SALEM — Oregon’s water regulators are seeking more than $3 million to better handle problems with groundwater depletion and water rights enforcement.

In its 2017-2019 budget proposal, the Oregon Water Resources Department wants state lawmakers to pay for 11 new positions while increasing the pay and duties of several existing positions.

The agency will ask for three funding “packages” to be included in Gov. Kate Brown’s recommended budget for the next biennium.

Concerns about water have grown in recent years due to drought as well as increased public scrutiny.

Last year, groundwater depletion concerns in Southeast Oregon’s Harney Basin prompted OWRD to suspend drilling of most new agricultural wells.

In August, the Oregonian newspaper also ran a package of articles, “Draining Oregon,” claiming the agency had allowed over-pumping by farmers.

“In some locations throughout the state, groundwater aquifers are no longer capable of sustaining additional development,” OWRD acknowledges in its “budget narrative” for the three funding proposals.

• Groundwater studies: Scientists from OWRD require about five to six years to finish a groundwater study within a single basin, such as the current Harney Basin study.

Without more staff, though, the agency can only conduct one basin study at a time.

To allow OWRD to undertake two studies at once, the agency has proposed hiring five new employees — a hydrologist, two hydrographers and two hydrogeologists — at a cost of more than $1.8 million.

• Water rights enforcement: Drought and new water demands have also saddled regional watermasters, who enforce water rights, with greater workloads at a time financial support from county governments has dwindled.

Aside from causing “delays in regulation” and “excessive overtime,” the workload has reduced watermasters’ visibility in the field, which is needed to deter illegal water usage, according to OWRD.

To alleviate this burden, the agency proposes hiring five new regional assistant watermasters and a new hydrologic technician to help with water monitoring.

The $1 million funding package would also raise the status of five existing hydrologic technicians so they could take on additional duties while receiving higher pay.

• Well inspection: Groundwater supplies are at risk from “misconstructed, poorly maintained and improperly abandoned” wells, according to OWRD’s budget narrative.

To ensure wells are properly built and kept up, OWRD relies on well inspectors. Though it’s authorized to employ six well inspectors, the agency only has enough income for four.

OWRD wants to hire two new well inspectors and upgrade the status of all six positions, which would entail more responsibilities and higher pay, with about $337,000 from the general fund.

Under this proposal, the agency would also generate revenues by imposing new and larger fees.

Landowners are allowed to drill their own wells, but they require more intense oversight and assistance from OWRD well inspectors than do licensed well drillers.

To help offset these costs, the agency proposes increasing the landowner permit application fee from $25 to $500, raising about $20,000 a year.

Professional drillers would also pay a new fee of $100 for wells that require variances from construction standards, generating another $25,000 a year.

BOISE — Sharing successful experiences that improve the management of Western forests and rangeland was discussed Oct. 20-21 in Boise.

The “National Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative” brought together states, land managers, industry, local leaders and federal officials to share best practices and explore policy options that could improve forest and rangeland management.

Western Governors’ Association officials hope the results of the initiative will position the organization to recommend congressional efforts to improve forest and rangeland management.

It was launched Aug. 15 by WGA Chairman and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock. The two-day Boise workshop is the second of five that will be held in different Western states.

By focusing on steps that can be taken to increase forest and rangeland health, “we are also taking steps to increase their resilience to wildfire and other threats like insects and disease and invasive species,” said WGA Executive Director Jim Ogsbury.

“We hope that these conversations will yield a number of recommendations on best management practices and tools that can help Western governors, the federal government and local communities to strengthen their forests and rangeland habitats, revitalize forest health and help break the current vicious cycle of catastrophic Western wildfires,” he said.

Every Western state has had successes and failures when it comes to managing rangeland and forests, said Idaho Gov. Butch Otter.

“It’s important we share those experiences … with everybody else,” he said.

Otter said all the ideas will be thrown into a pot “and we’ll render those down into actionable items.”

Those ideas and experiences will come from states, the federal government, the environmental community, local officials and industry, he said.

“This is a big deal,” he told Capital Press later.

Idaho Farm Bureau Federation CEO Rick Keller, one of about 80 people who attended the Boise workshop, said he liked the idea of bringing all the stakeholders together “to talk about common issues and solutions.”

“We hear a lot of the things that don’t work; it’s nice to hear some of the things that are working,” he said.

Jim Lyons, deputy assistant secretary of land and minerals management for the U.S. Department of the Interior, commended WGA for the initiative.

“These are important issues, regionally and nationally, and these discussions will help frame solutions to these concerns as we move forward,” he said.

Western forests and rangeland are facing significant challenges from fire, drought, invasive species, insects and disease, and development, Lyons said.

“These challenges cry out for new vision, new strategies and leadership that can sustain these landscapes, their communities and the legacy of the Western way of life,” he said.

Otter said he hopes the initiative results in the federal government placing more weight on input from states and local managers.

“It seems like they don’t place value on the people that are on the ground,” he said. “I would like to see them put equal value and weight on every input and not just from the folks in Washington, D.C.”

INKOM, Idaho — Federal reforms implemented a year ago haven’t enticed more domestic workers to take sheep industry jobs, say leaders of an organization that hires foreign labor for Western sheep ranchers.

Instead, officials of the Twin Falls, Idaho-based Western Range Association believe the November 2015 rule changes to the H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa program have become needlessly complicated and delayed approvals of badly needed workers.

Henry Etcheverry, an Eastern Idaho Basque sheep rancher who started a three-year term as the association’s president in June, said his organization’s more than 200 sheep operations have collectively hired only two domestic workers since the changes were enacted.

One worker was fired for being intoxicated on the job. The other never showed up for work.

Sheep ranchers are required to advertise job openings before filling them with foreign H-2A workers, but Etcheverry finds the few locals who express interest are typically out for a “camping trip.”

“It’s just a pipe dream,” Etcheverry said. “This government thinks there should be availability of (jobs) for domestic people, but domestic people don’t want to herd sheep — at least not for any period of time.”

H-2A visas fill a critical labor need for U.S. agriculture. But Etcheverry said the application process is so complicated that most operations rely on outside help, such as the association.

Etcheverry intends to visit with federal officials about the need for reforms during a November sheep producers’ convention in Sun Valley, Idaho.

H-2A workers are allowed to work at a U.S. sheep ranch for up to three years, with their status renewed annually.

According to a government fact sheet, the program changes improve administrative efficiencies and “promote greater consistency in the review of H-2A applications, provide workers employed in the U.S. with improved health benefits and protections and provide greater clarity for employers with respect to compliance of program requirements.”

Sheep ranchers, however, say the federal government couldn’t keep pace with H-2A applications under the revised rules and failed to process renewals in time, forcing many operations to send workers home and then bear the expense of re-processing them and bringing them back.

Castleford, Idaho, rancher Mike Guerry had to return 30 workers to Peru and Chile from January through March.

He noted the new rules roughly double minimum wages for sheep workers over the next three years, though sheep prices are down. Other changes require operators to give each employee a cell phone and prohibit compensating workers who would rather use their own phones, restrict workers from cutting wood and restrict lodging and dining facilities from within 500 yards of a corral, though watching sheep is a key role of a sheepherder.

Guerry said operators may even be fined for failing to publicize benefits offered in excess of minimum requirements.

Tremonton, Utah, rancher Lane Jensen, the association’s interim executive director, said another change specifies herders can’t deliver supplies to one another.

Jensen said the association is lobbying to restore the status of members who were short of workers and kept them past deadlines when the government failed to renew their H-2A visas.

TROUTDALE, ORE. — An Oregon company showed off a demonstration facility where it converts forest slash to biomass briquettes, and said it is prepared to license the technology and sell it world-wide.

Hiroshi Morihara, an Oregon developer and engineer who is CEO of HM3 Energy Inc., also announced the company has found a “big fish” investor: A Japanese energy company that wants to use the briquettes to fire electrical power plants in Japan and replace coal and nuclear facilities. New Energy Development Co. has invested $2 million in HM3 and plans to build a briquette production plant at an undisclosed location in Oregon. The briquettes would then be exported to Japan.

Using logging debris or agricultural crop residue to make biomass pellets is an idea that has had numerous starts and stops over the years, as developers and investors have struggled to make the process pencil out.

The upside has always been appealing from a rural economic development perspective. Using forest slash to produce biomass energy reduces wildfire risk, restores forest health and puts people to work in the woods and in production facilities, backers say. An economical technical solution, however, has been slow in coming.

HM3 believes it has refined the process to the point it can license and sell the technology.

“We were able to say, hey, we can do this,” Morihara said during a news conference and media tour of the company’s $4 million demonstration plant in Troutdale, east of Portland.

The company, and others working along the same line, uses a process called torrefaction. They essentially roast wood debris in a controlled environment and temperature range, which removes moisture and volatile compounds. The finished product is a light-weight, brittle cube that can be pulverized and burned like coal, but much cleaner. At the news conference, Morihara displayed briquettes made from juniper trees.

Portland General Electric is interested in converting its coal-fired power plant in Boardman, Ore., to operate on biomass. Later this year, a company called Oregon Torrefaction will supply PGE with enough briquettes to operate the power plant for a day, considered a key test of the technology.

Oregon BEST, an arm of the state business department that provides funding and university research expertise for a variety of energy projects, estimates Oregon, Washington and British Columbia could provide 35 million tons a year of biomass material to torrefaction plants.

The event at HM3 included an appearance by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon’s senior senator. He said HM3’s progress demonstrates that politicians don’t generate jobs themselves but can best help by creating a good business climate through such things as research and development tax credits.

A settlement appears possible in a federal lawsuit against an Oregon farmer accused of violating the Clean Water Act by stabilizing a riverbank.

Earlier this year, the federal government filed a complaint alleging that farmer Bill Case of Albany, Ore., discharged pollutants by placing large rocks within the high water mark of the North Santiam River.

Case claims the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers allowed him to stabilize the bank with riprap rock to prevent floods from washing out roughly 50 acres of his field.

The bank stabilization has actually reduced pollution in the river by preventing erosion, according to Case.

While the corps said a Clean Water Act permit wasn’t needed, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency believes such a permit was required, he said.

The EPA’s lawsuit seeks up to $37,500 in fines per day for the alleged violations — which it claims stretch back to 2009 — as well as returning the riverbank to its original condition.

However, a recent court document indicates that settlement talks could be fruitful in resolving the dispute.

In a joint filing, attorneys for the government and for Case say that a recent survey of the site, as well as other new information, “may provide the basis for a negotiated resolution of the claims asserted in this lawsuit.”

The attorneys asked that deadlines in the lawsuit be pushed back three months to assist in “furthering settlement discussions of all or some issues in this case.” U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin has approved the request.

An attorney representing the federal government refused to comment on settlement talks and Capital Press was unable to reach an attorney for Case.

Case said that government representatives spent two days making measurements on his property but he didn’t know specifics about what they found or how it may influence any settlement.

However, he said it’s possible the government has realized it lacks jurisdiction in the case because he didn’t place rocks into the river.

“We’ve proved to them we weren’t working in the river. I had pictures and everything,” Case said.

ONTARIO, Ore. — A full water allotment for the fist time in four years has made a huge difference for farmers in Oregon and Idaho who depend on the Owyhee Reservoir to irrigate their crops.

They received only a third of their full 4 acre-foot allotment in 2014 and 2015 and as a result drastically altered their crop rotations and left a lot of ground fallow to save what water they did receive for their onions, the area’s main cash crop.

The reservoir provides irrigation water for 1,800 farms and 118,000 acres of ground in Eastern Oregon and part of southwestern Idaho.

“It meant a lot to have a full allotment this year,” said Owyhee Irrigation District Manager Jay Chamberlin. “It was good to see growers get back to more normal planting.”

During the drought years, when water was sparse, a lot of farmers moved their onion acres to areas where they had access to well water or where water held out a little bit longer in the system, said Bill Buhrig, an Oregon State University cropping systems extension agent in Ontario.

In areas where water was scarce, a lot of early season crops such as cereal, wheat or triticale were planted.

As a result, Buhrig said, a lot of onions and cereals were planted on the same ground several years in a row and farmers got out of their normal five- to six-year rotations, which is not ideal for soil health.

“To go to a full allotment enables growers to get back into the rotations that really benefit both what their production needs are and soil health,” he said.

As a result of the drought, acreage for some water-intensive crops, such as sugar beets, was cut significantly. After falling to 4,725 acres in 2014 and 5,500 acres in 2015, sugar beet acres in the area bounced back to 8,000 this year, which is close to normal.

The ground left fallow the past few years has also been put back into production, said Stuart Reitz, an OSU cropping systems extension agent.

The full allotment “gives people more flexibility on what they can grow and where they can grow,” he said. “Having those short water years threw everybody’s rotations off.”

Dairyman Frank Ausman likes to grow most of his own feed but had to leave one of his three farms idle the past two years to spread what little water he did get to the other two.

He was able to put all three into production this year.

“It’s made a huge difference,” he said. “We have basically got back to normal.”

When the OID system stopped delivering water Sept. 30, there was 166,000 acre-feet of carryover water in the reservoir, less than normal but much more than the 5,000 acre-feet left the past two years.

“From the get-go, when we set the allotment, our goal was to try to carry over 100,000 acre-feet and we actually did better than that,” Chamberlin said. “We’re pretty pleased we were able to carry over that much.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The federal conspiracy case against Ammon Bundy and six co-defendants is now in the hands of jurors.

U.S. District Judge Anna Brown thanked all 12 jurors and the alternates for their dedication during the trial that began six weeks ago. Earlier this week, the alternates asked the judge if — instead of being dismissed — they could be allowed to listen to a live audio feed of deliberations, since it’s a landmark case in Oregon history.

The judge said she’s never had such a request. She denied it, citing the sanctity of secret jury deliberations.

Bundy in early 2016 led what turned out to be a 41-day occupation of a national wildlife refuge near Burns, Oregon. He and his co-defendants are charged with conspiring to impede Interior Department employees from doing their duties at the refuge.

If wildlife officials know how Oregon wolf OR-28 died, they aren’t saying so yet.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to provide additional information Oct. 19. The female wolf was found dead Oct. 6 in the Fremont-Winema National Forest near Summer Lake, Ore. Gray wolves in the western two-thirds of the state remain protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, and killing one is a crime.

IR-28 was the alpha female of the Silver Lake wolfpack.

The wolf’s carcass was taken to the agency’s national forensics lab in Ashland, Ore., for a necropsy, which would determine the cause of death.

Officials have said anyone with information about the case should call USFWS at (503) 682-6131, or the Oregon State Police Tip Line at (800) 452-7888. Callers may remain anonymous.

Fish and Wildlife is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible. The Center for Biological Diversity, which frequently comments on Oregon’s wolf management plan, has said it will contribute $10,000 to the reward fund.

The Westland Irrigation District in Northeast Oregon has asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of cheating smaller growers out of water.

In June, seven farms ranging from about 60 acres to 800 acres filed a complaint alleging the district stole their water to benefit three operations with more than 5,000 acres.

During oral arguments on Oct. 18, attorneys for the district told U.S. District Judge Michael Simon in Portland, Ore., that the lawsuit belongs in state court, not federal court.

“They’ve failed to exhaust the underlying state remedies that would make their claim ripe in federal court,” said Nicole Hancock, attorney for Westland.

The hearing focused on jurisdictional issues rather than the merits of the complaint, which claims the district used fraudulent accounting to make water available to the larger operations at the expense of the smaller growers, who have senior water rights.

The lawsuit belongs in state court because it deals with interpretations of Oregon contract law and water law, said Hancock. “It’s going to be a combination of those.”

Julie Weis, attorney for the plaintiffs, said it would be more efficient to resolve the case in federal court, particularly since filing a new lawsuit in state court may drag the dispute into the 2017 irrigation season.

The lawsuit belongs in federal court because it will likely entail water contracts with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the impact of the Endangered Species Act on water allocation, said Michael Haglund, attorney for the plaintiffs.

“There may well be intersections with federal law in this case,” Haglund said.

The judge signaled that he’s inclined to rule the lawsuit belongs in state court, since the case doesn’t neatly meet the legal standards for trying it in federal court.

Though he does have the authority to make an exception, there would need to be a valid reason — other than his personal preference, said Simon. “That’s no way to run a legal system.”

It also wouldn’t make sense to try the case in federal court only to later refer a question of law to the Oregon Supreme Court, he said.

Simon said he expects to rule on the jurisdiction issue by mid-November or early December.

If the plaintiffs are worried about delay, they can in the meantime file a state lawsuit against the district, Simon said. If he decides the case belongs in federal court, the state lawsuit can then be dismissed.

“That will have absolutely no bearing on what I do here,” he said.

The heavy rain accompanying October’s storms muddied fields, hampered harvests and delayed plantings in some cases, and skewed reports from government precipitation monitors while it was at it.

Automated monitoring equipment maintained by the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service in Portland showed precipitation off the charts in Oregon basins compared to average for this time of year.

In the Coast Range mountains, precipitation was measured at 643 percent of average as of Oct. 17, while Willamette basin sites measured snow and rain at 509 percent of average. Monitoring equipment in other basins recorded precipitation at more than 300 and 400 percent of average.

In Portland, October rainfall reached 5.86 inches as of Oct. 19. The average for the entire month is about 3 inches, according to the National Weather Service.

The heavy rain sent farmers scrambling to finish fall work, said Michael Bondi, director of Oregon State University’s North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora. “It caught us all by surprise,” he said.

The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service in Portland said heavy rain limited field work and created poor harvest conditions for some producers. In other cases, such as wine grapes, most growers were able to finish harvesting before the heavy rains hit.

Grower Ray Drescher, in the Gervais area, said his sweet corn harvesting equipment isn’t geared for working in such wet weather and he’ll be hard-pressed to finish picking by the end of the week. The co-op he delivers to, NORPAC, has said corn might be too ripe if it isn’t picked by Thursday or Friday. Drescher said he was able to harvest cauliflower, however.

Farmer Brenda Frketich, of St. Paul, Ore., used her blog, www.NuttyGrass.com, to talk about harvesting hazelnuts in the rain.

“It was a good reminder that not all harvests go as smoothly as they have the past three years with only the dust to complain about,” she wrote. “Mud is much worse!”

The precipitation figures compiled by NRCS are misleading to a certain extent because they measure precipitation only since the beginning of the “water year,” which began Oct. 1, and compare it to the average amount reached at the same point in other years. Heavy rain or snow in a short period, such as happened this fall, can make the early results seem extremely dramatic, said Scott Oviatt, the NRCS snow survey supervisor.

Although no one is declaring an end to drought worries, Oviatt said the early rain is meaningful because it establishes soil moisture that may carry into the spring.

“It’s a good sign as long as we continue this route,” he said.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The trial of a man who led a standoff at an Oregon wildlife refuge has raised many complicated issues, some of them political.

But federal prosecutor Ethan Knight told a jury Tuesday during closing arguments that the case comes down to common sense and one simple fact: “They made a choice to take over someone else’s workplace.”

Ammon Bundy and six co-defendants have been charged with conspiring to prevent federal employees from doing their jobs at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by seizing the refuge Jan 2 and occupying it for 41 days.

Knight reminded jurors the case isn’t about land policy in the U.S. West, a 2014 standoff at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch or what Ammon Bundy considered to be an unjust sentence for two ranchers convicted of arson.

Those are all issues Bundy has raised or tried to raise in his defense.

“They decided to pick and choose the rules and laws that apply and take over property that didn’t belong to them,” Knight said.

While Knight stood at a lectern to address the jurors, most of the defendants and their lawyers looked straight ahead toward U.S. District Judge Anna Brown.

The exception was Bundy, who backed his chair away from the defense table, swiveled to the left and looked at Knight and the jury for two hours.

Bundy’s attorney, Marcus Mumford, followed Knight, delivering a four-hour argument that included civics-related quotes from former president Woodrow Wilson, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and other figures from the past.

Mumford said Bundy and his fellow occupiers made a peaceful stand — but a determined one — against what they saw as federal government overreach in the prosecution of Harney County ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond.

“The problem wasn’t with the employees,” Mumford said. “It was with their employer, the federal government. It won’t respect its limits.”

Mumford reiterated many points that Bundy made when he testified for three days earlier this month, including that the presence of firearms ensured the protest wouldn’t be immediately stormed by armed federal agents.

The lawyer said the plan was to take ownership of the refuge by adverse possession, occupying it for years and then turning it over to local officials.

Mumford said Bundy expected government officials to dispute the claim, and that would force them to prove in court they have proper title to the land.

As part of that effort, Mumford said, the protesters made improvements to the refuge and didn’t trash the place as the government claims.

He displayed a photo of an occupier with a broom, supposedly sweeping up rat feces that government workers had allowed to build over time.

“Is it a conspiracy to clean up rat poop?” Mumford asked. “Or it is responsible.”

Knight said in his argument that the plan to stake a claim through adverse possession proves there was a conspiracy.

The prosecutor said the conspiracy started two months before the armed takeover, when Bundy and another out-of-state activist met with Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward and vowed there would be civil unrest if the sheriff didn’t protect the Hammonds from returning to prison.

Lawyers for the other six defendants will present their closing arguments Wednesday. One defendant, Ammon Bundy’s older brother Ryan, is acting as his own attorney. He plans to address the jury for an hour.

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Secretary of Interior supports the removal of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River.

The Herald & News reports that Secretary Sally Jewell endorsed the plan Monday in a letter sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asking it to approve an application for dam demolition.

The dam would also be transferred from its current owner, PacifiCorp, to Klamath River Renewal Corp., a consortium of federal, state and local officials. That would relieve PacifiCorp of all liability once the dams are decommissioned and removed.

The Klamath County ballot will still contain an up or down vote on whether the dams should be removed, but it is mostly symbolic. It could be used as an argument against the project if the vote is overwhelmingly against dam removal.

BEND, Ore. — Greg Mohnen, a longtime Central Oregon hay grower, took on the role of agricultural educator earlier this year.

Mohnen, 64, is the manager of the McGinnis Ranch, a hay and cattle operation that lies between Bend and Sisters. But now in addition, he is the president of both the Central Oregon Hay Growers Association and the Oregon Hay and Forage Association.

He said his goal as president of the two associations is to educate the public on what is involved in putting up hay and how that commodity is key to the food chain.

“So many people out there think it is so simple, that you don’t have to worry about the weather, about the moisture,” Mohnen said. “Food has to come from some place and hay is part of the process.”

Mohnen had been vice president of the state association. He succeeded Scott Pierson of Silver Lake, Ore., as president. Pierson became the vice president.

“I think Greg will be an exceptional president,” Pierson said. “I’m excited to have him come with a new perspective for the association. He’s a leader in the Central Oregon association and he’s proven to be a man of solid integrity.

“The hay he produces is outstanding and he should be an example to the rest of us hay growers on using the innovations that are available and being dedicated to producing high quality grass hay,” Pierson said.

At the 2015 Oregon Hay King Contest in Klamath Falls, Ore., Mohnen’s first and second cuttings of grass hay earned the highest scores and his third cutting grass hay earned the second highest score. Mohnen and McGinnis Ranch have 11 entries from its grass/legume, grass and timothy hay in the Oregon Hay King Hall of Fame over the last 12 years.

Mohnen has been working in hay fields and with livestock since he was a youngster growing up on a South Dakota ranch that produced prairie grass hay, alfalfa and corn, and had cattle and pigs.

He and his wife moved to Oregon in 1984 and after he worked for a couple Central Oregon ranches he has worked for Tim McGinnis, the owner of McGinnis Ranch, since 2000.

“Tim supports me being the state president,” Mohnen said. “He allows me the time to do that job.”

Mohnen said water is the biggest issue facing hay growers.

“If we weren’t so efficient with our water, we wouldn’t have anything,” he said.

This year’s Oregon Hay King Contest is scheduled for Nov. 19 at Ag West Supply in Madras, Ore. Mohnen said there’ll be plenty of educational opportunities. He said Mylen Bohle of the Oregon State University Extension Service will speak on soil ingredients and how they impact hay tonnage; an Oregon Department of Agriculture official will speak on new chemicals; there’ll be a presentation on low-pressure irrigation; and he hoped to have a speaker explain the use of cabbage for gopher control and a speaker from the University of California-Davis.

“We want to encourage growers to improve their efficiency,” Pierson said. “We want growers and consumers to utilize our extension agents and other available resources in our state to make their production more efficient.”

“There’s always something to learn no matter what,” Mohnen said of the information that will be available at the Hay King Contest. “There’s never a dumb question.”

FORT KLAMATH, Ore. — A rancher who had two steers killed and a third seriously injured by wolves earlier this month is frustrated by the lack of protections and other impacts on raising cattle in the Wood River Valley.

“This valley, with so many cattle, is going to be like a smorgasbord for the wolves. They’ll take the animals that put up the least resistance,” said Bill Nicholson, third generation owner of the Nicholson Ranch, where the three wolf attacks took place. They have been verified by state Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists.

During the spring and summer, upwards of 35,000 head of cattle are trucked to the valley to graze on the nutrient-rich grasslands. Most have now been trucked out of the area to winter grazing areas, predominately in far Northern California.

Nicholson said there are still about 300 to 400 steers on his ranch and estimates about 5,000 cows, calves and yearlings are still in the enclosed valley.

While the focus has been on the wolf killing, Nicholson said a potentially more serious problem stems from stress caused by attacks.

“You’re losing a lot of pounds with the stress,” he said. “Cattlemen estimate the average steer will gain about 3 to 4 pounds a day feeding on irrigated pasture known for its nutritious blend of sedges, rushes, grasses, forbes and clover.”

Because of the presence of wolves, Nicholson and Butch Wampler, who oversees the ranch’s cattle, say the cattle have been remaining in groups, often standing through the night.

“The stress on the herd is another factor, and probably more costly,” said Nicholson, noting stress impacts weight gains and could reduce values for leased lands.

Recommended methods of reducing or eliminating wolf attacks, including special fencing, strobe lights and more frequent patrols, also increase costs, although the state pays some of them.

Wampler discovered the steers that had been attacked.

On Oct. 5, concerned about possible attacks, he was in his pickup truck using his headlights and spotlight when he heard a bawling calf. Although unable to find the calf, he found a large group of cattle.

“They were all standing in a big circle. They should have been bedded down,” he said.

The next morning, he found the calf, which weighed 458 pounds.

“You could see the tooth marks,” he said.

Biologists removed some of the hide, which Wampler said exposed deep wounds in its legs. The calf is still alive but doing poorly.

“He’s pretty crippled,” Nicholson said.

Wampler, who had seen three wolves on a neighbor’s field in mid-September, said he was riding to his home Oct. 2 when he found a dead 800-pound steer, then “I saw this wolf take off toward the fence.” He then spotted a second wolf.

A day later he saw three wolves feeding on the carcass.

On Oct. 4 he found a second dead 600-pound steer.

“His stomach was ripped open. ... His heart, lungs and liver, they were all gone.” Wampler and Nicholson called the Oregon State Department Fish and Wildlife’s Klamath Falls office, which immediately sent out two biologists who confirmed both as wolf kills.

“I give the Fish and Wildlife people credit. They were right here,” Nicholson said.

John Stephenson, wolf coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said it’s believed the attacks were by the Rogue Pack, which is known to be in the area. No verification could be made because no wolves in the pack wear radio monitoring collars.

“There is a chance it is not (the Rogue pack), but we believe it was,” Stephenson said.

Nicholson said he was told that wolves bite cattle, which causes them to hemorrhage.

“They (the cattle) go into shock. They’re still alive but the wolf eats them until they die,” he said. “They (wolves) go right inside to the chest cavity and the first thing they eat are the heart and the lungs.”

Wolves have been seen in the Wood River Valley since the appearance of the wolf OR-7 in 2011. It was known to have returned to Southern Oregon in 2014, mated with a female wolf and they have since had several offspring in what is known as the Rogue Pack.

“I personally don’t think those are the first wolf kills in the valley,” Nicholson said, noting a neighboring rancher said the recent killings follow patterns seen in a steer death that was not reported to state officials last year.

He and Wampler said no wolf sightings have been reported since, possibly because of the presence of elk hunters.

“I think for the most part they (wolves) are pretty leery of people. It seems like they disappeared for now,” Wampler said, adding, “They will come back, that’s just a given.”

JUNCTION CITY, Ore. — Hay exporter Jesse Bounds knew it’d be a rough summer when two of his barns burned down in mid-July.

A fire ignited spontaneously in his field and soon consumed the structures, which contained roughly $500,000 of straw.

“It was so windy that day that it blew through the buildings in like five minutes,” said Bounds, who also bales straw and compresses it at his facility here.

Problems with the insurance company left Bounds short of money to rebuild both barns at a time when his income was drastically reduced from the loss of straw, he said. “I’m just bleeding to death.”

Then came a blow from an unexpected direction: Oregon’s Department of State Lands notified Bounds he’d violated Oregon’s removal-fill law by attempting to rebuild in a wetland.

The letter came as a shock. “I was literally sick to my stomach,” Bounds said.

His surprise sprang from the fact the property isn’t identified as a wetland on county maps and he’d received the necessary county permits to begin construction.

“The problem is the county and state don’t work on this issue,” he said. “If they’re really trying to protect wetlands, why would they allow the county to give me building permits again?”

Bounds suspects that DSL’s interest in the property was sparked by a complaint from a neighbor with whom he’s had disagreements, since the agency did not protest when he first built the storage facilities in 2014.

He’s already rebuilt one barn but worries he’ll still be required to spend roughly $57,000 on wetland mitigation on each of the 12 acres that DSL claims are wetlands because they contain hydric soils. Generally, such mitigation involves buying credits from a wetland bank that’s been developed elsewhere.

Bounds said the agency effectively declared the area a wetland and then forced him to prove it’s not.

“They come at you like they’re the police. They automatically think you’re in violation,” he said.

Julie Curtis, public information manager for DSL, acknowledged “the timing of our enforcement action was unfortunate due to Mr. Bounds’s recent fire.”

“However, as a regulatory agency, the Department of State Lands is bound by its statutory and rule responsibilities with regard to protecting Oregon’s wetlands and waterways,” Curtis said in an email. “We always strive to resolve violations in a way that ideally will facilitate accomplishing the applicant’s goals, while meeting the state’s requirements to protect Oregon’s wetlands and waterways.”

DSL acknowledged that a “forensic wetland delineation” on the property would be difficult and therefore the agency was willing to discuss alternative methods for defining the area where mitigation would be required, according to an agency email sent to a wetland consultant hired by Bounds.

The agency has agreed to postpone taking any action in Bounds’ case until the end of the 2017 legislative session next July, when it will be “re-engaging with Mr. Bounds to determine how to resolve the matter,” Curtis said.

Oregonians In Action, a nonprofit property rights group, believes it may have a legislative solution that would solve such problems for Bounds and other farmers in similar situations.

The underlying problem is that state and county maps may show that a property isn’t a wetland, but that doesn’t necessarily mean DSL can’t later determine it’s actually a wetland, said Dave Hunnicutt, the group’s executive director.

“DSL isn’t limited to the places listed on their state and local wetland inventory,” he said. “The maps are misleading to the public and can’t be relied upon.”

It’s unfair to expect landowners to pre-emptively check whether every portion of their property is a wetland, particularly since such determinations are often based on soil tests rather than stereotypical wetland characteristics, Hunnicutt said.

“It’s not a pond, it’s not a marsh, there are no cattails. It’s just a field,” he said. “If you can’t rely on the maps, then why do they have them in the first place?”

It’s also unrealistic for DSL to examine every property that’s permitted for development, which is why the process is largely complaint-driven, Hunnicutt said.

Hunnicutt plans to ask a legislator to introduce a bill clarifying that properties not classified as wetlands on local and state inventories are exempt from the removal-fill law.

In the alternative, the exemption would be narrowed to the rebuilding of agricultural buildings, which would be more specifically tailored to Bounds.

“The Legislature needs to step in and make sure what’s happening to Jesse doesn’t happen to anyone else,” Hunnicutt said.

CROW, Ore. (AP) — An early spring and ideal summer growing weather led to an early wine grape harvest in the southern Willamette Valley.

“It definitely helped ripen the fruit the way we want it,” Sweet Cheeks Winery & Vineyard winemaker Leo Gabica said.

Sweet Cheeks and other wineries nestled in the hills around Eugene had their grapes off the vine by the end of September — typically when the harvest starts.

This year’s harvest is the earliest King Estate, southwest of Eugene, completed in its more than two-decade-long history. “You credit that to the quality and ripeness of the fruit,” Chief Executive and co-founder Ed King said.

Area winemakers and winery owners said 2016 looks to be another great year for grapes, particularly in terms of quality. It follows two memorable harvests, which produced exceptional yields and left cellars well stocked with aging wine.

“It is just astonishing, the quality of the fruit,” King said.

Winemakers still must tally the tonnage of this year’s harvest, but many said it will not be as large as either of the past two record-setting years. Wineries in the southern Willamette Valley harvested 8,618 tons of wine grapes in 2015 and 7,038 tons in 2014, up from 4,731 tons in 2013, according to data from the Southern Oregon University Research Center in Ashland.

Optimal weather for much of the year and an early start to the growing season contributed to the early harvest and fruit quality, experts said. Winter months were not too cold, spring was mild without the types of frosts that can kill grape buds, and the summer had relatively few days of extremely hot temperatures that can ripen grapes too quickly.

“You’d like to have a winter that’s not too cold, but yet has enough moisture to allow the soil to recharge,” said Southern Oregon University professor Greg Jones, a leading researcher of the state’s wine industry. “You want to have a spring that starts off warm and clear with little frost risk. And then you want to have a summer that has the right heat accumulation to ripen varieties, but yet doesn’t produce a lot of heat stress.”

“You don’t want a lot of heavy rain events or hail events, or anything like that,” he added. “And then you want to have a harvest that is happening in the month of September where temperatures are starting to go down at night, but are still a little warm during the day. All of those kinds of things would be ideal for most growers.”

Above average temperatures during the past three years in the southern Willamette Valley regularly matched those optimum conditions, Jones said.

“Grape vines like it to be a little warmer than normal, and they’ve certainly had that for the past few years,” he said.

When grapes start growing determines when the growing season ends, said Morgan Broadley, one of the owners at Broadley Vineyards in Monroe.

“Once you get going in an early spring, even if you just have a normal summer, it is going to be early,” he said.

Jones said 2016 turned out to be “a pretty good year,” for grape growing.

“We had little heat stress compared to previous years,” he said. “This year, July ended up being a little cooler than normal. That made it be less stressful because, sometimes in July, when you have a lot of heat stress events over 100 degrees it can actually damage the vines, and make for lower quality. But this year we just didn’t have very many of those.”

Mild weather in September “allowed people the time to let everything ripen nice and slowly,” Jones said.

At Silvan Ridge Winery — across a country road from Sweet Cheeks — head winemaker Juan Pablo “J.P.” Valot said the quality of the grapes this year is “phenomenal.”

Cool, damp conditions contribute to mildew and mold that blackens grape buds. This year, however, the weather was relatively warm and dry that “keeps the vines more healthy without mildew” or mold, Valot said.

Jim McGavin, owner of Walnut Ridge Vineyard, west of Junction City, said this year’s harvest will produce “an absolutely beautiful vintage.”

The pleasant late summer weather helped the harvest go smoothly, he said. “It was just a beautiful, easy harvest season this year,” McGavin said. “Nice clear, dry weather. No rain pressure when we were picking.”

Like other southern Willamette Valley wineries, Sweet Cheeks buys grapes from other Oregon vineyards to add variety to its vintages. Earlier in October, Gabica and his crew unloaded tons of syrah grapes from Southern Oregon.

The first part of wine making involves sorting out unripe fruit, removing stems and dropping the grapes into a massive tank, where fermentation begins. In nearly two years, the fermented grape juice will be in bottles as wine.

The large harvests of 2014 and 2015 filled many bottles.

For some wineries, another large production year could be a problem, said Jones, of Southern Oregon University.

“Just like any business, you have to realize that your business can only manage so much in terms of production,” he said. “It may be that your sales distributions are limited. Or it may be that you don’t have the infrastructure in your operation to process more grapes.”

But winemakers said their operations can handle the most recent sizable harvest.

“I’m excited for another great vintage,” said Valot, of Silvan Ridge. “And I think that’s great for Oregon.”

KETCHUM, Idaho (AP) — A central Oregon man who put poison on a deer carcass in a central Idaho wilderness leading to the death of a wolf and a dog has been sentenced to 10 days in jail and ordered to pay $10,000 to reimburse the state for investigative costs.

The Idaho Mountain Express reports that Tim Clemens of Hines, Oregon, pleaded guilty earlier this month to one count of poisoning animals and one count of unlawful take of big game.

Idaho Fish and Game launched an investigation in January after two dogs were poisoned, one of which survived.

Authorities tied the poisoning to a field-dressed deer carcass in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.

Authorities say tests on a wolf carcass found nearby confirmed it had ingested the poison.

The alpha female of the Silver Lake wolfpack was found dead on national forest land Oct. 6, wildlife officials have confirmed.

The cause of death is unkown. The wolf is being examined at the National Forensics Laboratory.

It was found dead in the Fremont-Winema National Forest near Summer Lake, Ore.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of person killing the wolf. OR 28, the alpha female of the pack, is under federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.

More details to come.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — A watchdog arm of the U.S. Department of the Interior says the Bureau of Reclamation lacked the authority to enter into an agreement with the Klamath Water and Power Agency on water use, and that consequently $32.2 million spent by the agency over seven years “was a waste of funds.”

The department insisted that it did have the authority.

The dispute between the inspector general’s office and its own department has been referred to the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget for resolution.

In its report released this week, the inspector general’s office recommended that the Bureau of Reclamation discontinue funding water-supplementation activities in the Klamath Basin unless it has specific legal authority. The Interior Department noted that the cooperative agreement with the Klamath Water and Power Agency already ended, on May 2. The Klamath Project is a federal dam project in southern Oregon and northern California to manage the flows of the Klamath River.

The inspector general’s office said parts of the program paid irrigators for idling land and for deepening and drilling wells, and that it largely benefited the irrigators instead of fish and wildlife, the intended benefactors.

In its response, the Interior Department said water savings realized through the cooperative agreement “essentially provided the same fish and wildlife benefits as the acquisition of third party water rights.”

The reduction in surface water demand through land idling and wells, the department argued, increased “the water available in Upper Klamath Lake and Clear Lake Reservoir to meet requirements for the endangered short-nose and Lost River suckers and in the Klamath River for the endangered coho salmon.”

SALEM — Before Oregonians even cast their vote on a $3 billion corporate sales tax proposal on the Nov. 8 ballot, state lawmakers are considering ways to redesign the tax in the 2017 legislative session.

The “gross receipts” tax, contained in Measure 97, requires “C” corporations to pay the state 2.5 percent of their annual Oregon sales exceeding $25 million.

If Measure 97 passes, “this will be the dominant issue of 2017,” said Sen. Mark Hass, D-Beaverton, chairman of the Senate Finance and Revenue Committee. Hass’s committee already has filed placeholder bills to address the measure after the election.

While Gov. Kate Brown released some general goals in June to dampen the negative impact on certain businesses, this is the first time lawmakers have spoken publicly about possible proposals they could offer next session.

Lawmakers could make small fixes to the law, such as repealing exemptions for benefit companies, or a complete overhaul such as replacing the gross receipts tax with a different corporate tax scheme.

As long as none of those proposals raise more money than Measure 97, the Legislature needs only a simple majority to approve any changes, lawmakers said.

As written, the ballot measure would bolster state revenue by nearly 30 percent, or an estimated $3 billion annually, and avert a projected $1.35 billion state budget shortfall for 2017-19.

Proponents say the measure would help reverse a trend in which Oregon residents pay an increasing share of state revenue, while businesses pay less.

Opponents argue the tax plan raises prices for consumers and creates inequity in what different kinds of corporations are required to pay in taxes. The measure would tax only “C” corporations with an excess of $25 million in annual sales, while leaving “S” corporations with the same amount of sales untouched.

If the measure passes, lawmakers in 2017 can expect “a cavalcade of 10,000 lobbyists from every industry with valid stories about why their rates should be lower,” Hass said.

The legislation required to redesign the tax measure will likely “be the biggest bill you’ve seen in your life” because of the complicated fixes that might be needed, said Sen. Brian Boquist, R-Dallas.

Lawmakers will have to decide whether they want to consider each of those requests and possibly design different rates for different industries.

Some lawmakers favor overhauling the tax by reducing the rate and expanding the base of businesses that would have to pay.

Hass proposed an alternative to Measure 97 in the 2016 session that would have raised $500 million annually by lowering the tax rate and applying it to a broader group of businesses. However, business and union groups refused to negotiate on an alternative, and Hass said he did not have the needed support in the House of Representatives to advance the proposal.

Other lawmakers are suggesting eliminating the gross receipts tax entirely and replacing it with a different corporate taxation scheme.

While five other states have gross receipts taxes, the one proposed in Oregon imposes the highest rate on the smallest number of corporations.

Our Oregon, a public employee union-backed group, wrote the measure with the intent to target large, out-of-state corporations such as Walmart and Comcast. But the tax also affects nearly 200 Oregon corporations — including the iconic Powell’s Books, Nike, Columbia Sportswear and Intel. Because the tax applies to sales, rather than profits, it would hit high-volume, low-profit outfits particularly hard, said Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland.

Burdick, who is part of a group of lawmakers looking at potential Measure 97 changes, said she would prefer to do away with the gross receipts tax and replace it with something else that would raise equal or less revenue. Burdick said she has no particular kind of tax in mind.

“I’m really trying to keep an open mind at this point,” she said.

Lawmakers also could try to devise a law that would prevent Measure 97 from taxing the same item or service more than once, another problem associated with a gross receipts tax, Boquist said.

Brown recently has been mum about what changes she would make to the measure, saying she is focused on getting the measure passed.

She suggested Wednesday, Oct. 12, at a meeting of the Pamplin Media Group and EO Media Group editorial boards that an exemption in the measure for benefit companies is problematic. Businesses can registered as a benefit company with the Secretary of State’s Office to show customers they have higher standards of transparency and accountability.

The designation was not meant to give businesses a tax advantage, Brown said.

Pat McCormick, spokesman for the “No on Measure 97” campaign, said the problems with the measure has “created a platform for a lot of lobbying activity” in the 2017 session.

“People can’t really be sure what they’re voting on if the Legislature is planning on changes,” McCormick said. “We don’t know what the changes will be.”

The Yes on Measure 97 campaign opposes “any attempt to let big corporations off the hook to pay their fair share, especially if the business lobby attempts to make our small businesses and consumers pay more,” said Katherine Driessen, spokeswoman for Our Oregon.

The controversial proposal has fueled one of the most expensive ballot measure battles in the state’s history. Businesses opposed to the major have raised an arsenal of more than $16 million and counting, and both campaigns for and against the measure have bombarded voters with advertising slots on social media and airwaves.

If the measure doesn’t pass, lawmakers will face the prospect of either making cuts in services or coming up with their own tax package to boost revenue, lawmakers said.

Without additional revenue, those cuts could be 10-12 percent across the board, Brown said.