-
casts an expenditure bud-
get of $64,152,499, and pre-
dicts receiving $63,439,383
in revenue.
March 22nd - 24th
presents
1-844-239-9335
to the second year. That split
was to help districts with
annual increases in costs for
items such as salaries and
utilities.
In more recent budget
years, Saul said, the state
has allotted 50 percent of the
funds for each year. But this
biennium, districts are lob-
bying to return to the 49/51
split. Saul said the even split
makes it difficult for districts
to plan for the second year,
and often leaves districts
without as much funding
as they would like, or turn-
ing to deficit spending in the
second year. This can lead to
cutting expenditures, includ-
ing staff positions.
Saul said although the
current biennium’s budget
was split 50/50, the funding
was higher than expected
and prevented a shortage for
most districts. But she said
that’s not something districts
can count on, leading dis-
tricts to push for more fund-
ing funneled into the second
year of the biennium.
“While we may not have
to make the significant cuts
that other districts do, we are
also not able to expand pro-
grams or offerings to sup-
port the additional growth,”
Saul said.
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