OPINION READER’S FORUM
Founded in 1906
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2021
A4
OUR VIEW
Public health offi cials deserve praise, thanks
W
hen the pandemic
is over — and one
day it will recede
— there will be a plethora of
stories for future historians
to delve through.
One story we hope is not
overlooked now, and won’t
be discarded in the future, is
the dedicated and determined
work conducted by the mem-
bers of the Umatilla County
Health Department.
For more than a year,
the people who work at the
health department — med-
ical workers, employees,
contact tracers — sat on the
frontline of one of the great-
est, and most dangerous,
events of our history.
Led by director Joe Fiu-
mara, the health department
took center stage when the
pandemic descended. Their
job has not been — and will
not be — an easy one. They
are charged with protect-
ing the health of the public,
a public that is diverse and
complicated and, at times,
utterly unwilling to listen.
The pandemic has most
likely changed the role of
public heath forever. Once
a little-known piece of our
government bureaucracy, the
Kathy Aney/Hermiston Herald, File
A nurse gives a shot through a driver’s window during a rainy drive-thru vaccination clinic on Jan. 8, 2021, at the
Pendleton Convention Center.
local health department was
shoved to the front lines of
the pandemic war and the
price has been high.
Long hours.
Seven-day-a-week work
schedules.
Little thanks.
Health department person-
nel faced criticism and oppo-
sition regarding testing, con-
tact tracing and vaccinations.
They, like public schools,
are and will continue to
be caught in a bewildering
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
COLUMN
Mega-dairies and our mega-drought
O
regon, like the rest of
the West, is staring
down a dry summer. In
an executive order, Gov. Kate
Brown instructed state agen-
cies to trim water use in prepara-
tion for what can only be called a
mega-drought.
Across the West, resi-
dents hunker
down in antici-
pation of water
restrictions and
in some regions
farmers have
started reevalu-
ating the viabil-
Kristina
ity of water-inten- Beggen
sive crops. In the
Klamath Basin in southern Ore-
gon, indigenous communities
are facing the potential demise
of sacred and federally protected
endangered fi sh, and irrigation
water has been shut off due to
the lowest levels the river has
ever seen.
Yet, in Oregon’s northeastern
Morrow County, the state may
welcome one of the largest and
most notorious guzzlers of water
— a mega-dairy. Easterday Dairy
would bring 28,000 cows to the
same land as the former Lost
Valley Farm in Boardman, join-
ing four other mega-dairies in
Morrow County.
The Easterdays’ multimillion
dollar fraud case involving hun-
dreds of thousands of imaginary
cattle and subsequent bankrupt-
cies put a pause on the permit-
ting process for the dairy until
Oregon’s Department of Agri-
culture found that Cody East-
erday — listed as the owner of
Easterday Dairy on the permit —
passed on ownership to his son,
Cole.
The original application
was withdrawn per ODA’s July
15 deadline, but a decision on
the subsequent permit submis-
sion from Cole is still pending.
Although the fi nancial troubles
aff ecting the Easterdays’ vari-
ous companies call their ability
to responsibly manage a mega-
dairy into question, clearly war-
ranting denial of the dairy’s per-
mit, yet another pressing case
for denial stares us in the face
— our persistent drought. East-
erday Dairy’s permit application
estimates its water usage would
average approximately 20 mil-
lion gallons per day.
Twenty-two of Oregon’s 36
counties have requested drought
declarations from Brown this
year. Morrow was granted its
request and is currently under
a drought declaration. As crops
and pastures wither, the threat
of devastating wildfi res grows.
According to the National
Drought Mitigation Center,
county residents will likely have
a “signifi cantly shortened” win-
dow for water access this year.
These conditions represent a
“new normal” for the area, and
will undoubtedly worsen in time
if the proposed Easterday mega-
dairy is granted a permit.
Morrow’s mega-dairies source
their water from local groundwa-
ter and the Columbia River, but
both are fi nite resources. Migrat-
ing fi sh depend on the river’s
fl ow, and experts have said these
fi sh need as much water from
the Columbia as it has left from
April until September.
As we wade further into a
summer that only promises to
get drier and hotter, this water
will become infi nitely more pre-
cious and quite possibly scarcer
than ever before. Several parts
of Morrow County are already
designated as critical groundwa-
ter areas in response to serious
groundwater decline.
Mega-dairies routinely use
untold gallons of water in water-
stressed regions. Despite the
drought, Oregon agencies con-
tinue to elevate the interests of
industrial agriculture over the
basic needs of communities and
ecosystems to access clean water.
ODA must deny the proposed
Easterday Dairy’s permit. Our
water is too limited and too pre-
cious to waste it on mega-dairies
in a drought.
———
Kristina Beggen is an organizer
with Food & Water Watch and the
Stand Up to Factory Farms Coa-
lition. She works at the nexus of
environmental and social justice.
Let’s not reward bad behavior
Inmates outside the walls of Two Rivers Correctional Institu-
tion for a family play date — what? Forthcoming is a date to have
inmates, also known as adults in custody, to be allowed at Hermiston
Spray Park. Reportedly the inmates will be allowed time with their
families at the park. So who approved this reward for bad behavior?
Was it the Department of Corrections? Citizens of Hermiston? Good
questions, but what I do know is this citizen doesn’t approve of this
recipe for complete disaster.
I found out by accident of this event and was stunned that some-
one thought of this as a wonderful idea! Perhaps someone has an
agenda for promotion at the prison. Maybe this isn’t the fi rst such
event where Joe Public didn’t need told. Why be secretive if this is so
great? To say that I’m unhappy about this is an understatement.
Inmates were sentence for off enses by a judge, after a fair trial, so
now it’s okay to thumb your nose at the judicial system? Rewarding
for misconduct is never a win. It teaches people that accountability
doesn’t matter. While this is my thoughts, I have a hard time believ-
ing other citizens know about the event or think this is a positive
thing for Hermiston. We are a community of doers and movers. Let’s
move this out of the possibility of being a reality Hermiston.
Karen Primmer
Hermiston
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES
U.S. SENATOR
RON WYDEN
STATE REP. GREG SMITH,
DISTRICT 57
221 Dirksen Senate Offi ce Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-5244
La Grande offi ce: 541-962-7691
———
900 Court St. NE, H-482
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1457
Email: Rep.GregSmith@state.
or.us
———
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE
CLIFF BENTZ
2185 Rayburn House Offi ce
Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-6730
Medford offi ce: 541-776-4646
CORRECTIONS
Printed on
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VOLUME 114 • NUMBER 30
Andrew Cutler | Publisher • acutler@eomediagroup.com • 541-278-2673
Kelly Schwirse | Multi-Media consultant • kschwirse@hermistonherald.com • 541-564-4531
Audra Workman | Multi-Media consultant • aworkman@eastoregonian.com • 541-564-4538
Tammy Malgesini | Community Editor • community@eastoregonian.com, 541-564-4532
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crossfi re between those who
follow science and those
who disregard commonsense
measures that will stop the
COVID-19 virus.
All agencies, like the
health department, can do is
what they’ve been doing —
work hard, keep their focus
and continue to care about
the public.
The employees at the
health department have com-
pleted their work under the
most diffi cult circumstances
and they’ve received little
or no recognition. Granted,
they’re not in their jobs to
be recognized. They are
there for a variety of reasons,
including the fact they feel
compelled to help their fel-
low citizens.
When the COVID-19 war
is over, there will be lots
of accolades thrown about.
There will be a palatable
sense of relief. Yet, we want
to make sure that, in the end,
the people who stood in the
fi ring line day after day were
singled out for their out-
standing work. The Umatilla
County Health Department
deserves all our praise.
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STATE SEN. BILL HANSELL,
DISTRICT 29
900 Court St. NE, S-423
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1729
Email: Sen.BillHansell@state.or.us
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OBITUARY POLICY
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