Freres Lumber Co. of Lyons, Ore., has received a $250,000 U.S. Forest Service grant that will help it gear up for what the company sees as an emerging market: Using wood products in tall building construction.

The company will apply the money to buying and installing a computer numeric code (CNC) milling machine for its $23 million Mass Plywood Panel plant that is under construction in Linn County.

Mass plywood panels, like cross-laminated timbers, show strong potential for use in tall wooden buildings. Engineered timber panels can be used for walls and floors, beams and more, and are touted as a carbon-neutral replacement for concrete and steel. Tall wooden buildings are under construction in Portland, and Oregon State University’s forestry and engineering programs recently teamed with the University of Oregon’s architecture program to form the TallWood Design Institute at the OSU campus. It’s the nation’s first research partnership to focus on the advance of structural wood products.

The Freres company’s Mass Plywood Plant, set to open in January 2018, will be capable of producing panels that are up to 24 inches thick, 12 feet wide and 48 feet long. The CNC machine uses computer-aided design and machining technology to saw door and window spaces in the panels, which are made from layers of veneer.

Rob Freres, executive vice president, believes his company’s product is a better option than Cross Laminated Timbers, which are made from joined pieces of lumber.

Mass plywood panels require less wood fiber, weigh less and are more versatile, he said.

“It does have great promise,” Freres said.

He said veneer for the panels can be produced from small trees, the “suppressed understory” that can be harvested from public forests without the controversy that accompanies old-growth logging.

The panel plant, under construction halfway between Lyons and Mill City, also provides a way to revitalize rural Oregon, Freres said. It will use “cranes and robots” to move the large panels, but will employ 20 people per shift, he said.

“By adding value to the products we’re making today, it’s making their jobs more secure,” because the technology and the new product move the company away from the commodity market and give it more control over pricing, Freres said.

“It is exciting,” he said. “We’re part of a very cyclical business, and as such we’ve been very conservative financially. We’ve internally financed this so we don’t have bankers keeping us awake at night.”

While confident about the company’s move, Freres said Oregon’s timber industry as a whole won’t recover until changes are made in the management of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management timber. The company has bought public timber since 1936 and the Forest Service and BLM have been on a “thinning regime” for the past 25 years, he said. The company adjusted its manufacturing processes to make use of what’s available and to stay competitive, he said.

“All of this takes forest management and the harvest of trees,” Freres said.

BANDON — Grab your grocery bag and hoof it down the farm trail.

The U.S. Forest Service acknowledged there isn’t much it can do about a “Rainbow Family” gathering expected to bring thousands of counter-culture types to the Malheur National Forest in Eastern Oregon over the next two weeks.

The organizers don’t have a permit, and the Forest Service’s response to that has angered area residents such as rancher Loren Stout, who lives near the gathering spot and has a federal grazing permit on land adjacent to it.

He said the Forest Service would punish ranchers if they ignored permit requirements and tapped a spring for drinking water like the Rainbow Family has done. Stout said it took him two years to get a National Environmental Policy Act permit to drill an exploratory mining hole.

“People are furious over this,” Stout said. “Not because it’s a friggin’ bunch of hippies, it’s the different standards.”

An estimated 500 to 700 people have already set up camp at Flagtail Meadow off of Forest Road 24, near the towns of Seneca and John Day. The 46th annual National Rainbow Gathering could draw 15,000 to 20,000 July 1-7, and is being held without a permit required of anyone else who would want to stage such an event on federal forest land.

Ryan Nehl, deputy Forest Service supervisor on the Malheur and the agency administrator for the event, planned to take a permit form to organizers at the gathering spot June 21.

“I don’t have a lot of faith they will sign it,” Nehl said. In that case, the Forest Service will impose an operational plan for the gathering to follow, and could take action if those conditions are violated.

But Nehl said the Forest Service will not attempt to stop the gathering.

“It’s a risk-based decision,” he said. “To try and kick them off the land would present a danger to employees and the public.”

The event is put on by the Rainbow Family of Living Light, a loosely-organized group that annually picks a spot for its gathering and invites like-minded people to attend for multiple days of music, camping, dancing and communal hanging out. The gatherings have been held since the 1970s.

On a Facebook page set up for this year’s event https://www.facebook.com/groups/246284825703234/, one person posted, “If we were in control we would all have free energy, everyone would be housed and fed and we’d be having song circles every day.”

“What is the pants policy at this event?” another poster asked. He was assured that nudity should be expected.

In other postings, people urged fellow “family” members not to upset locals by panhandling or “gas jugging,” meaning to beg for gasoline. Others caution against “spanging,” a slang reference to asking for spare change. A stabbing among Rainbow members during a meeting in the Umatilla National Forest earlier in June has area residents worried about what the larger gathering will bring.

A community meeting was scheduled June 23, in John Day to let residents ask questions of Forest Service and law enforcement personnel. The meeting is from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the Juniper Hall Conference Room of the Malheur National Forest Headquarters, 431 Patterson Bridge Road.

The Forest Service mobilized an incident command team that includes 30 agency law enforcement officers from around the country, and has marked areas such as creeks that campers should stay out of. Oregon State Police, BLM officers, Grant County sheriff’s deputies and John Day police are available to help the incident team, Nehl said.

Meanwhile, rancher Stout said the Forest Service is “trying to put grazers out of business” but lets the Rainbow bunch do what they want. He said the gathering spot is a major Native American archaeological site and the area has eight springs that could be damaged.

He said the “takeover of federal ground” is no different than the Bundy group’s occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters. “I hate to say that,” Stout said.

SALEM — Oregon’s food processors and wineries are alarmed by a bill to reduce the maximum number of hours that manufacturing employees can work per week.

The proposal originated as an attempt to clarify how to calculate overtime paid to Oregon’s manufacturing workers, which had recently been in dispute.

However, the most recent version of the bill being considered by Oregon lawmakers would limit the maximum work week to 72 hours for manufacturing jobs, which food processors and wineries argue will impair their ability to handle the influx of crops during seasonal peaks. Work weeks are currently limited to 91 hours.

Paying overtime is expensive, so food processors would prefer to have enough workers as to avoid lengthy work weeks, said J.L. Wilson, a representative of the Northwest Food Processors Association.

However, such companies are often located where crops are grown, not where there’s an abundance of people, so they don’t have a sufficient labor pool from which to pull, he said.

As a result, these processors must rely on existing employees working longer during periods of peak production, Wilson said during a June 20 hearing on House Bill 3458.

“This is going to fundamentally disadvantage rural Oregon,” he said of the proposed limit. “They wouldn’t do it if they didn’t have to, in many instances.”

Similarly, harvest irregularities can force growers to suddenly provide wineries with larger amounts of grapes than expected, resulting in unpredictably heavy work loads, said Ellen Brittan of Brittan Vineyards in McMinnville, Ore.

Wineries have little choice but to extend work hours to prevent the fruit from rotting, she said. “You just have to deal with it.”

Some workers at Brittan Vineyards have logged as many as 86 hours per week, but they do so willingly to maximize overtime pay, she said.

“They want to be sure they can make a significant amount of money during this short window of opportunity,” Brittan said. “We have people fighting for those overtime hours.”

Not all Oregon employers are upset about the most recent version of HB 3458 before lawmakers.

Associated Oregon Industries, a non-profit representing businesses, believes the 72-hour work week will be challenging but is acceptable as long as overtime rules are clarified.

Last year, the state’s Bureau of Labor and Industries changed its guidance for manufacturing employers, finding that workers must be paid for both daily and weekly overtime hours combined. Traditionally, they simply had to pay whichever amount was greater.

For example, someone who worked 11 hours for two days and eight hours for three days spent a total of 46 hours at work that week, earning six hours of weekly overtime pay.

Since the person also exceeded the 10-hour daily cap twice, that counted toward two daily overtime hours.

Employers would usually just pay the worker for six hours of weekly overtime, but under BOLI’s new guidance, they must combine the daily and weekly overtime hours to pay for eight hours of total overtime.

A bill originally proposed in the Senate amended the law to allow employers to return to the traditional overtime approach, but groups representing workers objected to the change.

As a result, the proposal resurfaced in the House as HB 3458 with the addition of a work week limit of 60 hours.

Under an amendment to the bill currently before the House Rules Committee, that limit was revised to 72 hours per week for 90 days under hardship circumstances.

BEND, Ore. (AP) — Federal and county forestry officials are concerned that this year’s large outbreak of the invasive cheatgrass could lead to increased wildfires.

Deschutes County Forester Ed Keith says a wet winter and spring has led to taller, thicker patches of the grass. Cheatgrass is common throughout the Western U.S. It dries out and becomes very flammable around summer after sprouting anew starting in December.

The Bend Bulletin reports that the grass tends to grow along roadways, which in 2015 sparked a 105-square-mile wildfire when a vehicle struck the grass.

Keith says cheatgrass is in Deschutes County’s lowest-priority class in part because it’s so widespread. He said he talks to landowners about how to manage growth on their properties, but doesn’t focus on removing it because of its abundance.

The first picture I am sharing was taken 60 years ago (1957) of people getting prepared to take part in speedboat races at Floras Lake. My guess is that the building on the left side of the picture is the…

Litigation has been halted in three lawsuits over Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument while its expansion is reviewed by the Trump administration.

Timber companies and county governments have filed one lawsuit in Oregon and two others in Washington, D.C., challenging the Obama administration’s decision to nearly double the monument’s size from roughly 53,000 acres to 100,000 acres.

Under the Trump administration, that designation and numerous others are being re-evaluated by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who’s expected to submit a report on the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument by Aug. 24.

Due to the possibility the “designation could ultimately be changed in ways that would affect this litigation,” attorneys for the Interior Department believe that “deferral of further judicial proceedings is thus warranted,” according to a court document.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Marke Clarke in Medford, Ore., and Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon have granted the federal government’s motions to suspend litigation in all three cases until Sept. 24, a month after Zinke’s report is due.

While the lawsuits largely center on the expansion’s effect on logging, the national monument’s larger boundaries have also upset ranchers who graze cattle in the area.

According to the plaintiffs, restrictions on logging in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument are unlawful because much of the new acreage is governed by the O&C Act of 1937, which requires sustainable production.

Apart from the loss of harvestable forestland, timber companies worry the expansion will draw more complaints about logging on private property adjacent to the monument or surrounded by it.

Counties that receive a portion of logging proceeds, meanwhile, are concerned about reduced revenues.

While grazing would be allowed within the monument, ranchers worry the designation will effectively curtail the practice due to skewed environmental studies.

Several environmental groups have intervened as defendants in the Oregon lawsuit because they were concerned the Trump administration wouldn’t vigorously defend the expansion.

Similar motions were pending in the two Washington, D.C., cases when the litigation was suspended.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Steelhead fish in Santiam and Willamette rivers in northwestern Oregon have hit low levels not seen in over 40 years, fisheries managers said.

There are typically about 5,600 wild winter steelhead crossing through Willamette Falls annually, the Statesman Journal reported Friday. This year, it was around 800, officials said.

Numbers for hatchery-raised summer steelhead also came out low. This year, the count came out to 1,100 compared with the regular average of 18,000 fish per year.

These are numbers that have never been seen since the fish counts began in the 1970s, officials said.

“The steelhead run has basically crashed,” said Dave Carpenter, a fishing guide on the North Santiam River. “We’ve seen ups and downs over the years, as you do any place. But this is the first year we’ve seen such a dramatic drop. We’ve never seen anything even close to this bad.”

The low counts are caused by years of poor ocean conditions and drought, said Bruce McIntosh with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Those factors have limited the steelhead’s food supply, McIntosh said.

“The fish we’ve seen coming back are often skinny and clearly struggling to make a living out there,” he said.

Sea lions have also become a significant threat to the fish, McIntosh said.

Wildlife officials found that sea lions snacked on 20 to 25 percent of this year’s steelhead run.

Even though ocean conditions have improved, McIntosh predicts steelhead fish runs may continue to be smaller over the next two years.

Carpenter said he is doing his part to protect the fish. He said he cancelled five scheduled steelhead trips and has stopped advertising future trips, even though they were a significant part of his business.

Wildlife officials have no immediate plans to curtail fishing, McIntosh said.

Tuesdays

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21

Capital Press

The appearance of voracious Mormon crickets in the Arlington area of north central Oregon prompted a June 16 meeting of townspeople with state agriculture and Oregon State University Extension representatives.

Officials hasten to say the insects are neither Mormon nor crickets, but rather a grasshopper relative called the shield-backed katydid. The more common name dates to when the pests leveled the crops of Mormon settlers in the Salt Lake area of Utah in the 1800s.

By either name, they can overwhelm crops, fields and gardens. They don’t fly, but grow up to 3 inches long and crawl in mass formations that can be startling.

Area wheat farmer Walter Powell said he was driving near Arlington recently and “All of a sudden it was like the road was moving” there were so many bugs crossing.

He said they also affected play at the annual wheat growers tournament at China Creek Golf Course in Arlington. On the fifth green, Powell said, players had to clear insects from their putting lines. He said Mormon crickets will eat anything; during the golf tourney, he saw some eating companions that had been crushed by golf cart wheels. “They’re cannibals,” Powell said.

That’s true, said Helmuth Rogg,an entomologist and director of the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s Plant Program Area. Rogg said the insect’s cannibalistic nature may explain its fabled marching behavior, in which hordes of Mormon crickets move en masse. Ones that falter or get injured are fair game for those coming along behind, “They move on so they don’t get eaten,” he said.

But Rogg said their presence in the area is not a new phenomenon and there’s no indication the population has increased. The insects thrive in the open sage country around Arlington, he said, and may have taken a wrong turn.

“It sounds like now Mormon crickets are marching into town,” he said. “It’s nothing to be concerned about.”

He said Mormon crickets can decimate wheat fields and pastures, however. A growth inhibitor insecticide such as Dimilin works on immature Mormon crickets, but the adults marching on Arlington are best countered with carbaryl, a poison bait marketed as Sevin Dust.

Rogg said Mormon crickets also are a problem in the Jordan Valley area along the Idaho border. Grasshoppers, meanwhile, are causing problems in the Steens Mountain area and in Malheur County, in Southeast Oregon.

March 4, 1942 - June 4, 2017

Two hard cider makers from Montana — yes, they grow apples in Montana — swept the top awards in the fifth annual Portland International Cider Cup.

Western Cider Co. won a gold medal and the overall best of show award for its McIntosh “heritage dry” cider. Montana Ciderworks won a gold medal and was runnerup best of show for its North Fork Traditional, entered in the “modern sweet” category. Western Cider Co. also was selected New Cidery of the Year. It is based in Missoula, Mont., and makes hard cider from its orchard in the Bitterroot Valley.

The competition included more than 150 ciders from more than 40 cideries in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia. This was the second year in a row that a Montana cidery won the top prize. Entries were sampled in April by 45 judges with experience in the industry, and the results were announced during the cup event earlier this month.

In a news release, Northwest Cider Association Executive Director Emily Ritchie said the Pacific Northwest is the largest cider market in the U.S. for per capita consumption, and is home to 25 percent of the country’s cidermakers.

Other gold medal category winners were:

• Square Mile, Oregon — Spur and Vine, hopped cider category.

• Square Mile, Oregon — Ginger Pear, spiced/herbed.

• Swift Cider, Oregon — Peach Oak, wood/oaked.

• 2 Towns Ciderhouse, Oregon — Traditions 2015 Riverwood, modern dry.

• 2 Towns Ciderhouse, Oregon — Flight of the Kiwi, fruit.

• Eden Valley Orchards, Oregon — Pear House Cider, modern perry.

In other awards, 2 Towns Ciderhouse, of Corvallis, Ore., was named Large Cidery of the Year, and Montana Ciderworks, of Darby, Mont., was chosen Small Cidery of the Year.

VANCOUVER, Wash. — The Washington State Department of Agriculture will put out more traps in southwest Washington this summer to detect Japanese beetles, a strong-flying and leaf-eating pest found in abundance last summer across the Columbia River in Oregon.

Unlike other Western states, Washington has never had an outbreak of the invasive insect. Last year, WSDA trapped just three Japanese beetles — all at airports in King County.

But the Oregon Department of Agriculture detected a record 369 Japanese beetles in Cedar Mill, a suburb of Portland. ODA has just finished spreading a granular insecticide, Acelepryn, at more than 2,400 residences to kill larvae. ODA obtained a court order to ensure it could get on every property.

Washington has never had to conduct an eradication campaign for Japanese beetles, though it has experience in spraying for gypsy moths, another invasive species that like the Japanese beetle is widespread in the East but has so far been fended off in the West.

“I’m not sure which would be worse, but I know the Japanese beetle would be bad because we’re such an agricultural state,” said Rian Wojahn, WSDA’s eradication coordinator. “It’s a turf pest, and it’s a plant pest. That’s why it’s such a bad pest.”

The USDA has estimated that nationwide Japanese beetles cause $460 million in damage annually.

As grubs, the insect feeds on grass roots. The insects emerge above ground as flying beetles for two months in the summer and attack flowers, fruits and ornamental plants. Japanese beetles are so attracted to roses that traps are baited with the scent of roses.

ODA estimated that a Japanese beetle infestation would cause $43 million worth of damage annually.

Although the judge’s order applied to about 200 properties, ODA spokesman Bruce Pokarney said Thursday that only two landowners could be described as “real holdouts.”

In the end, they attested to their sensitivity to chemicals, and ODA agreed to use an insecticide similar to the organic pesticide that it sprays from the air over residences to eradicate gypsy moths. Pokarney said the alternative insecticide is less effective and more expensive than the chemical used elsewhere.

The operation ended June 7 and went well, he said. “It’s been amazing how this community has recognized the threat of Japanese beetles.”

The insecticide won’t kill the generation of Japanese beetles about to emerge, but is expected to begin thinning the population. Eradication may take four more years, according to ODA.

ODA opted not to spray foliage to kill the insects as beetles. “It would be very intrusive to landowners, and we think we can (eradicate the insects) this way,” Pokarney said.

WSDA plans to set out 325 traps in Clark, Cowlitz, Klickitat, Lewis and Wahkiakum counties, more than triple the usual number for southwest Washington. “Now that they’re close, it could be that some eradication is on the horizon, so we’re definitely staying vigilant,” Wojahn said.

SALEM — Farmers can pay the minimum wage to piece-rate employees who miss work due to illness under a bill Oregon lawmakers passed Thursday.

Senate Bill 299, approved by the House 38-21 after earlier passing the Senate unanimously, resolves some of the confusion that’s dogged Oregon’s paid sick time law since 2015.

As interpreted by the state Bureau of Labor and Industries, the statute required growers to calculate a “regular rate of pay” to compensate piece-rate workers for sick time.

The problem is workers are often paid varying rates per pound for different crops, which means their hourly wage changes over time.

This fluctuation created a conundrum for farmers, who were uncertain when the “regular rate of pay” was established.

Should a worker be paid based on the previous week’s earnings, during the harvest of a higher-value crop?

Or is the “regular rate of pay” based on average rates earned by other workers when the sick employee was missing, when a lower-value crop was picked?

Although BOLI recommended basing sick time wages on the previous week’s earnings, farmers could still face lawsuits from workers who disagreed with that interpretation.

Under SB 299, the statute clarifies that sick piece-rate employees can be paid the minimum wage unless they have a predetermined hourly, weekly or monthly wage.

Provisions in the bill also help distinguish between farms that must pay workers for sick time and those that can provide it without pay.

Throughout much of the state, 40 hours of sick time must be paid by employers with 10 workers or more, while those with a smaller workforce must still provide those 40 hours but without compensation. In Portland, that threshold is set at six employees.

Business owners and their family members weren’t supposed to contribute to this employee count, but BOLI determined that they still count as workers if they fill out a federal “W-2” form for tax purposes.

The newly passed bill exempts business owners — those who have at least 15 percent ownership in a company — and their spouses and children from the employee count.

The provision is important to multi-generational farms that have family members working on them, said Jenny Dresler, state public policy director for the Oregon Farm Bureau, which supports SB 299.

“They don’t necessarily consider themselves employees, but rather managers of the farm,” said Dresler.

Setting the ownership threshold at 15 percent was necessary to overcome objections from the bill’s critics, who feared that companies would list employees as owners to circumvent the sick pay requirement, she said.

“That was probably one of the most contentious pieces,” Dresler said.

Uncertainty over growers who participate in seasonal farmers’ markets in Portland is also relieved by SB 299.

The worry was that farmers who normally operate outside Portland but regularly sell produce within its borders would become subject to the city’s lower six-employee sick time threshold.

The bill makes clear that such temporary locations don’t count as Portland businesses.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — An organization representing U.S. beet and cane sugar farmers says it supports a revised agreement to resolve the illegal dumping of subsidized Mexican sugar onto the U.S. market.

In 2014 Mexico and the U.S. reached an agreement, in lieu of protective tariffs, limiting the amount and type of sugar Mexico could export into the U.S.

Based on U.S. growers’ concerns that the agreement failed to address the glut of Mexican sugar on the market and increase U.S. prices, the countries recently reached a tentative agreement setting higher minimum prices for the sale of Mexican sugar into the U.S. and requiring that a greater percentage of Mexican sugar be shipped in an unrefined form to meet demand at U.S. refineries.

Leaders of the American Sugar Alliance said they liked many aspects of the proposed updated settlement but couldn’t support it. They explained Mexico has the right to supply all U.S. sugar needs when its own production and existing agreements with other countries are insufficient to meet demand. The Alliance argued the original version of the settlement update would open a loophole allowing Mexico to decide the form of sugar to send the U.S. — refined or unrefined — to fill unmet demand.

ASA spokesman Phillip Hayes said in a June 15 press release his organization will now support the agreement because the Department of Commerce has tightened it to address the loophole.

President Donald Trump “has said repeatedly that trade agreements and U.S. trade laws don’t work without strong enforcement,” Hayes said in the press release. “For too long, Mexico has been allowed to sidestep our trade laws, but those days are over.”

Based on price declines following sugar dumping, ASA estimates Mexico cost U.S. sugar producers $2 billion during 2013 and 2014 combined, and another $2 billion since the original agreement was signed.

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) — Future accidental radiation releases at the largest U.S. site of waste from nuclear weapons production are likely following back-to-back emergency evacuations of workers in May and June because aging infrastructure is breaking down, the top Energy Department official at the site told The Associated Press.

Adding to the likelihood of more nuclear mishaps at the sprawling Hanford Nuclear Reservation is inadequate government funding to quickly clean up the millions of gallons of toxic nuclear waste at the site, said Doug Shoop, who runs the department’s operations office at Hanford.

Hanford has an annual budget of $2.3 billion for cleanup but Shoop said it will cost at least $100 billion to clean up the highly toxic radioactive and chemical wastes on the 580-square mile site which produced up to 70 percent of the plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal since it was established in World War II.

“The infrastructure is not going to last long enough for the cleanup,” Shoop said in an interview this week. “It will be another 50 years before it is all demolished.”

Shoop made the comments after hundreds of Hanford workers were evacuated May 9 when the roof of a 1950s rail tunnel storing a lethal mix of waste from plutonium production collapsed. Tests show no radiation was released.

Then, on June 8, demolition work at a 1940s plutonium plant sent 350 workers seeking cover inside. Radiation was emitted but not deemed at a level harmful to people.

More money would lead to a faster cleanup, Shoop said. But President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for next year includes a $120 million cut for Hanford.

The official deadline for cleaning up Hanford is 2060, but Shoop said so much infrastructure at the site is deteriorating that “some facilities are not going to withstand that time.”

The site’s cleanup began in 1989 and critics have accused regulators of allowing the U.S. government to delay cleanup deadlines by decades, putting lives and the environment at risk.

“Every year that we don’t have an earthquake ... has been just luck,” said Gerry Pollet, a Washington state legislator who represents a liberal Seattle district, about 200 miles from Hanford.

Shoop said about half of the site is free of pollution. And parts of Hanford make up the new Manhattan Project National Historical Park, where visitors can learn about the development of the atomic bomb.

But Hanford’s most dangerous contaminated waste has not been cleaned up, and the two recent evacuation incidents illustrated problems that could become more frequent in the future.

In the May rail tunnel collapse, a huge sinkhole suddenly emerged above the 360-foot long tunnel holding eight railroad cars that transported waste in the 1950s. The earth that fell into the tunnel helped prevent radiation from going into the air because it covered the railroad cars. Workers have since filled in the sinkhole and covered the tunnel with a fabric similar to what is used to cover farmers’ haystacks.

Officials were aware of the risk to the tunnel, Shoop said. He warned other aging facilities at Hanford also pose a risk.

“There are a whole bunch of things analogous to the tunnels,” he said.

In the June incident, radiation warnings sounded as workers removed outdoor equipment from a plant that once churned out disks of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons and is now one of Hanford’s most polluted areas.

The event illustrated how Hanford’s precautions to protect its workers have paid off and how they’ll likely face similar situations in the future, Shoop said.

“We are sending people into environments no one was expected to go to,” Shoop said. “Is there the potential for more alarms? Absolutely.”

Hanford’s has 177 underground tanks made of steel that contain more that 54 million gallons of radioactive and chemical wastes.

In late May, radioactive contamination was also found on robotic equipment surveying the space between the walls of a double-walled underground nuclear waste storage tank, indicating a possible leak. Some radioactivity was discovered on the clothing of the worker who removed the robot from the tank, although no skin contamination was found, Hanford officials said.

In addition, vapors for several years have escaped from underground storage tanks and made dozens of workers sick, most recently on Tuesday. In that event, eight reported smelling vapors and three underwent medical checks.

The tunnel collapse prompted a group of northwestern U.S. lawmakers to press the federal Government Accountability Office to review the Hanford cleanup work, saying they “are concerned that future events could put the safety of workers, the public and environment at risk.”

Shoop defended progress at Hanford, pointing to numerous successes from three decades of cleanup.

He is aware that some people may feel little has been done.

“Some things are not proceeding as fast as we’d all like,” Shoop said. “You can’t do it all at once.”

LANGLOIS -- Coast Community Health Center will be providing Oregon Health Plan assistance from 3-6 p.m. at the Langlois Public Library on Wednesday, June 21. A certified assister will be able to complete new and renewal OHP applications, as well…

AURORA, ORE. — No one will ever mistake Oregon’s minuscule strawberry production for California’s $1.8 billion crop, but for a couple weeks in early summer the state’s berries take center stage to bask in the lore of their supreme flavor.

Hoods, anyone? Case closed, strawberry purists would argue. No hard, white-centered, flavorless pretenders from out of state allowed.

At a strawberry field day earlier this month, growers got a glimpse of some new cultivars that could provide options in what USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service estimates is a $9 million annual agricultural niche in Oregon.

Chad Finn, a USDA berry breeder who works closely with Oregon State University in Corvallis, said Charm and Sweet Sunrise are early, high-quality, June-bearing berries that will be good for processing.

Charm is sweet enough that it could be used in ice cream like Hoods, which have been around since 1965. “It’s got that kind of quality,” Finn said.

It has a tender skin and Finn said he’s always described it as a processing berry, but at farmers’ markets in Corvallis it’s been one of the predominant varieties brought in for sale, he said.

Charm also is a tough, vigorous plant and produces a thick canopy, Finn said. There was concern the canopy was so thick that pickers wouldn’t be able to get at berries efficiently, but anecdotal feedback from picking crew bosses indicate it hasn’t been a problem, he said.

Because of its vigorous nature and reliably high yield, Finn said Charm might be suited for organic production. “If I was an organic guy I would start experimenting,” he said.

Sweet Sunrise, meanwhile, is a full flavor berry, one of the best, Finn said. It’s a bit tart, but a little sugar allows the flavor to come through, he said. It’s a more open plant than Charm, making it easy to pick.

Both cultivars appear to be ones that will hold up longer in the field, providing three years of harvest compared to two years or even one for Tillamook, Totem or Hood strawberries, Finn said.

Another relatively new cultivar, Mary’s Peak, also is a June-bearing berry, with a big canopy and large fruit, he said.

Bringing new strawberry cultivars to commercial production is a slow motion process. Sweet Sunrise was selected in 2000 and Charm in 2001 from crosses made two years earlier in each case. Years of trials and testing are necessary, then the plants have to be reproduced in large numbers by commercial nurseries, which can slow down the process, Finn said. U.S. plant patent applications are pending on both.

Beyond size, flavor and plant vigor, another key factor in strawberry production is the availability of labor. If berries ripen too early in the season, professional picking crews may not be on hand to harvest them, Finn said. If they are too late, crews may have moved on to blueberries, which are easier to pick.

Of Oregon’s strawberry production, roughly one-third goes into ice cream, one-third is sold fresh market, and perhaps one-third is flash frozen and bagged for store sale, Finn estimated.

Sweet Sunrise and Charm were developed by USDA’s Agricultural Research Service in cooperation with the research and experiment arms of the ag schools at OSU and Washington State University. The field day presentation was at OSU’s North Willamette Research and Extension Center near Aurora.

SALEM — A key group of lawmakers has approved a 16 percent fee hike for Oregon water rights transactions while a more controversial proposal has languished.

Fees for numerous water rights transactions administered by the Oregon Water Resources Department would collectively be raised by 15.88 percent under House Bill 2295, which averts the loss of 5.5 full-time staff dedicated to processing such requests.

“People would have to be laid off and transactions would go through slower,” said Rachel Snell, executive director of the Oregon Water Resources Congress, which represents irrigation districts.

“You’ve got to have people at the department who can process those pieces of paper,” Snell said.

The bill is scheduled for a June 16 vote by the Joint Committee on Ways and Means after recently clearing its Natural Resources Subcommittee with a “do pass” recommendation, which bolsters its chances of approval by the full Legislature.

If HB 2295 does become effective, it would mark the third increase to water rights transactions fees since 2009, but if it fails, those fees would revert to 2009 levels.

The OWRD argues the latest hike is necessary due to rising salary, benefit and retirement expenses, and points out that it’s signficantly reduced backlogs of various transaction types in recent years.

The Oregon Farm Bureau does not oppose HB 2295 as long as there are no other new fee increases that would skew funding for water rights transactions more heavily toward irrigators, said Mary Anne Nash, public policy counsel for the organization.

Currently, the total cost of such transactions — which covers roughly 35 staff positions — is split evenly between the general fund and irrigator fees.

A proposal to impose a new $100 fee on all existing water rights in Oregon, House Bill 2706, is also before the Joint Ways and Means Committee but it hasn’t been referred to a subcommittee, which is generally a necessary first step toward passage.

While HB 2706 will technically stay alive through the end of the 2017 legislative session, it’s expected to go no further this year, said Snell of OWRC.