OLYMPIA — Washington Gov. Jay Inslee berated U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration Thursday for changing the Justice Department’s hands-off attitude toward the state’s marijuana trade.

Inslee said Washington won’t be “intimidated” and will oppose federal intervention.

“We should all be dedicated to that uproar of resistance on this wrong-headed, backward, antediluvian, below the Mason-Dixon line (policy) by Jeff Sessions,” Inslee said.

Inslee spoke at a forum previewing the 2018 legislation session shortly after Sessions, a former Alabama senator, issued a memo on federal enforcement of marijuana laws. The memo withdrew guidance issued by the Obama administration that gave states a green light to legalize marijuana cultivation and recreational use.

Besides Washington, five states — Oregon, California, Nevada, Alaska and Colorado — have approved the recreational use of marijuana. Massachusetts and Maine have also approved it but those laws have not gone into effect. Those states and 21 others plus Washington, D.C., have approved marijuana use for medical purposes.

The state-supervised cultivation of hemp, also a Schedule I drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act, was authorized by Congress in the 2014 Farm Bill. Marijuana has not received such congressional approval. Washington and the other states proceeded with marijuana based on a 2013 memo by then-Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole. The memo admonished states to keep marijuana away from children, prevent interstate trafficking and to not let marijuana become a cover for illegal drug or lead to more impaired driving and other health problems.

Sessions rescinded the Cole memo in what a Justice Department statement called a “return to the rule of law.”

Sessions did not order specific enforcement actions, but he instructed U.S. attorneys to follow standard guidelines, prioritizing serious crimes that cumulatively harm a community.

Washington growers sold $67.6 million worth of marijuana in a 12-month period that ended June 30, according to the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board. A 37 percent sales tax on retail sales generated $314.8 million.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson joined Inslee at the press event. Ferguson said his office had been anticipating a change in federal enforcement policy since Sessions became attorney general.

“It’s not exactly a shock, right?” he said.

He said his office was prepared to defend Washington’s marijuana law, though he noted that for now there was no specific enforcement action to oppose.

The Washington Farm Bureau has taken the position that it won’t advocate for marijuana because it is a federally controlled substance. The organization does support developing a hemp industry within federal law.

The Washington Department of Agriculture has worked to keep its hemp program within federal law and obtained a permit last year from the Drug Enforcement Administration to import hemp seeds.

On marijuana, the Justice Department has periodically since 2009 issued guidance suggesting a relaxed attitude toward marijuana, but reserving the right to aggressively prosecute drug laws.

“Now we have Jeff Sessions coming in who wants to upset the apple cart of a very successful program for ideological reasons,” Inslee said.

A new rail transload facility at the Port of Portland is intended to ease farm exports, but agricultural shippers say they are ambivalent about its chances of success.

While a new option for getting hay and other goods across the Pacific Ocean is certainly welcome, farm exporters say they’re still concerned by rail disruptions and container availability.

“Unless they’re going to get us more containers, I don’t think it’s going to help,” said Johnny Gilmour, a farmer and hay exporter with Gilmour Pacific near Albany, Ore.

Ocean carriers abandoned the port’s Terminal 6 container facility in 2016 due to productivity slowdowns blamed on a labor dispute between ICTSI, the terminal operator, and the longshoremen’s union.

The disruption was problematic because many Oregon farm exporters shipped their goods to Asian markets through Portland, rather than the more distant ports of Seattle and Tacoma along Washington’s Puget Sound.

Port of Portland severed its contract with ICTSI last year and entered into an agreement with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union aimed at preventing future conflicts and promoting the facility.

Now, the port has opened a rail transload facility at Terminal 6 that will allow export containers to be transferred from trucks onto railcars headed for the Puget Sound.

For Oregon hay exporters, among the primary intended beneficiaries, the facility will allow truckers to deliver more than one container per day. Due to time constraints, truckers could typically only deliver a single container per day to Puget Sound ports.

Over time, the Port of Portland expects the transload facility — operated in partnership with BNSF Railway — will handle roughly 1,000 containers per week, with half of them headed for export markets.

“It will probably take up to a month or two to ramp up to a volume level like that,” said Keith Leavitt, the port’s chief commercial officer.

Incoming cargo will likely consist of finished wood products, tires and footwear, while outgoing goods will likely be hay and raw wood products, he said.

Leavitt said he’s unaware of plans to ship value-added farm products in refrigerated containers, but the potential for such shipments exists.

“I don’t see why that wouldn’t be possible since we have that utility at T6,” he said.

The transload facility will be open five days a week, providing better truck access that will improve the terminal’s functionality, Leavitt said.

Late last year, the Swire Group agreed to send its ships to service the container facility, but these calls will only occur about once a month and focus on truck exports to Australia.

By keeping Terminal 6 operating throughout the work week, the facility will hopefully become attractive to other ocean carriers as well, Leavitt said.

“Connecting our cargo markets to the Puget Sound ports makes a lot of sense,” he said.

Agricultural exporters say the new transload facility is probably meant to compete with Northwest Container Services, a private transload facility also in Portland. Capital Press was unable to reach the firm’s Portland representative for comment.

However, the dependability of rail transportation to the Puget Sound has recently been questionable, said Jesse Bounds, a hay exporter with Bounds Hay Co. in Junction City, Ore.

Rail shipments of hay containers have sometimes been late to arrive at those ports, resulting in delayed arrivals in Asian markets and shipments getting split between two ships, which increases handling costs, he said.

“We’ve had problems with the rail and empty container availability,” Bounds said, noting that the issues have kept him trucking containers straight to the Puget Sound.

The key to making Terminal 6’s transload facility successful will be improving rail service and increasing the availability of empty containers, which are directly tied to the flow of imports, said Shauna Watts, co-founder of Lindsey Forwarders, which handles hay exports.

Another issue is the port’s use of longshoremen, who have earned a reputation for being unreliable and expensive, she said.

“Competition makes everything work better, but it’s ironic it’s not necessarily better for the shippers,” Watts said.

GILLIAN FLACCUS

Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The state of Oregon sued the agrochemical company Monsanto on Thursday over pervasive pollution from PCBs, the toxic industrial chemicals that have accumulated in plants, fish and people around the globe for decades. The company called the lawsuit baseless.

The lawsuit seeks $100 million to use to mitigate pollution, particularly along a 10-mile stretch of the Willamette River in Portland that will be the target of a $1 billion cleanup announced by federal authorities in 2016.

Oregon’s lawsuit cites internal memos and correspondence indicating that Monsanto knew early on about the toxic effects of PCBs.

A 1937 internal company memo said that exposure to vapors at high temperatures or ingestion of the substances by animals produced “systemic toxic effects” and prolonged skin contact could lead to an acne-like rash, the lawsuit alleged.

Monsanto said in an emailed statement that the litigation undermined decontamination efforts in the Portland Harbor overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agency declared the area a “superfund site” in 2000.

“Monsanto voluntarily stopped producing PCBs more than 40 years ago and didn’t use or dispose of any PCBs in the state of Oregon. Cleanup efforts are underway in Oregon with the full group of responsible parties under supervision of the EPA, and it’s most important that everyone stay focused on that work,” said Scott S. Partridge, Monsanto’s vice president of global strategy.

In Oregon, more than two dozen rivers and streams have tested positive for PCB contamination and fish and wildlife in more than 40 watersheds have also shown signs of pollution, according to court documents.

A variety of fish species in Oregon are vulnerable because the PCBs accumulate in their fatty tissues. When seals, eagles, osprey, orca whales and humans eat those fish, that contamination is passed on, the lawsuit alleged.

In some cases, dead orca whales that washed up on shore have been treated as hazardous waste, the lawsuit said.

“PCBs cause a wide range of systemic toxic effects in humans and animals and can seriously impair the endocrine, neurologic, and reproductive systems,” according to the lawsuit.

Portland’s harbor suffered the most pollution because it was lined for a century with businesses that relied heavily on PCBs for manufacturing, metal recycling, fuel storage, railways and other industrial uses.

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were used in many industrial and commercial applications — including paint, coolants, sealants and hydraulic fluids. Monsanto, based in Missouri, produced them from 1935 until Congress banned them in 1979.

According to the EPA, PCBs have been shown to cause a variety of health problems, including cancer in animals as well as effects on the immune, nervous and reproductive systems.

Several cities — including Portland, Oregon, and the California cities of Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose, Long Beach and San Diego —have also sued Monsanto over PCB pollution. Washington became the first state to sue Monsanto over PCBs in 2016.

The new lawsuit said that a study included in a 1955 Monsanto internal report that said “the toxicity of these compounds has been repeatedly demonstrated” and that prolonged skin exposure could cause a “serious and disfiguring dermatitis.”

A 1968 study of a waterway near a Monsanto plant characterized the creek as a “potential source of future legal problems,” the lawsuit said.

Yet Monsanto told officials around the country the contrary, the lawsuit alleged. In a letter to New Jersey’s Department of Conservation that year, Monsanto wrote, “Based on available data, manufacturing and use experience, we do not believe PCBs to be seriously toxic.”

Oregon’s lawsuit seeks damages for public nuisance, unjust enrichment and cites trespassing — saying the contamination hurt the state’s natural resources.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Even as a series of states legalized the recreational use of marijuana, the possession, use or sale of the drug remained a federal crime. Still, the Justice Department, under President Barack Obama, took a hands-off approach.

That changed Thursday. Attorney General Jeff Sessions revoked an Obama-era policy that was deferential to states’ permissive marijuana laws. Sessions is leaving it up to federal prosecutors in states that allow drug sales and use to decide whether to crack down on the marijuana trade.

The move by Sessions has generated outrage among advocates for legal marijuana as well as some conservatives who believe the federal government shouldn’t overrule the wishes of state government on issues like this. It’s also generated confusion about what the policy might mean for marijuana users, sellers and states that collect taxes from pot sales.

Some questions and answers about the new policy:

The real-world impact of Sessions’ decision remains to be seen. Justice Department officials wouldn’t say whether the move is intended for federal prosecutors to specifically target marijuana shops and legal growers. And Sessions is giving broad discretion to U.S. attorneys to decide how aggressively to enforce marijuana law, among all the other demands on their time and limited resources.

But rescinding the Obama policy could have a chilling effect on the burgeoning marijuana legalization movement. And it will undoubtedly add to existing confusion over use and enforcement.

That’s not clear. A federal law blocks the Justice Department from interfering with medical marijuana programs in states where it is allowed. Justice Department officials said they would follow the law, but would not preclude the possibility of medical-marijuana related prosecutions.

Yes. Many banks already want nothing to do with pot money for fear it could expose them to legal trouble from the federal government. The new uncertainty about how prosecutors will deal with this will only make it harder.

Sessions’ announcement came just three days after a legalization law went into effect in California. But officials denied the timing of the move was connected to the opening of California’s sales, which are projected to bring in $1 billion annually in tax revenue within several years. Sessions has railed against marijuana for years, including as an Alabama senator. A task force he convened had been looking at whether to change the Obama policy, so the move is not especially surprising.

Lawmakers can’t necessarily undo an internal Justice Department policy decision. But they can push legislation to protect marijuana sales. And they might. Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado said he plans to reach out to other legislators from states that have legalized recreational marijuana -- Alaska, California, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Washington -- to seek congressional protection for those programs.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon’s governor said Thursday the state will fight U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ move to roll back a lenient policy on federal enforcement of the drug to protect its economic interests.

Gov. Kate Brown said marijuana is an important component of the state’s economy, creating more than 19,000 jobs. Oregon was the first state to decriminalize personal possession, in 1973. It legalized medical marijuana in 1998 and recreational use in 2014.

“My staff and state agencies ... will fight to continue Oregon’s commitment to a safe and prosperous recreational marijuana market,” Brown said.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler said Sessions’ move was an infringement on states’ rights.

“The federal government should respect the will of Oregon voters; the principle of federalism is at stake,” Buehler said.

Sessions ended an Obama-era policy that allowed pot to crop up in states and will let federal prosecutors in legal marijuana states decide how aggressively to enforce U.S. law prohibiting the drug.

Billy J. Williams, U.S. attorney for Oregon, indicated he would maintain the same limited level of enforcement.

“We will continue working with our federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement partners to pursue shared public safety objectives, with an emphasis on stemming the overproduction of marijuana and the diversion of marijuana out of state,” Williams said in a statement.

Oregon Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer urged people to mobilize against Sessions’ decision.

“Going against the majority of Americans — including a majority of Republican voters — who want the federal government to stay out of the way is perhaps one of the stupidest decisions the attorney general has made,” Blumenauer said.

An amendment by Blumenauer and California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher prevents the Justice Department from interfering with state medical marijuana programs.

Don Morse, director of the Oregon Cannabis Business Council, said the amendment also protects the recreational side to some extent, because “it is difficult to distinguish one from the other.” Pot grown legally in Oregon can be sold to medical marijuana patients from recreational shops.

Congress recently passed a short-term funding bill that maintained the Blumenauer-Rohrabacher amendment. The bill expires on Jan. 19, and Blumenauer is working to ensure it gets into the next measure, his office in Washington said.

President Donald Trump made a campaign promise not to interfere with state marijuana laws, Blumenauer said. That was echoed by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who co-sponsored legislation from New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker to legalize marijuana at the federal level.

In Oregon, Morse said he expects “business as usual” in the marijuana industry.

“Legal marijuana has become so entrenched in the U.S. — it’s a multibillion-dollar industry — and I don’t see the people who are behind this, people like myself, rolling over for the Justice Department, which means Congress will have to act,” Morse said, adding that he thinks lawmakers should declassify marijuana as a dangerous drug.

Forest officials plan to log nearly 8,000 acres in the Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman national forests of northeast Oregon to help protect local resources from wildfire within the Granite Creek watershed.

The Ten Cent Community Wildfire Protection Plan includes the tiny towns of Granite and Greenhorn, as well as the popular Olive Lake Campground, historic Fremont Powerhouse and adjacent recreational cabins.

Both forests signed a record of decision for the project Jan. 3, authorizing 7,859 acres of commercial timber harvest, 1,227 acres of small tree thinning, 3,557 acres of hand-thinning in riparian areas and roadside hazard tree removal.

Andrew Stinchfield, project manager and acting district ranger for the North Fork John Day Ranger District on the Umatilla National Forest, said fire safety was the primary driver for the treatments.

“There is a lot of fuel out there, a lot of dead and down (wood) on the ground, a lot of ingrowth of trees,” Stinchfield said. “What we’re trying to do is basically create a series of these strategically placed fuel breaks, ultimately along roads and then in selected stands around private property.”

The project also includes 9,382 acres of controlled burning, though Stinchfield said they will not burn in the North Fork John Day Wilderness Area after objections were raised by Oregon Wild, Wilderness Watch, Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project and the American Forest Resource Council.

The decision does not include 6,743 acres of non-wilderness burning on the Umatilla National Forest, which Stinchfield said will be determined separately.

Stinchfield said the project was planned over three years in consultation with the Grant County Community Wildfire Protection Plan, which ranked the Granite Zone a high-risk, high-priority area.

The last large fire to burn in the area was the Vinegar fire in 2013, which torched 1,351 acres about six miles southwest of Granite on rugged Vinegar Hill.

“We’re excited to get the project started,” he said.

Commercial logging is expected to start this summer, and will be done through several timber sales, Stinchfield said. The overall project should take between seven and 10 years to complete.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions is rescinding an Obama-era policy that paved the way for legalized marijuana to flourish in states across the country, creating new confusion about enforcement and use just three days after a new legalization law went into effect in California.

President Donald Trump’s top law enforcement official was to announce the change Thursday, people with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press. Instead of the previous lenient-federal-enforcement policy, Sessions’ new stance will instead let federal prosecutors where marijuana is legal decide how aggressively to enforce longstanding federal law prohibiting it, the people said.

Sessions’ plan drew immediate strong objection from Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, one of eight states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use.

Gardner said in a tweet that the Justice Department “has trampled on the will of the voters” in Colorado and other states. He said the action would contradict what Sessions had told him before the attorney general was confirmed and that he was prepared “to take all steps necessary” to fight the step including holding up the confirmation of Justice Department nominees.

Sessions is rescinding the policy by president Barack Obama’s Justice Department that has generally barred federal law enforcement officials from interfering with marijuana sales in states where the drug is legal.

The people familiar with the plan spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it before the announcement.

The move by Trump’s attorney general likely is sure to add to confusion about whether it’s OK to grow, buy or use marijuana in states where the drug is legal. It comes just after shops opened in California, launching what is expected to become the world’s largest market for legal recreational marijuana and as polls show a solid majority of Americans believe the drug should be legal.

While Sessions has been carrying out a Justice Department agenda that follows Trump’s top priorities on such issues as immigration and opioids, the changes to marijuana policy reflect his own concerns. Trump’s personal views on marijuana remain largely unknown.

Sessions, who has assailed marijuana as comparable to heroin and has blamed it for spikes in violence, had been expected to ramp up enforcement. Marijuana advocates argue that legalizing the drug eliminates the need for a black market and will likely reduce violence, since criminals would no longer control the marijuana trade.

The Obama administration in 2013 announced it would not stand in the way of states that legalize marijuana, so long as officials acted to keep it from migrating to places where it remained outlawed and keep it out of the hands of criminal gangs and children. Sessions is rescinding that memo, written by then-Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, which had cleared up some of the uncertainty about how the federal government would respond as states began allowing sales for recreational and medical purposes.

The marijuana business has since become a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar industry that helps fund some government programs. Eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use, and California’s sales alone are projected to bring in $1 billion annually in tax revenue within several years.

Sessions’ policy will let U.S. attorneys across the country decide what kinds of federal resources to devote to marijuana enforcement based on what they see as priorities in their districts, the people familiar with the decision said.

Sessions and some law enforcement officials in states such as Colorado blame legalization for a number of problems, including drug traffickers who have taken advantage of lax marijuana laws to illegally grow and ship the drug across state lines, where it can sell for much more. The decision was a win for marijuana opponents who had been urging Sessions to take action.

“There is no more safe haven with regard to the federal government and marijuana, but it’s also the beginning of the story and not the end,” said Kevin Sabet, president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, who was among several anti-marijuana advocates who met with Sessions last month. “This is a victory. It’s going to dry up a lot of the institutional investment that has gone toward marijuana in the last five years.”

Threats of a federal crackdown have united liberals who object to the human costs of a war on pot with conservatives who see it as a states’ rights issue. Some in law enforcement support a tougher approach, but a bipartisan group of senators in March urged Sessions to uphold existing marijuana policy. Others in Congress have been seeking ways to protect and promote legal pot businesses.

Marijuana advocates quickly condemned Sessions’ move as a return to outdated drug-war policies that unduly affected minorities.

Sessions “wants to maintain a system that has led to tremendous injustice ... and that has wasted federal resources on a huge scale,” said Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “If Sessions thinks that makes sense in terms of prosecutorial priorities, he is in a very bizarre ideological state, or a deeply problematic one.”

A task force Sessions convened to study pot policy made no recommendations for upending the legal industry but instead encouraged Justice Department officials to keep reviewing the Obama administration’s more hands-off approach to marijuana enforcement, something Sessions promised to do since he took office.

The change also reflects yet another way in which Sessions, who served as a federal prosecutor at the height of the drug war in Mobile, Alabama, has reversed Obama-era criminal justice policies that aimed to ease overcrowding in federal prisons and contributed to a rethinking of how drug criminals were prosecuted and sentenced. While his Democratic predecessor Eric Holder told federal prosecutors to avoid seeking long mandatory minimum sentences when charging certain lower-level drug offenders, for example, Sessions issued an order demanding the opposite, telling them to pursue the most serious charges possible against most suspects.

A small and geographically isolated species of fish found only in Lake County, Ore., may soon come off the federal endangered species List.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed delisting the Foskett speckled dace, located in the remote waters of the Warner Basin. The announcement comes after more than a decade of habitat restoration work with the Bureau of Land Management and Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife.

Foskett speckled dace are a unique subspecies of speckled dace, a member of the minnow family. The fish grow only 2-4 inches long and live just a few years, spawning in the spring.

Chris Allen, a biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Portland, said Foskett speckled dace come from tiny Foskett Spring on the west side of Coleman Lake. A backup population has also been established at Dace Spring, about a half-mile farther south.

The fish were listed as threatened in 1985 due to declining habitat. At the time, the area was privately owned, overgrazed and used for irrigation water, Allen said. The BLM purchased the 161 acres around Foskett Spring in 1987, and since then the population has rebounded to more sustainable levels.

“In this habitat, at least, they thrive in open water,” Allen said. “That’s been one of the keys to recovery, is to create as much suitable habitat for this fish as possible.”

The population of Foskett speckled dace tends to fluctuate from year to year. Between 2011 and 2014, the numbers ranged from a low of 1,728 to a high of 24,888. Allen said the population was 4,279 last year in Foskett Spring.

With the proposal to remove Foskett speckled dace from the endangered species List, the Fish and Wildlife Service will enter a 60-day public comment period that closes March 5. Robyn Thorson, USFWS Pacific Region director, said the success of the Foskett speckled dace builds on other fish delistings in recent years, including the Oregon chub and Modoc sucker.

“These recoveries of native Oregon wildlife are great examples of how our long-standing commitment to working with local and state partners is paying off,” Thorson said in a statement.

Curt Melcher, ODFW director, also praised the effort, saying agency partnerships with the BLM and Fish and Wildlife Service were the key to success.

Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the Foskett speckled dace is the 37th species recovered under the Endangered Species Act, and said more will come with time.

“This is exactly how the Endangered Species Act is supposed to work,” Greenwald said in a statement. “The fish’s habitat was protected and threats removed, and now the dace has a future.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A judge is taking action against two men who took part in the occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge after Facebook photos showed they violated their release conditions by visiting the Bundy ranch in Nevada without permission.

U.S. District Judge Anna Brown has moved up Jon Ritzheimer’s date to surrender to prison from Feb. 15 to Jan. 12, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported Tuesday.

Brown ordered Montana militia leader Ryan Payne to return to home detention in Las Vegas.

She also forbade Ritzheimer from having contact with any defendant from either the Oregon or Nevada standoff cases before his prison sentence begins.

Payne received a similar order.

The two men have pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon in 2016.

Payne also faces other federal charges in Nevada along with Cliven Bundy and sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy.

The photos of Payne and Ritzheimer at the ranch, located east of Las Vegas, were discovered by a federal pretrial services officer in Oregon who notified Brown.

The photos were posted on Ritzheimer’s Facebook page.

Ritzheimer had a “no-travel restriction” on his Oregon release that only allowed him to travel from Arizona to Oregon to attend court.

Ritzheimer is also banned from posting on Facebook except to promote his motorcycle repair business.

He was given permission to stay at an Airbnb rental in Las Vegas in late December to celebrate his wedding anniversary, according to court documents.

After a mistrial in Nevada, Brown gave Payne permission to go home to Montana for Christmas.

Neither of the men was allowed to go to the ranch.

“I am concerned that defendants have taken advantage of this court’s release accommodations in their favor,” Brown wrote in an email obtained by the newspaper.

Brown decided to deal with the allegations informally instead of through formal proceedings.

Mother Nature has some catching up to do if Oregon expects to have adequate water supplies heading into summer.

Snowpack is lagging significantly across the state heading into 2018, at just 42 percent of normal levels. That is a stark contrast to last year, when January snowpacks surged to 124 percent of normal levels statewide.

Despite another La Niña winter — which usually predicts colder and wetter weather in the Pacific Northwest — temperatures are actually hovering above normal, especially in Southern Oregon. The highest levels of snowpack are in northeast Oregon, where the Umatilla, Walla Walla and Willow basins are just 55 percent of normal, and the Grande Ronde, Powder, Burnt and Imnaha basins are 53 percent of normal.

Scott Oviatt, snow survey supervisor for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, said it is still too early to tell what the water year will look like, but he would like to see more snow accumulating in the mountains.

“The closer to normal conditions, the more assurances you have adequate water supplies closer to irrigation season,” Oviatt said. “Obviously as time passes, we’ll have a better feel of what the trends and storm impacts look like.”

Not only is snowpack below normal, but overall precipitation is also down statewide at 89 percent of normal, compared to 105 percent of normal three weeks ago. The difference between this year and last year’s “snowpocalypse” has left Oviatt and weather forecasters scratching their heads.

“We’re really seeing this extreme variability in the last five to 10 years, where these trends don’t represent what we’ve seen historically,” Oviatt said.

Marilyn Lohmann, hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Pendleton, Ore., said each La Niña has its own spin, and the odds of having two winters like 2017 back to back are usually pretty slim.

Over the next three months, Lohmann said, the weather should shift back to normal temperatures and precipitation. “Sometimes we do get the bulk of our snow in that February and March time frame in the mountains,” Lohmann said. “It does look like hopefully we will be able to regain some of what we’ve lost.”

While statewide stream flows were less than 65 percent of normal at the end of December, the Oregon Water Resources Department says reservoir levels are above normal for this time of year, which may mitigate some impacts of a drier-than-usual winter.

According to OWRD, central Oregon reservoirs are between 44 and 88 percent of capacity, and eastern Oregon reservoirs continue to hover between 36 and 65 percent of capacity. Willamette and Rogue basin reservoirs also remain on track to fill.

Agriculture and forestry groups in Oregon worry the state’s Department of Environmental Quality is planning to significantly expand its authority over pesticides.

Under the policy being considered by DEQ, the agency would regulate pesticide spraying over state surface waters “whether wet or dry at the time,” according to an early draft.

It’s unclear how broadly dry waterways would be defined, but the concern is that areas where water pools in winter — such as wet fields in the Willamette Valley — would be subject to regulation during summer, critics argue.

“DEQ would be setting itself up to be the most aggressive regulator of farm and forestry practices in the U.S.,” said Mary Anne Cooper, public policy counsel for the Oregon Farm Bureau.

Regulation of pesticides over waterways by DEQ initially became an issue in 2009, when the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a federal policy exempting pesticides from regulation under the Clean Water Act.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency delegates its Clean Water Act authority to certain states, including Oregon, which developed a “general permit” for pesticide discharges in 2011.

This original policy wasn’t a problem for farmers and foresters, though, because it largely just required them to follow the EPA pesticide label and general “integrated pest management” standards, said Scott Dahlman, policy director for the Oregonians for Food and Shelter agribusiness group.

“It formalized what these guys are already doing,” Dahlman said,

“Most people were covered but didn’t know it,” added Cooper.

That original general permit expired in 2016, which prompted DEQ to begin devising an updated version.

The Oregon Farm Bureau and Oregonians for Food and Shelter are concerned by proposed drafts they’ve discussed with DEQ, which indicate dry waterways would be defined broadly, requiring many more farmers to register with the agency and submit pesticide management plans.

“We’re seeing no justification as to why this is necessary,” said Dahlman.

Even if the DEQ wouldn’t enforce the general permit as applying to every dry puddle, the program would fall under the federal Clean Water Act, which allows for private litigation over alleged violations, Cooper said.

“There would be citizen suit enforcement,” she said.

If the DEQ seriously extended its authority over pesticide spraying, that would also effectively usurp the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s jurisdiction under the agricultural water quality program, Cooper said.

Growers have been encouraged to advise ODA on water quality plans and voluntarily improve water conditions on their properties, which would be undermined by DEQ’s planned policy, she said. “That’s a big betrayal of trust for a lot of farmers.”

Ron Doughten, water quality permitting manager for DEQ, said the agency is in the process of addressing comments about the general permit.

The agency is still analyzing which pesticide applications would be considered to come from “point sources” — opening them to Clean Water Act regulation — and which waters would be covered by the permit, whether wet or dry, Doughten said.

“How and where that applies is still a part of the discussion,” he said. “We’re far from anything being settled.”

The agency plans to release its most recent draft of the permit for public comment in late winter or early spring, then finalize the policy within several weeks, Doughten said.

Beyond Toxics, an environmental group, believes Oregon’s oversight of pesticide spraying should be strengthened, said Lisa Arkin, its executive director.

“Pesticides are persistent in the environment and should be regulated as a point source pollution problem,” she said.

In meetings with the DEQ, however, the organization did not discuss regulating dry waterways as broadly as critics worry about, Arkin said. “We were talking about small streams and irrigation ditches. We were not talking about depressions in a field,” she said.

Even so, farmers should be extremely cautious about potentially contaminating well water with pesticides, some of which can persist in water for up to five years, Arkin said.

“There is so much evidence of contamination of well water in agricultural areas,” she said.

Farmers typically buy pesticides from large suppliers, or are serviced by specialized applicators, so it wouldn’t be problematic to inform them of new general permit requirements, Arkin said. “There are many ways people could be alerted to that.”

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — A horse sanctuary in western Oregon might close down by March unless it can secure financial support, its owners said.

David Kelly and his wife, Jane, started the Oregon Horse Rescue on their farm outside Eugene about five years ago and have been supporting the operation mostly by themselves, the Register-Guard reported Tuesday.

The couple pay about 90 percent of the sanctuary’s operating costs but cannot continue to provide that level of support, David Kelly said.

Donations cover 10 percent of operating costs now, but they want donations to cover 75 percent. The couple set the beginning of March as the deadline to decide if they will close.

The nonprofit has about 40 horses in its care and about a dozen up for adoption. Others who are sick, blind or unfit for riding are permanent residents.

“A lot of ours are older,” Kelly said. “They might not be rideable any more, but they are great, and deserve years of a loving, caring home.”

Caring for the unwanted horses cost the organization $330,000 in 2016, according to its annual filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

The money was used for supplies such as hay and grain, veterinary care and to pay employees, excluding the couple, who do not draw wages.

There is a big need for horse rescues in the southern Willamette Valley, said Sandy Huey, who operates a smaller horse rescue in the Eugene area.

“It’s pretty overwhelming,” she said.

Horse rescues hope to receive enough donations to stay afloat, but Huey said it’s not uncommon for operators to pay out of their own pockets.

The USDA proposes to let the cranberry industry withhold 15 percent of the 2017 crop to halt a slide in prices paid farmers and handlers.

Cranberries, whole and in juice concentrate, would be diverted to charities, animal feed and other uses that won’t add to a supply that’s roughly twice the demand.

“With the laws of economics, it has to help. How much it helps is another question,” Bandon, Ore., cranberry grower Charlie Ruddell said.

The proposal, published Tuesday in the Federal Register, was based on a recommendation by the Cranberry Marketing Committee, made up of growers and handlers. The order would apply to about 1,100 farmers and 65 handlers, mostly in Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Wisconsin.

The marketing committee also has asked the USDA to mandate a 25 percent reduction in the 2018 crop. A USDA spokesman said the agency is still considering the request.

Since the 2017 crop has been harvested, handlers would be charged with disposing of excess fruit. Handlers would be able to meet up to half their obligation by diverting fruit concentrate, a byproduct of making sweetened, dried cranberries.

The marketing order would not apply to organic cranberries, a small percentage of the market. Handlers who receive fewer than 12.5 million pounds of cranberries or dispose of all their fruit also would be exempt.

Cranberry farmers have been producing record crops, but demand has been fairly flat. The cranberry surplus has doubled in the past five years. Without volume controls, the 2017 crop would swell the inventory to 115 percent of the yearly demand of approximately 950 million pounds, the committee estimated.

Some farmers who were receiving 30 cents a pound in 2011 are now getting 10 cents a pound, while the cost of production has risen to 35 cents a pound, according to the marketing committee,

Neither the committee nor the USDA projected how a 15 percent cut in the 2017 crop would impact prices.

Long Beach, Wash., farmer Malcolm McPhail said the reduction could boost prices by $1 or $2 a barrel. A barrel equals 100 pounds.

“I’m all for it. We’ve got to do something to get things under control,” he said. “It’ll take doing something for next year’s crop, too.”

Even with the a 15 percent reduction in the 2017 crop, the surplus would remain large. The volume reduction would not apply to about 210 million pounds of foreign-grown cranberries expected to be imported into the U.S.

Volume reduction is a short-term step to cut the surplus, said Tom Lochner, executive director of the Wisconsin Cranberry Growers Association, whose state produces roughly two-thirds of U.S. cranberries.

“The long-term solution has to be increasing markets to match the supply and demand,” he said.

The USDA said it does not expect volume reduction to reduce consumption. Retail prices have little effect on consumer demand for cranberries, according to the agency.

The cranberry industry, which can’t easily ramp down production in bogs to fit the market, has turned to volume controls before, most recently in 2001. The USDA rejected the marketing committee’s recommendation to withhold a portion of the 2014 crop. The agency said it was concerned the committee was colluding with Canadian producers.

USDA-approved volume reductions are intended to stabilize prices for farmers. Critics, such as the Heritage Foundation, contend volume controls interfere with the marketplace and amount to price fixing.

The USDA will take public comments on the proposal until Feb. 1.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown will apparently not ask state agencies to reopen their investigation into the killing of a female wolf Oct. 27 in Union County, despite concerns from several conservation groups.

Brian Scott, 38, of Clackamas, reported that he shot the wolf in self-defense while elk hunting in the Starkey Wildlife Management Unit west of La Grande. The wolf, he said, was charging at him. Wildlife advocates dispute his claim, pointing to the bullet’s trajectory and other discrepancies in the physical evidence.

A coalition of groups — 18 in all — wrote to Gov. Brown asking her to reopen the state’s investigation, In her reply, dated Dec. 1, Brown said she has confidence in the outcome after consulting with the Oregon State Police, Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife and Union County District Attorney’s Office.

“While Oregon is working toward wolf recovery, any wolf mortality is a serious concern that deserves a full and rigorous investigation,” Brown wrote.

Scott told investigators he feared for his life when he shot the wolf at a distance of 27 yards. He described seeing two animals flank behind him, while a third came running directly toward him.

The groups, however, argue that the bullet passed through the wolf’s shoulders, perhaps indicating it was standing broadside to Scott and not charging. Scott has said he cannot explain the trajectory, and does not know if the wolf veered sideways before he shot. The Union County District Attorney’s Office declined to press charges.

Steve Pedery, conservation director for Oregon Wild, said the group will continue to put pressure on the governor and agencies regarding wolf poaching investigations, and ensure those protections are taken seriously.

“We now have, I think by anyone’s standards, an epidemic of wolf poaching around the state,” Pedery said. “That’s a situation that should be deeply concerning for anyone who cares about wildlife in this state.”

In her letter, Gov. Brown reiterated that killing wolves is illegal everywhere in Oregon, and remains a federal crime west of highways 395, 78 and 95.

“Too many wolves have been found shot in Oregon where the shooters have not been identified,” she wrote. “Oregon State Police is appropriately investigating those cases, supporting their federal counterparts, identifying poachers and ready to assist in their prosecution.”

ODFW is also in the process of revising its Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, which Brown said will “keep wolves on the path to recovery across the entire state, focus on efforts to reduce wolf-livestock conflict rather than merely responding to it, and incorporate the best current science into its management practices.” Oregon had 112 confirmed wolves as of the end of 2016. An updated 2017 population report is expected in March.

Organic blueberry growers can improve their bottom line by planting in raised beds, using a plastic weed mat for mulching and lower rates of fertilizer, according to research from Oregon State University.

Bernadine Strik, OSU berry crops professor, led a 10-year study to determine best management practices for organic blueberries, which was recently published in the journal HortScience.

More than half of all organic blueberries grown in the U.S. come from Oregon and Washington, Strik said. The Oregon Blueberry Commission initially funded her project in 2006, looking for additional support in organic production.

“The market is very strong for organic fruit specifically from the Pacific Northwest,” Strik said. “We have such a good climate for growing organic blueberries.”

At the time, just 2 percent of the region’s blueberries were certified organic. The total now is as high as 20 percent, making the Northwest the largest producer of organic blueberries in the world.

“I don’t see that changing,” Strik said. “I think that’s a real advantage to our region.”

Strik conducted her study at the university’s North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora, planting two varieties of blueberries — Duke, an early season berry, and Liberty, which ripens later in the year.

Strik also had the 1-acre field certified by Oregon Tilth, ensuring she would face the same challenges as organic growers with record keeping and inspection.

“This was my first certified organic study,” Strik said. “And it’s still the only certified organic blueberry research trial in the world.”

Over the course of a decade, Strik found that Liberty blueberries yielded 22 percent higher in raised beds versus flat ground, which has proven to be a no-brainer move for organic and conventional growers alike.

As for weed control, Strik looked at a few different options for organic growers, including sawdust mulch, yard debris topped with sawdust and a black plastic weed mat.

Though it did carry some drawbacks, such as increased soil temperature and field mice, the mat proved to be the lowest cost option. Sawdust mulch cost nearly twice as much, Strik said, and almost three times as much for the sawdust and yard debris combination.

“The higher cost was because there were more weeds that needed to be pulled,” Strik said.

Finally, the study looked at organic fertilizers, which can cost 10 to 20 times as much as conventional products. Strik applied both a feather meal and liquid fish at rates ranging from 25 to 65 pounds per acre on the low end, and 50 to 125 pounds per acre on the high end.

Liberty berries showed little difference between the low and high rates of fertilizer, Strik said, indicating a huge cost savings to organic growers. Duke berries, meanwhile, fared best with higher levels of cheaper feather meal, and were especially sensitive to liquid fish. Strik suspects that has to do with higher levels of potassium.

Bryan Ostlund, administrator of the Oregon Blueberry Commission, said growers are seeing more acreage being planted or converted to organic statewide, and Strik’s research gives growers the tools they need to be successful.

“It’s a highly competitive market,” Ostlund said. “Growers are always asking questions, trying to increase those yields.”

The rezoning effort sets up a potentially major shift in how Oregon — known for its conservative land use laws — manages a growing population.

Some rural counties complain that Oregon’s laws that protect farms and forest lands are too restrictive. If this plan in Douglas County moves forward, it could set a precedent for counties that want to build on land currently set aside for farming.

“What we are trying to do is identify a way to provide a little more flexibility to more rural jurisdictions to allow land that is of low or no value to commercial farming or forestry to be used in an alternative method,” said Douglas County Planning Director Keith Cubic. 

The county analyzed the acres in question and concluded that they’re not suitable for most types of farming.

“We looked at soils, viticultural (grazing) boundaries,” Cubic said. “All of those factors were put together before they were disqualifying features.”

That’s a claim disputed by Greg Holmes, food systems programs director for 1,000 Friends Of Oregon.

“This is the type of land where our cattle and hay production happens, where our wine grapes happen, and other high-value crops to the state of Oregon happen,” Holmes said. He pointed out there’s land with similar soil types and characteristics across the state. 

“It may be relatively less productive than some other lands, but if we were to suddenly take this type of land and call it non-resource land anymore and then multiply that across all the counties across the state ... we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural lands,” Holmes said.  

Supporters and opponents of the proposal both say it could set a precedent for land use in rural counties. And other counties are watching this process carefully.

County leaders from Deschutes and Jefferson counties in central Oregon submitted letters of support for the idea to Douglas County leaders.  

“Deschutes County is interested in pursuing a similar program,” reads the letter signed by the county’s three commissioners. “We recognize that a subset of resource lands are not accurately designated in our region as well.” 

The plan has also attracted the attention of Oregon’s Department of Land Conservation and Development. The agency flagged a number of concerns with the proposal in a letter to Douglas County. 

Douglas County commissioners could approve the plan this week. But they may also delay the decision to allow for more public input.

If the initial plan is approved by the commissioners, the idea would still need to go through a legislative process or a quasi-judicial process before the land could actually be rezoned, Cubic said. While he expressed support for Oregon’s land-use system, he believes it could be more flexible. 

“There’s land that’s neither farm nor forest that is not sufficiently addressed by the statewide planning program,” Cubic said.  “So our focus is first on those lands.”

The Idaho, Oregon and Washington wheat commissions are helping pay for a new technician to help promote the use of Northwest wheat in South America.

Each commission will provide $30,000 per year to U.S. Wheat Associates for five years.

Long-term demand on that continent could potentially double the current demand for Northwest wheat, said Mike Miller, president of U.S. Wheat Associates and a Ritzville, Wash., farmer. He pointed to “huge” demand in Brazil and potential demand in Chile, Colombia and Peru.

“The South American market has turned into as big a market now as the Pacific Rim-Asian market,” said Darren Padget, board member of the Oregon Wheat Commission and a Sherman County farmer. Asia buys about 43 percent of U.S. exports, he said, and South and Central America about equal that percentage.

South American customers who have visited the U.S. say they need a technician to determine how to best use wheat from the U.S., and the U.S. needs to have a presence, Miller said.

The goal is to increase sales for all classes of U.S. wheat and grow the market presence.

Padget said the commissions heard about the need for a technician during a U.S. Wheat global staff meeting in Colorado last May.

The three state commissions look for projects on which they can cooperate, Padget said.

Having somebody on site is important if you’ve got a problem, he said. It could give U.S. wheat an advantage over wheat from such nations as Australia and Canada.

U.S. Wheat is looking for the right fit for the position. The job description is not completely set, Padget said.

“They’re trying not to put themselves in a box too much if the right person comes along,” he said.

Padget hopes to have a technician in place by the Latin American Wheat Buyers Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in July.

U.S. Wheat will employ the technician and the commissions will provide support for travel, equipment and other needs, he said.

“I’m kind of excited about it — it’s a great project the three states are wholeheartedly behind,” he said. “I think it’s going to do a lot of good and it’s a good use of grower dollars.”

A legal dispute has erupted over replacing dwellings on farmland in Oregon due to an ambiguously written provision of the state’s land use laws.

The specifics of the controversy are convoluted, but it centers on whether Oregon law allows landowners in “exclusive farm use” zones to rebuild dwellings that were torn down or destroyed by a natural disaster many years or even decades ago.

Landwatch Lane County, a farmland preservation group, believes that rebuilding after such a long interval is prohibited and goes against the intent of the Oregon Legislature.

If such delayed replacements were permitted, it would result in “non-conforming uses plastered all over EFU land,” said Lauri Segel-Vaccher, the group’s legal analyst.

“Are you really going to have a commercial farm and forest economy, or are you converting farm and forest land into residential uses?” she said.

Kay King, a landowner near Florence, Ore., wants to rebuild three dwellings on 100 acres of farmland that were removed more than 20 years ago.

Rebuilding the old homes will allow for the next generation of farmers to live on the land, but it’s unlikely to have widespread impacts, said Mike Gelardi, King’s attorney.

“I think that’s overblown,” Gelardi said.

The matter has ended up before the Oregon Court of Appeals, which is scheduled to hold oral arguments in the case on Jan. 9.

In 2013, Oregon lawmakers passed a bill that made it easier for farmers to replace buildings that had become dilapidated, or that had been destroyed or demolished.

The law basically stated that dwellings on farmland could be replaced as long as they once had modern amenities, such as indoor plumbing, electricity and heat. Previously, dwellings could only be replaced if they currently had those features.

Another requirement pertained to whether property taxes had been paid on the property, and how recently. This awkwardly-worded provision is at the heart of the legal dispute.

A permitting authority can allow replacement dwellings as long as they were subject to property taxes for the lesser of:

“A) The previous five property tax years unless the value of the dwelling was eliminated as a result of the destruction, or demolition in the case of restoration, of the dwelling; or

(B) From the time when the dwelling was erected upon or affixed to the land and became subject to assessment as described in ORS 307.010 unless the value of the dwelling was eliminated as a result of the destruction, or demolition in the case of restoration, of the dwelling.”

The government of Lane County interpreted this passage to mean that dwellings can be rebuilt at any time after they were eliminated, regardless of the five-year property tax rule.

After the county approved King’s application to rebuild the three homes, Landwatch Lane County objected to the decision before Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals, or LUBA.

The board rejected the county’s interpretation and overturned the dwelling approval, rejecting the concept that demolished or destroyed homes could be rebuilt after an indefinite period of time.

The five-year period was established as a maximum “look-back,” according to LUBA. In other words, dwellings could only be rebuilt if they were subject to property taxes within the past five years until they were destroyed or demolished within that time window. The provision also applied to homes that were built and taxed less than five years before they had to be replaced.

King has challenged this decision before the Oregon Court of Appeals, arguing the ruling ignores the state government’s own interpretation of the law.

In regulations that enacted the law, the Land Conservation and Development Commission stated that destroyed or demolished homes can be rebuilt “notwithstanding” the five-year property tax requirement, said Gelardi, the landowner’s attorney.

“It’s certainly confusingly worded in the statute, but that’s the intent,” he said.

COOS BAY – Southwestern Oregon Community College announces the names of students who excelled fall term 2017-2018. These students are being recognized with placement on the college’s Dean’s List (3.0-3.49 GPA in at least 12 credits), Honor Roll (3.5-3.99 GPA…

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