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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2019
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Infrastructure committee studies the future of depot
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
As the Columbia Devel-
opment Authority waits to
receive the former Umatilla
Chemical Depot from the
U.S. Army, major questions
remain about how to best
serve industrial portions of
the property.
An infrastructure sub-
committee formed this fall
and is diving head fi rst into
the challenge of how to lay
the groundwork for roads,
water, sewer, electric-
ity, natural gas, fi ber inter-
net and more to prepare the
property for development.
“We only want to touch
the ground once,” CDA
executive director Greg
Smith said. “We don’t want
to lay water line only to have
to pull it back out later.”
Transportation provides
a good example. The CDA
was granted $7 million for
roads there and the Port of
Umatilla got another $2 mil-
lion as part of the Oregon
Legislature’s 2017 trans-
portation package. But,
Smith said, there are a lot
of options for spending that
money — would it be bet-
ter to create a new inter-
change leading to the depot
off Interstate 84 near Patter-
son Ferry Road in Morrow
County? Add an industrial
entrance at the entrance of
the National Guard’s Camp
Umatilla? Adjust the current
intersection of Interstate
84 and Interstate 82 so that
semitrucks can be routed
into the depot from there?
These are the types of
questions the infrastructure
subcommittee will study
over at least the next six
months.
Outside of the transpor-
HH fi le photo
Warehouses in the four hundred block of the Umatilla Chemical Depot remain standing on Oct. 8, 2014.
tation package dollars, the
CDA doesn’t have a lot of
money to work with so far.
An allocation in this year’s
House Bill 5006 of $6 mil-
lion for a “wastewater treat-
ment facility and water sup-
ply line” refers to federal
money passed through to
the Oregon Military Depart-
ment for upgrades to Camp
Umatilla.
Although the National
Guard training facility is
located on part of the former
depot, Smith said unfortu-
nately the OMD isn’t able
to share any infrastruc-
ture, such as water lines
with civilian projects on the
depot, for security reasons.
He did say, however,
they have expressed open-
Umatilla County
OKs Amazon deal
By PHIL WRIGHT
STAFF WRITER
The Umatilla County
Board of Commission-
ers gave its approval for a
15-year property tax break
to Amazon to build new
data centers near Stanfi eld.
In exchange, the multina-
tional tech giant agrees to
pay tens of millions over
that span to the county and
Hermiston.
The Hermiston City
Council approved the deal
Oct. 14, requiring Amazon
Data Services to invest no
less than $200 million in the
Greater Hermiston Enter-
prise Zone, which the city
and the county co-sponsor.
The county board of com-
missioners took on the mat-
ter last Wednesday morn-
ing in Pendleton.
County counsel Doug
Olsen told the county board
that in lieu of taxes, Ama-
zon agrees to pay at least
$2 million a year to the
county and city. The local
governments are working
on an agreement about how
to spend the money.
Amazon also will pay
an annual amount equal
to the property tax on an
assessed value of $25 mil-
lion, but that won’t be on
the tax rolls. Still, Olsen
said, “That means each one
of the taxing districts in
that area will be receiving
a portion.”
In addition, Amazon
will pay $50,000 a year to
Umatilla County Fire Dis-
trict No. 1 for fi re safety
and $50,000 a year to the
Hermiston School District.
Amazon opted to pay
Hermiston schools, he
said, because some of its
employees are likely to
live in that district. He also
said the payment will not
diminish the amount of
ness to partnering in other
ways, such as loaning some
labor or equipment to dig
trenches.
Kim Puzey, director of
the Port of Umatilla and
chair of the infrastructure
subcommittee, said Smith,
who is also a state legis-
lator in addition to his pri-
vate economic develop-
ment work, cautioned the
committee that they likely
wouldn’t get more money
from the Legislature beyond
the money they’ve already
been allocated for roads.
So Puzey is in Washing-
ton, D.C., this week meet-
ing with Oregon’s senators
and representatives to seek
options for federal funding.
“We’re assuming (the
eomediagroup.com
ities to data centers, would
have different needs, so it
is important the CDA fi g-
ure out what type of invest-
ments they are interested
in attracting. The engineer-
ing fi rm Anderson Perry and
Associates will then help
them know what they need
to provide to make the land
“shovel ready” for those
projects.
“You can say, ‘What
do you need and we’ll go
after it,’ but the timeframe
is too lengthy,” Puzey said.
“They’ll just go away. There
are too many other proper-
ties that already have those
things for them to stick
around.”
Puzey and Smith both
said that the committee’s
Umatilla high schoolers get a taste for space
By JESSICA POLLARD
STAFF WRITER
funding the school receives
from the state. Commis-
sioner George Murdock
said the money to Herm-
iston schools amounts to a
corporate gift.
Umatilla County com-
missioner candidate Patri-
cia Maier of Hermiston
questioned what would
happen if the county
demanded Amazon pay the
property taxes.
“That’s
conjecture,”
Murdock replied. “In my
estimation, if we decline
them we won’t get any-
thing from them because
they’ll go somewhere
else.”
The very reason for
enterprise
zones
and
the like, he continued,
is to incentivize private
development.
Mark Morgan also
addressed the board. He’s
the Hermiston assistant
city manager and admin-
istrator of the enterprise
zone. He said he ran the
numbers on “how much
money we’re giving away
as a result of all of this” and
after “37,000” calculations
determined the deal is “giv-
ing away exactly zero.”
That notion, he said,
assumes the city and
county already had those
revenues. He claimed the
payment based on the $25
million of assessed value
would make Amazon the
third biggest property tax-
payer in Hermiston and the
total deal would make it the
top property taxpayer.
The deal also requires
Amazon to pay its workers
at least 130% of Umatilla
County’s average wage.
According to the Oregon
Employment Department,
annual wages in Umatilla
County averaged $40,233
in 2018, thus 130% of that
would top $52,000.
The fi rst all-female space-
walk in NASA’s 61-year his-
tory was Friday. But before
the space agency focused its
attention on making history,
it took some time out Thurs-
day to give some Umatilla
County students the chance
to go behind the scenes of
the historic event.
Students from Uma-
tilla High School spent
time learning how NASA
astronauts Jessica Meir
and Christina Koch would
fuel up and climb into their
space suits in a zero gravity
environment.
Robotic teacher Kyle
Sipe tuned high-schoolers
into a live chat session with
Angela Case, a program
coordinator at Space Center
Houston, who showed stu-
dents about how astronauts
live day-to-day in spite of
zero gravity.
“When you’re in space,
there is no up or down,”
Case told the students.
Through the video ses-
sion, students made guesses
about what astronauts eat for
dinner and how long they
exercise each day in order
to avoid muscle atrophy —
many students in the room
guessed it was fi ve hours
a day, but it’s actually just
two.
When the presentation
ended, students had the
chance to ask questions with
Case via chat, who answered
them in real time.
They learned that the lon-
gest time anyone’s spent
at the ISS — which is the
size of a football fi eld —
has been one year, and that
zero gravity has no effect
on swallowing and digest-
ing food.
Sipe said that attendance
to the session was much
larger than he anticipated.
He said many students are
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state) is a no, so we’re try-
ing to fi nd a yes somewhere
else,” he said.
Puzey said the CDA is
discussing possible revenue
sources, such as renting out
the depot’s approximately
1,000 concrete igloos as
storage units.
Another option, he said,
would be to take inspiration
from Hermiston’s Regional
Water System. That proj-
ect was funded by a part-
nership of the port, the city
and three private compa-
nies that all agreed to take
on debt upfront and pay it
down over time with reve-
nue from the system.
He said different types
of development, ranging
from food processing facil-
two meetings so far have
drawn a variety of partners
together, from Eastern Ore-
gon Telecom to the cities of
Umatilla and Hermiston.
The CDA has negoti-
ated for water rights on the
depot, but the cities have
both offered to sell addi-
tional water and wastewa-
ter capacity. Smith said it
will be up to the CDA and
its infrastructure subcom-
mittee to study the propos-
als and see which one was
the best option from a fi nan-
cial standpoint.
He said Umatilla is mak-
ing decisions now about
major water projects and
could use answers quickly
about what the CDA might
need from them, but unfor-
tunately it is too early in
the process to make those
decisions.
Smith said the CDA is
trying to be a good neigh-
bor to nearby communities.
For example, they’re try-
ing stick to industrial devel-
opments on the depot and
direct commercial projects,
such as hotels, toward the
cities so that they can bene-
fi t from adding them to their
tax base.
He also cautioned people
not to expect the depot to
be transformed into a bus-
tling hub of economic activ-
ity overnight — attracting,
negotiating and construct-
ing industrial projects takes
years, sometimes decades.
On the other hand, Puzey
said there have been a lot
of promising discussions.
He called the large piece of
property at the intersection
of two interstates “special.”
“I don’t know of an
industrial
property
so
well-situated in the western
United States,” he said.
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Astronauts
Christina
Koch, right,
and Jessica
Meir pose for
a photo on the
International
Space Station.
Photo courtesy
of NASA
focusing on astronomy in
science class this month
and the opportunity to learn
more about the life of an
astronaut couldn’t have been
better timing.
He added that it’s not
the school’s fi rst interaction
with NASA. In 2011, the
robotics team won a NASA
scholarship to help boost the
program during its fi rst year.
And in 2017, then-junior
Anthony Ibarra traveled to
Florida to participate in the
International Space Settle-
ment Design Competition.
“I’m excited kids got a
chance to ask questions and
interact with someone from
the Space Center,” Sipe said.
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