WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2020
HermistonHerald.com
EasternOregonMarketplace.com
UPDATES
EOMG off ering
Community
Marketing
Grant Program
As businesses reopen, EO
Media Group wants to help
them spread the word.
The Oregon family-owned
multimedia company has
established a Community
Marketing Grant Program
to assist businesses aff ected
by COVID-19 restrictions in
the markets served by the
company’s 12 newspapers,
including the Hermiston Her-
ald and East Oregonian.
Up to $1 million in match-
ing advertising dollars will be
available. Recipients of the
Community Marketing Grant
Program will be awarded
a dollar-for-dollar match
for print or digital adver-
tising in EO Media Group
publications.
Community organizations
and locally owned and oper-
ated businesses are encour-
aged to apply to extend their
marketing to local residents
during this challenging time.
Grants are available for a
minimum of $250 and maxi-
mum of $10,000 in matching
funds each month, and will
be awarded between May
15 and July 31. Applications
will be accepted starting
May 15 and must be submit-
ted online at eomediagroup.
com/marketing-grant.
Grants will be reviewed
and replied to within one to
two days of application. For
more information, contact
Kathryn Brown at 541-278-
2667 or kbbrown@eastore-
gonian.com.
— Hermiston Herald
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Toni Edmisten wipes down chairs, tables, and condiments between diners at Nookie’s Restaurant and Bar in Hermiston on Tuesday
afternoon.
Restaurant rebound
Local restaurants begin reopening process
By BEN LONERGAN
STAFF WRITER
or the fi rst time in
nearly two months,
diners were able to sit
down to eat at restau-
rants on Friday as Umatilla
County entered phase one of
Gov. Kate Brown’s reopen-
ing plan.
Nookie’s Restaurant and
Brewery was among several
Hermiston restaurants to close
entirely for the duration of the
stay home order, a period of
time that owner Mitch Myers
said he used to recondition his
restaurant and complete a few
long term maintenance proj-
ects, such as upgrading light-
ing and replacing the aging
fl ooring in the kitchen.
Myers said that he spent
a lot of time thinking about
what he would need in terms
F
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Kitchen staff wear masks while prepping meals at Nookie’s
Restaurant and Brewery in Hermiston on Tuesday afternoon.
of staffi ng and product once
the restaurant was able to
reopen. He said that when
they closed, the business had
to donate nearly $30,000 in
perishable inventory and clear
out stock, leaving the restau-
rant mostly devoid of food
by the time he began thinking
about reopening.
“We knew that we needed
to get the kitchen back
retooled up and function-
ing, even if it was at a smaller
level,” Myers said. “Once we
got all of our remodeling done
and everything ready to go,
we went ahead and opened
for takeout for eight or nine
days.”
Despite Myers’ worries
about how to reopen, he said
he was overwhelmed with
how well the fi rst weekend
went. The restaurant did three
days of record sales over the
weekend when compared to
the same days in years past.
“It makes me so optimistic
— as a business person — to
see the fact that it rebounded
not only to previous numbers,
but better than pre-COVID
closure numbers every single
day for the fi rst three days that
we opened,” he said.
See Restaurants, Page A8
Long-awaited West Project fi nally complete
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
Area farmers have cause for
celebration after completion of a
major water supply project known
as the West Project.
The project, which the Colum-
bia Improvement District suc-
cessfully tested on May 5, will
add about 30,000 acres of irri-
gated cropland near Boardman
to the Columbia Basin’s agricul-
tural region. It is one of a pack-
age of three pipeline projects that
together could add billions of dol-
lars to the area’s economy.
The win for Eastern Oregon
has been decades in the making.
J.R. Cook, president of the North-
east Oregon Water Association,
said after 19 years working on
water issues in the area he’s “still
a rookie” compared to many of the
growers, politicians and organiza-
tions who have all worked together
to make the West Project happen.
“We get to see the fruits of past
generations’ labors,” he said.
The difference in value between
an acre of dryland wheat and an
acre of a high-value irrigated crop
is a difference of thousands of dol-
lars. But large swaths of farmland
between Boardman and Hermiston
were reduced to dryland farming or
INSIDE
Contributed photo by NOWA
Irrigation water pumped from the
Columbia River fl ows through a canal
during a test of the new West Project.
Contributed photo by NOWA
An aerial view shows the recently completed West Project near Boardman.
taken out of production altogether
in the 1980s and 1990s as the Ore-
gon Water Resources Department
A3 Essential workers plan
counterprotest to Reopen
Hermiston rally
designated critical groundwater
areas, which came with restric-
tions on how much water could be
A6 New Vietnamese restaurant
to open mid-June
pumped out of the ground.
Growers’ other option for water
— the Columbia River — would
let the aquifers recharge, but
incredibly strict restrictions on tak-
ing water from the river made the
three pipelines they wanted to see
built seem like, well, a pipe dream.
Now, the West Project is a real-
ity, and the East Project and Ord-
nance Project are in progress.
Jake Madison of Madison
Ranches is a board member of
the Columbia Improvement Dis-
A7 Bealls parent company
declares bankruptcy
trict, which will own and operate
the project in partnership with the
Port of Morrow. Madison said in
a statement that the West Project
took “a great deal of team effort
and persistence to pull off.”
In addition to putting 30,000
acres back into production as irri-
gated farmland, the project also
generates signifi cant energy sav-
ings over the district’s old system.
“In all, this project is a huge
win for the energy goals of the
state of Oregon, our rural econ-
omy and drought resiliency for
our future generations,” he said.
“It took several generations, three
locally developed plans, and mul-
tiple relationships forged across
the state and nation to get here.
We could not have done it without
the legislative and executive lead-
ership of Oregon who stepped in
from day one to ensure these proj-
ects got constructed.”
Tom Byler, director of the Ore-
gon Water Resources Depart-
ment, said the project is a “signif-
icant step forward to address the
basin’s water needs now and in the
future.”
According to a press release
put out by the Northeast Ore-
gon Water Association, the West
See Water project, Page A8
A9 Most Umatilla County Fair
events canceled
