PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — In August, a state analyst spotted dozens of suspicious transactions when he crunched cannabis sales data: a small number of medical marijuana cardholders bought unusually large quantities of marijuana flowers on consecutive days.

Oregon regulators suspected medical marijuana patients and caregivers were exploiting the system by buying cannabis to sell on the illicit market.

The response was swift. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission, under pressure from federal officials to tackle the robust black market for marijuana, quickly issued a temporary rule that dramatically reduced the amount that medical marijuana cardholders could buy in a day.

The limit dropped from a pound and a half of marijuana to 1 ounce -- the same quantity recreational cannabis consumers are allowed to buy.

“What we saw was abuse, clear abuse of the standards,” Steve Marks, executive director of the Liquor Control Commission, said Wednesday.

Over 19 days in August, for instance, one medical marijuana cardholder bought nearly 13 pounds of cannabis. Another bought 7 pounds over 10 days that month. Officials said the questionable transactions came from a small percentage of cardholders and that the typical purchase for most cardholders was 4 grams or less.

Marks said marijuana program overseers worried that the state’s low marijuana prices enticed some cardholders to stock up and “take it to Iowa or wherever and sell for a profit.”

“We saw that happening,” he said, adding it was “a little bit of a Ponzi scheme.”

Oregon has been in the crosshairs of U.S. Justice Department leaders for not doing enough to crack down on the black market. U.S. Attorney Billy Williams has repeatedly expressed frustration with the state’s failure to contain production and he’s chided top officials for not devoting enough resources to oversight and enforcement.

On Wednesday, patients and advocates for the medical marijuana program blasted the new limits at a contentious meeting of the state’s rules advisory committee.

Advocates said medical marijuana patients sometimes need large quantities of the drug to make products they rely on to treat their conditions and they accused the state of meddling with medicine.

The rules committee, made up of marijuana industry participants and advocates, called on the Liquor Control Commission to restore daily purchase limits to 24 ounces.

The at-times boisterous crowd included some of the same activists who have long championed Oregon’s 20-year-old medical marijuana program since its early days. For many, the rule reflects the latest change to a program that has experienced a steep drop-off in participation since voters approved recreational marijuana in 2014.

State statistics show Oregon has about 39,000 medical marijuana patients, down from 78,000 in 2015. The number of grow sites serving three or more patients has also plummeted from about 4,000 in 2015 to about 800 today, according to Anthony Taylor, a longtime advocate.

Cannabis is tax-free for medical marijuana patients. They also are allowed to buy more potent edibles and oils than recreational users, and until the latest rule change, they could buy more cannabis flower.

It remains a vital program for those who remain, supporters said.

Brent Kenyon, a licensed producer, processor and retailer based in Medford, accused regulators of scapegoating medical marijuana cardholders for black market diversion when recreational producers do the same.

“You cannot punish everybody for the few bad actors,” he said. “You can’t do it. It’s not good policy.”

During a particularly tense exchange, Jesse Sweet, the lawyer who has helped draft the state’s rules for Oregon’s legal marijuana market, asked Dr. Rachel Knox, a member of the advisory committee, to explain why one person would need so much cannabis.

“I need you to explain to me why a patient needs 6 pounds of flower,” he said. Knox countered by saying the state had no proof that the transactions were linked to illegal activity and she wouldn’t rule out that one person could have a legitimate medical need for a large quantity.

It was a claim that Sweet found incredulous, using an expletive to express his disbelief.

Sweet, the administrative policy and process director for the Liquor Control Commission, then got up and walked out of the crowded meeting. He eventually returned and apologized for losing his temper.

Marks, after the meeting, struck a diplomatic note, saying he was encouraged by the lively discussion and some of the advocates’ proposals, including allowing patients to buy more marijuana based on a doctor’s recommendation.

“We are going to look at it,” he said. “We are listening.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The waters off Oregon’s coast now have a season of low oxygen caused by warming ocean temperatures, according to scientists.

The coastal waters go through an annual season of hypoxia, a condition resulting in the deaths of sea organisms as dissolved oxygen decreases in water near the ocean floor, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported this week.

The low-oxygen season is much like the state’s wildfire season, said Francis Chan, co-chair of the West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel.

“Every summer we live on the knife’s edge and during many years we cross the threshold into danger, including the past two years,” Chan said. “When oxygen levels get low enough, many marine organisms who are place-bound, or cannot move away rapidly enough, die of oxygen starvation.”

Some of the first signs of hypoxia appeared in 2002, when dead crabs were hauled up in crab pots. Hypoxia was rarely recorded last century, but it has been observed almost annually since 2002, Chan said.

Warmer ocean temperatures trigger excessive phytoplankton blooms, which take oxygen out of the water when they die and sink to the ocean floor. The problem has been exacerbated by the lack of mixing ocean waters. Changing wind patterns have led to the stratification of ocean layers.

“Scientists keep saying that the ocean is changing along with the climate, and people are beginning to get in tune,” said Jack Barth, an Oregon State University oceanographer and co-chair of the Oregon Coordinating Council on Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia. “They see the heat waves and all the smoke from wildfires and are beginning to realize that this is something different.”

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Bruce Bordelon, professor of viticulture at Purdue University, is fretting about the weather. The state is getting way too much rain, which plays havoc with maturing grapes. Excess moisture can cause them to burst, and encourages mold and other harvest-damaging ailments.

“It has rained every week since the last week of July,” Bordelon said. “That’s the worst thing that can possibly happen. That’s why so many of the nation’s grapes are grown in California and Washington and Oregon, where they don’t get summer rains during the ripening phase.”

Still, things could be worse. Just a couple of decades ago, Indiana had virtually no wine-grape crop to worry about. Today, the annual harvest (and the 2.4 million gallons of wine it makes) generates an economic impact of $600 million, sustains 4,000 full-time jobs, and pays $37 million in state and local taxes and $38 million in federal taxes.

Much of the credit for the rise of Indiana’s wine industry belongs to a tiny Purdue University program that goes by the unlikely name of the Purdue Wine Grape Team. Over the last two decades, this four-person cadre of experts has been instrumental both in husbanding the local winemaking industry and in raising its profile nationwide.

“Tens of thousands of people have taken our classes and attended the events we coordinated,” said Christian Butzke, professor of enology (winemaking) and a member of the Purdue Wine Grape Team. “That’s how we reach a lot farther than just teaching at Purdue.”

Indiana had a thriving (though somewhat rustic) wine industry during the 18th and 19th centuries, but Prohibition killed it on the vine. A revival began in 1971 when the Indiana General Assembly, nudged by Indiana University law professor (and winemaking hobbyist) William Oliver, passed the Indiana Small Winery Act that allowed for the creation of small Indiana winemakers. A year later, Oliver opened Oliver Winery, which has grown to become Indiana’s largest.

Initially, however, only a handful of operations set up shop. The Indiana Wine Grape Council was established by the Indiana General Assembly in 1989 to goose growth by disseminating winemaking research and providing marketing help. It’s funded by a portion of the 5-cent excise tax on every gallon of wine sold in Indiana, a fund that also pays the salaries of the Purdue Wine Grape Team. The tax generates about $550,000 a year.

Founded in 1991, the team is an agricultural extension program composed of enology, viticulture and marketing specialists who assist Indiana winemakers and grape growers. Team members (who include, along with Butzke and Bordelon, Katie Barnett and Jill Blume) come from Purdue’s departments of Food Science and Horticulture & Landscape Architecture.

“Purdue is renowned,” said Michel Pascal, co-owner of Carroll Wine & Spirits, a Fishers-based fine-wine and spirits distributor. The state has nearly 100 wineries, he said, “and all of them use Purdue as a research tool. And when I travel to California and talk about Purdue, people know exactly what’s going on. They know what it is.”

That’s quite a compliment for a program that’s not a school or department and doesn’t even offer so much as an undergraduate minor. Though Butzke has for years taught a popular wine-appreciation class that draws 250-plus students for each session, the team’s extension efforts — encompassing everything from soil analysis to fact-finding tours of vineyards around the world — is the chief reason Indiana now contains 98 wineries, compared with about 10 in 1991.

“I think the fact that Purdue had a program, and we were able to help them, is what helped give them the confidence to do it,” Bordelon said.

“Many operations around the state went ahead with five-acre, 10-acre plantings. That probably wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been here to offer workshops, to do things to show what they could grow and how to grow it, and to put together publications to show how to manage crop loads. We provided the support they needed to gain the confidence to grow the industry.”

One of Purdue Wine Grape Team’s biggest success stories is Oliver. When it opened in 1972, Oliver sold a respectable 2,000 cases of wine. Now it sells about 430,000 cases annually, in 26 states.

But CEO Bill Oliver, son of founder William Oliver, said there was a time back in the 1990s when Oliver almost gave up on growing its own grapes. The Indiana weather was just too changeable. Bordelon pitched in to turn things around, Oliver said.

“He was tremendously helpful in helping us solve problems,” he said. “And Lord knows you’ve got a lot of problems growing grapes in Indiana. We have 60 acres now, but I don’t know if we’d have even one if it weren’t for Purdue.”

The program also reaches beyond the state’s borders. It’s swollen the ranks of Indiana-born winemakers and vineyard owners worldwide, with Purdue Wine Grape Team disciples ranging as far afield as Napa Valley and New Zealand.

“Purdue’s enology and viticulture program is nationally recognized,” said Dan Howard, executive director of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture.

People touched by the grape team’s programs form part of a worldwide diaspora of Hoosiers who’ve made it big in the wine industry.

For instance, one of Butzke’s graduate assistants, Patty Skinkis, received a doctorate in viticulture at Purdue and is now an associate professor and viticulture extension specialist for the highly regarded wine program at Oregon State University.

Kokomo native (and Purdue grad) Erik Miller owns the well-regarded Kokomo Winery in Dry Creek Valley, California; Purdue graduate Mike Sweeney owns Oregon’s Cherry Hill Winery; and another Purdue alum, Laurine Leep Apolloni, owns Apolloni Vineyards in Oregon.

Apolloni majored in mechanical engineering at Purdue and didn’t get fully into wine until after she graduated, but that’s not an uncommon career path in the vineyard biz.

“What you find in the wine industry is a lot of former engineers and scientists who have a passion for wine, and who transfer their problem-solving and technical skills to the areas of viticulture and enology,” she said.

Butzke makes a point of keeping in touch with such Purdue grads, whether they were part of the school’s wine programs or not.

He invites them to speak at his wine appreciation class, and to serve as judges at the annual Indy International Wine Competition, the 27th edition of which was completed in June, and for which he’s chief judge. The world-renowned gathering brings in competitors from all over the world.

Purdue cuts a high profile because it’s a fairly big fish in a small pond. When it comes to agricultural enterprises, the entire wine industry pales in comparison to crops such as corn, wheat or even tomatoes.

As Butzke points out, only about 20 million acres worldwide are planted in grapes — a mere fraction of the 350 million acres of cropland in America alone. And Indiana has only about 600 acres of grapes, which barely amounts to a rounding error when compared to its 16 million acres of prime agricultural land.

“We often say in the wine industry that there’s hardly ever more than one or two degrees of separation between anybody anywhere in the industry,” Butzke said. “It’s an international community, but it’s also a local one.”

But still, that small parcel is responsible for thousands of jobs that didn’t exist 20 years ago.

The university has facilitated that growth, helping people who want to start a winery, providing continuing education to those already in the industry, and helping train future winery employees.

Anne Zwink, a Purdue graduate who spent a great deal of time under Butzke’s tutelage (and who went on to earn a master’s degree in food science with a focus on enology from Washington State University), couldn’t agree more.

She’s now the winemaker at Soldier Creek Winery in Iowa, which — like Indiana — is in the midst of a prolonged effort to stoke its grape industry.

“Every state has a handful of wineries, but that number is growing year after year,” Zwink said. “It’s definitely an industry that’s up and coming.”

Even after this year’s truly awful grape-growing weather, Bill Oliver is upbeat. He noted that the previous three years were fine.

“You’ve got to take the good with the bad in agriculture,” he said.

As for the future of Indiana’s wine industry, he thinks there’s plenty of room for even more growth, a view he didn’t always hold.

“It you’d have asked me eight or 10 years ago, I’d have said it’s as big as it’s ever going to get,” Oliver said. “But now it’s probably three times larger than it was then.”

Farmer Mike Iverson grows fresh market vegetables along both sides of the Aurora State Airport, so a prospective runway expansion makes him nervous for several reasons.

An immediate concern would be any disruption to traffic on Keil Road, which runs directly south of the airport and is necessary for him to transport workers and equipment back and forth.

Noise and pollution from added air traffic are worrisome to Iverson, who is also troubled by the implications for development on surrounding farmland from a more bustling airport.

While such concerns about increasing the runway from 5,000 feet to 6,000 feet are nothing new, an upcoming proposal from the Oregon Department of Aviation has Iverson and other opponents on high alert.

On Sept. 26, the agency will ask the Oregon Emergency Board — which makes funding decisions when the legislature isn’t in session — for permission to apply for a $33.3 million federal grant to expand the Aurora airport’s runway.

The fear is that if the Federal Aviation Administration approves the application, proponents of the controversial proposal will be emboldened to sidestep normal regulations to expand the runway.

“There was no public process and they’re trying to bypass the public process now,” said Iverson.

The Oregon Department of Aviation counters that even if the Emergency Board does authorize applying for the grant, that hardly means the runway expansion would be exempt from requirements by local, state and federal governments.

“Once the money is there, it doesn’t circumvent the permitting or planning process,” said Matthew Maass, the agency’s state airports manager.

Increasing the runway’s length has already been extensively discussed during a “master planning” process for the airport, also paid for by the FAA, and the grant application is just another incremental step, he said.

The FAA doesn’t subscribe to a philosophy of “if you build it, they will come” — it only funds such expansions for airports that have demonstrated their operations are already constrained, Maass said.

A study of the Aurora airport determined that more than 500 aircraft operate at less than fully capacity by taking on less fuel or cargo to adapt to the shorter runway, he said.

Extending the runway by 1,000 feet would allow these aircraft to gain more airspeed and improve their lift, letting them take on more fuel and cargo, he said. Agricultural traffic could still be accommodated if the runway were longer.

“They are going to fund it based on the existing need today,” Maass said, while acknowledging the expansion could increase air traffic at the facility.

If the runway was extended, the state would buy more land south of the facility to protect the airspace, but new buildings wouldn’t be allowed in that area, he said. “Our intent would be to keep that farmland because it protects the approach to the airport.”

Opponents of the project are dubious whether the runway extension would ever face full regulatory scrutiny, partly because of House Bill 4092, which would have eased land use laws for such an airport expansion onto farmland.

The bill died in committee earlier this year, but it’s likely other legislation could again be proposed to “super-site” the expansion — especially if the funding is already in hand, said Ken Ivey, chairman of the Aurora-Butteville-Barlow Community Planning Organization.

“They don’t want to go through the land use planning, they don’t want the community involved,” he said. “They will hammer a square peg into a round hole because they have the funding.”

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is withholding $500,000 allocated for a water quality study of Oregon’s Upper Klamath Lake, citing potential budget cuts.

The bureau’s Klamath Basin Area Office Manager Jeff Nettleton told the Klamath Tribes that the funding will be reprogramed to other activities to avoid losing that money, the Herald and News reported .

In an email last month to the tribes, Nettleton said the bureau is expecting budget cuts between 13 percent and 20 percent next year. He said the office will continue to work with the tribes to “close out the current agreement and evaluate the possibilities for future funding of the key activities under the agreement, but that future is uncertain due to budget cuts and other issues.”

Negotiations about water allocation agreements cannot proceed until there is progress on improving water quality, Klamath Tribal Chairman Don Gentry said in a statement.

“In what can only be described as a giant step backwards, the federal government recently pulled funding for critical water quality research that could help us understand how to make the lake safer for people, fish, birds and other wildlife,” Gentry said.

The lack of funding and enforcement staffing is halting progress on reducing to the flow of damaging nutrients into the lake, Gentry said. The tribes have been working with the state Department of Agriculture, state Department of Environmental Quality, and local landowners to make reductions.

“The Tribes believe that the declining health of the lake and surrounding ecosystem is a community issue, one that can be solved with local collaboration to the benefit of all,” Gentry said.

Representatives of food manufacturers and food service companies recently attended a tour of Oregon’s hazelnut industry intended to inspire new culinary uses for the crop.

The Sept. 13 tour was organized by the Oregon Hazelnut Marketing Board and included stops at a hazelnut orchard and a processing plant, followed by a hazelnut cooking session at Oregon State University’s Food Innovation Center in Portland.

The ultimate goal is to have consumers encounter more hazelnuts in new contexts, hopefully driving consumption of the staple Oregon crop, whose production is expected rise significantly in coming years, said Patrick Gabrish, vice president of sales and marketing for the Hazelnut Growers of Oregon cooperative.

“If you enjoy the product in one format, you’re more likely to enjoy it in more formats,” Gabrish said.

Oregon is the country’s top hazelnut producer, with about 70,000 acres of orchards in the ground and thousands more planted each year. Much of that acreage isn’t yet of bearing age, which means the industry is facing tremendous growth.

China, which has traditionally consumed roughly 60 percent of Oregon’s crop, can’t absorb all the new production and so the industry needs to create a stable domestic market, Gabrish said.

With so many of Oregon’s hazelnuts going overseas, the industry hasn’t had the opportunity to familiarize U.S. consumers with new uses for the crop as it will in the next few years, he said.

Fortunately, modern chefs and food makers aren’t as constrained by what distributors provide as they were in years past — they come from a generation that’s accustomed to doing its own research and tracking down ingredients, Gabrish said.

Part of the solution will fall to processors, who must provide hazelnut ingredients in packages that are well suited to individual companies, he said. For example, restaurants won’t want the industrial-scale pails of hazelnut butter that manufacturers use.

Consumers often see hazelnuts in confectionery goods, but one new product developed by the Northwest Hazelnut Co. takes the crop in a different direction.

The processor teamed up with Esotico, an artisan food company in Silverton, Ore., to create a hazelnut pasta based on Italian recipes.

Esotico has sold the pasta at farmers’ markets and it’s attracting new customers, which will hopefully inspire others to find innovative uses for hazelnuts, said Naomi Inman, public relations director for the Northwest Hazelnut Co.

Aside from imparting a unique flavor, the hazelnuts boost the pasta’s protein content to 11 grams per serving, she said.

“We’re hoping other manufacturers — especially large ones — catch on to savory uses for hazelnuts,” Inman said.

Statistics bear out the positive reception that hazelnut products are likely to encounter: In 2017, 47 percent of consumers surveyed said they considered the crop “very healthy,” up from 24 percent in 2006, according to an Oregon Hazelnut Marketing Board study.

About 49 percent of survey respondents reported eating hazelnuts at least once a month, compared to 33 percent in 2006, the study said.

“Consumers are starting to get almond fatigue, which I think is a pretty big opportunity for hazelnuts,” said Jason Ball, research chef at OSU’s Food Innovation Center.

Though Hazelnuts have the reputation of being seen as special, that shouldn’t discourage their regular usage, said Sarah Masoni, product and process development director at the center.

“We want it to be a daily use item,” she said.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A judge has tossed a lawsuit filed by animal rights activists in the name of a once-neglected horse, finding that animals don’t have a right to sue.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reports in doing so, Washington County Pro Tem Judge John Knowles on Monday refused to become the first judge in the nation to grant a non-human legal standing to sue.

Lawyers from the Animal Legal Defense Fund had urged Knowles to let the 8-year-old horse sue for lifelong costs of medical care after the horse was discovered in March 2017 covered in lice, 300 pounds underweight and with frostbitten genitals.

Its former owner, Gwendolyn Vercher of Cornelius, was convicted of animal neglect and paid some $3,700 in restitution.

Lawyer Matthew Liebman argued that animals are sentient beings and noted that animals can be listed as “victims” of neglect or abuse in criminal cases.

A solar developer claims Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals should order Yamhill County to reconsider its rejection of a solar facility on farmland.

Earlier this year, the county government denied a conditional use permit for the 12-acre solar panel array on land zoned for “exclusive farm use” near Yamhill, Ore.

The developer, Yamhill Creek Solar, appeared before LUBA on Sept. 13 arguing the decision should be remanded to the county because the rejection was based on speculative concerns that weren’t supported by sufficient evidence.

Damien Hall, the company’s attorney, said the county’s decision demonstrated a “plain case of bias,” pointing to one commissioner’s remarks supporting stronger restrictions on solar facilities that were later adopted.

The county also effectively required the solar development to have “zero impacts” from soil compaction, which is an excessively high standard that misinterprets Oregon’s land use law, Hall said.

Pilings driven into the ground to support solar panels aren’t much different from the fence posts that are commonly seen throughout rural areas, he said.

“They do not create compaction in any way that’s unfarmable,” Hall said, noting that such a high threshold would effectively preclude solar facilities anywhere in Yamhill County.

Opponents of the installation have incorrectly indicated the project would “pave over” farmland when it would actually be eventually decommissioned after 30 years, he said.

“There are no impervious surfaces proposed beneath the panels,” Hall said.

The developer argued that solar panels wouldn’t adversely affect surrounding farm uses, but the county nonetheless found the facility was a “character-changing use” that would hinder the success of the wine industry, which relies on a pastoral landscape.

Not only is this interpretation of state land use law overly broad, but the county had no evidence of wineries or agritourism in the project’s near vicinity, Hall said. “There is no agritourism.”

Atticus Wine, an opponent of the project that intervened in the case, argued that Yamhill County properly supported the denial of the conditional use permit and wasn’t biased in its decision.

The statement made by one commissioner about a proposed ordinance for solar facilities was simply a political sentiment that elected officials are allowed to express, said Jennifer Bragar, attorney for the intervenor.

Bragar said findings that the project didn’t meet the standards necessary for a conditional use permit were well back-up with evidence by the county.

For example, the county wasn’t compelled to accept the developer’s plan for mitigating soil compaction and erosion as complying with its standards, she said.

“There were open questions that were never responded to,” Bragar said.

Driving pilings into the ground every few feet isn’t the same as a fenceline, and it’s unclear what the long-term impacts would be, she said.

Yamhill County correctly interpreted land use criteria in deciding preserving farmland weighed stronger in this case than expanding renewable energy production, particularly since there’s “plenty of other land” for development, she said.

“The county didn’t ignore anything the petitioner brought up,” Bragar said. “There are many reasons to deny this application.”

An opinion in the case is expected to be issued by LUBA by Oct. 3.

The Oregon Department of Forestry and USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service are partnering to help private landowners in southwest Oregon slow the spread of an invasive tree-killing disease known as “sudden oak death.”

Since the mid-1990s, the disease has devastated millions of susceptible trees in California, including tanoak, coast live oak, Shreve’s oak and California black oak. The disease was first discovered in Curry County, Ore., in 2001. The Oregon Department of Agriculture immediately quarantined a 9-square-mile area, which has since grown to 525 square miles, roughly one-third of the county.

NRCS Oregon has requested up to $500,000 through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program to reimburse landowners for removing infected trees. Priority will be given to landowners within the quarantine area, which stretches from Brookings north to Gold Beach, though anyone who has the disease on their property is eligible to apply for assistance.

Known by the initials SOD, the disease is caused by the fungus-like pathogen Phytophthora ramorum. The disease thrives in wet forest environments, and spreads via airborne and waterborne spores. Symptoms include bleeding cankers on the tree’s trunk and dieback of foliage, eventually killing the tree.

Randy Wiese, the lead forester working on SOD for the Oregon Department of Forestry, said there is no cure for the disease. Infected tanoaks are cut down, piled and burned, along with all tanoaks in a 30-foot radius.

While SOD can infect adjacent Douglas-fir trees, Wiese said the disease is generally non-lethal in conifers.

“Most species, it will get into them and it’s just sort of there,” he said.

Wiese, who joined ODF in 2010, said the problem in Curry County is getting worse every year. They are now battling two strains of sudden oak death, including the North American strain and an even more aggressive European strain. The top two areas for treatment he said, are along the Winchuck and Pistol rivers.

“The European strain is our focus,” Wiese said. “If we can, we’ll do a larger treatment because of the aggressiveness and the concern.”

SOD is a hazard for landowners because dead trees pose an increased fire and safety risk, Wiese said. From an economic perspective, the quarantine has burdened Curry County with restrictions severely limiting firewood sales and other forest products.

The state quarantine prohibits harvesting tanoak from known infested areas, though producers can request a “pest-free production site” permit within the quarantine from ODA and ODF.

Curry County is the only location of sudden oak death in Oregon forests, though ODA has also found the disease in a small number of nurseries since 2003. More than 135 plants have been proven to be hosts, with the five most common including camellia, pieris, rhododendron, viburnum and kalmia. If SOD is found, a nursery must follow a strict USDA protocol that includes a quarantine, destruction of infected plants, tracing the source of host plants and three years of inspection and sampling to assure SOD is no longer present.

For more information, or to apply for NRCS funding to remove trees stricken with sudden oak death, contact district conservationist Eric Moeggenberg at 541-824-8091.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A part-owner and operator of medical marijuana dispensaries in Oregon was sentenced to seven years in prison Monday, marking what a prosecutor called the county’s first federal sentencing of a legal pot business owner for tax crimes.

Matthew Price also was ordered to pay $262,776 restitution to the Internal Revenue Service during sentencing in federal court in Portland, the Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

Price, 32, pleaded guilty to four counts of willfully failing to file income tax returns in connection with his Cannabliss stores in Portland and Eugene. Price admitted that he didn’t file individual tax returns from 2011 through 2014 for income received from the operation of the dispensaries.

An investigation into Price started after the IRS discovered he hadn’t paid employment taxes for his employees.

Price failed to report nearly $1 million of income and disregarded advice from three different certified public accountants who warned him not to use his business money to pay personal expenses, Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Uram said. Price did anyway, spending $67,000 in cash on a sports car, $15,000 in cash on a Rolex watch, and other income on vacations, homes and season tickets to the Portland Trailblazers, Uram said.

Price’s defense lawyer, Whitney Boise, had urged probation for Price, saying he has no prior criminal record, has accepted responsibility, has nearly paid off the restitution and already has suffered. Price wasn’t sure what could or couldn’t be deducted from his taxable income, was unorganized and wasn’t comfortable with the advice he received from his accountants, Boise said.

U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman said he didn’t fully accept the defense’s explanation that Price didn’t comprehend his tax obligations.

“It’s true you didn’t walk into this with an MBA,” Mosman said. But it’s also clear Price has the intelligence to understand “one of the most basic obligations of running a business,” the judge said.

Price, who apologized in court, must turn himself in on Nov. 1.

Whether he’ll be able to continue in his marijuana business until then, or after prison, will be decided at a hearing Friday. The matter arises because use or sale of marijuana remains prohibited under federal law and is a standard prohibition during federal supervision.

There was a tax-related prosecution 12 years ago in Detroit of a “back-door”’-type marijuana dispensary, but not a legal business such as the one Price ran, Uram said.

Months of intense heat and smoky skies are not expected to diminish Oregon’s potato crop, with farmers across the state predicting average to above-average yields heading into the bulk of harvest.

Bill Brewer, CEO of the Oregon Potato Commission, said the overall impact of wildfire smoke is yet to be determined in spuds, but he has not heard of any major setbacks or problems with quality.

Hot weather can be hard on certain potato varieties, such as Russet Burbank — the gold standard for french fries — though in general, Brewer said he anticipates a roughly average harvest statewide and good quality potatoes.

“The higher heat during the summertime has been a bit of an issue, only on select varieties,” Brewer said. “So far, I have not heard any other negatives about other growing conditions.”

About 70 percent of Oregon potatoes are grown in the Columbia Basin around Hermiston and Boardman. Potatoes ranked as the seventh-most valuable agricultural commodity in the state in 2017, raking in $176.9 million.

Marty Myers, general manager of Threemile Canyon Farms near Boardman, said the growing season got off to a good start with warm weather early in the spring. Crews began harvesting early season potatoes on July 10, and Myers said yields have generally been very good.

Threemile Canyon Farms grows 9,000 acres of mostly conventional and some organic russets, all for local food processors. Myers said it is still too early to tell if triple-digit heat and smoke in July and August has impacted full season potatoes. Harvest just began Sept. 12, and will likely run through Oct. 20-25.

“Early season was very warm, and things looked pretty good,” Myers said. “Then summer heat comes in like it does every year and knocks us back a little bit. ... We always know it’s going to get hot over the summer, and at periods we’re going to have smoke.”

Brewer said he believes the smoke does have an effect on potato production, blocking sunlight needed by the plants and possibly altering taste, but more research is needed to back up anecdotal evidence.

Dan Chin, who runs Chin Family Farms Organic outside Merrill in the Klamath Basin, said they were socked in by smoke from wildfires raging in southern Oregon and northern California for a solid month and a half.

“A lot of times, you couldn’t see more than a couple of miles, or a mile,” Chin said. “It was pretty intense.”

However, Chin theorizes the smoke actually helped his potatoes this year by lowering the heat and causing the plants to put more energy into the tubers. He started harvesting Sept. 12, and said both size and quality are looking good.

“Just looking at it last year and this year, we’re seeing a little trend that the smoke didn’t really hurt our sizing and yield as much as we thought it might,” Chin said. “As far as our crop is concerned, we’re pretty happy with it.”

That being said, Chin said they definitely do not want smoke every year, which makes it harder for employees to work outside.

Mark Ward, chairman of the Oregon Potato Commission, farms 160 acres of potatoes on the north edge of Baker City. He is targeting Sept. 24 to begin harvest, and like others, expects to see solid yields.

Ward exclusively supplies potatoes to Simplot for making french fries. He said this summer’s heat, including five days of triple-digit temperatures, may increase the likelihood of sugar ends, a defect in potatoes that results in unappealing brown ends.

“We won’t know that until we deliver some potatoes,” Ward said. “If you were managing your water properly, you should be OK.”

The Baker Valley also experienced 10 days of smoke so thick the surrounding Elkhorn Mountains couldn’t be seen, Ward said, which may affect potato yields, though he does not see it being a tremendous problem.

“Just what I’ve seen doing our little hand-digs, they look good,” Ward said.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — What happens now?

In the wake of Oregon’s first fatal attack by a cougar — and the second deadly attack in the Northwest this year — the question of how best to manage the state’s big cat population has reached the forefront.

Even before a cougar attacked and killed 55-year-old hiker Diana Bober in Mount Hood National Forest last week, mountain lions were already in the public eye.

Their increasing numbers — an estimated 6,600 statewide — have pushed the predators closer to Oregon’s population centers, officials said. That’s led to a series of high-profile incidents in The Dalles, Ashland, Silverton and Dallas.

Complaints about cougars have tripled in the Willamette Valley since 2011. And the number of cougars killed due to human or livestock conflicts reached 169 animals in 2016, according to state records.

Hunters say they’ve seen the problem coming for years, ever since a ballot initiative in 1994 outlawed the use of hounds to hunt cougars.

They say it eliminated the most effective tool for managing cougar numbers and allowed the population to skyrocket.

“This is a statistical problem now,” said Jim Akenson, a longtime cougar biologist now working for the Oregon Hunters Association. “The more cougars you have on the landscape, the greater the chance of a negative encounter. If their numbers continue to grow, you do worry about this happening again.”

Akenson said reinstating hound hunting would not only bring cougar numbers down to healthier levels — around 3,500 animals statewide, he said — it would also reestablish a greater fear of humans in animals increasingly brazen about showing up in populated areas, he said.

Akenson said he’d take a county-by-county approach, looking to cap cougar numbers based on local conditions.

Environmental groups strongly disagree. They point out how rare fatal attacks by cougars are and say hunting causes more problems than it fixes.

“This is an absolute tragedy — a person has died — but we have to remember that this is very, very rare,” said Dr. John W. Laundre, a professor at Western Oregon University and a board member of the environmental group Predator Defense.

This is Oregon’s first confirmed fatal attack over a long history, he noted.

Three people have been killed in California and Colorado in cougar attacks, while two have died in Washington, including earlier this year, when a cougar attacked two mountain bikers near North Bend, killing one of them.

“If you look at it objectively, how few incidents occur really speaks to how well cougars live with us,” Laundre said. “Deer kill far more people than cougars by being on the highway and getting hit by a car. Should we wipe out every deer seen near a road?”

In terms of management, hunting is actually among the worst ways to control a population, Laundre said.

Oregon sport hunters killed an average of 261 cougars each year during the past decade, according to state numbers, even as cougar numbers kept increasing.

“There’s no evidence that hunting reduces cougar numbers,” Laundre said.

Even worse, he said, “using sport hunting as a way of controlling them kills animals that aren’t causing any problems, it disrupts the social order, so you have these young male cats that don’t get the training they need.”

Laundre suggested California’s model, which removes mountain lions that cause problems but hasn’t allowed sport hunting since 1990. California’s population is estimated at between 4,000 and 6,000 animals.

Hunters say they could control the population, but need hounds to achieve that goal.

“The harvest of (cougars) would be doubled if hounds were allowed,” Akenson said. “Plus, they impart a man-fear response from cougars that tends to keep cats more wary.”

Cougars were once abundant in Oregon, but similar to other predators, such as wolves, that started to change with the arrival of settlers in the 1800s.

Before Oregon was even an official state, bounties were placed on cougars. The bounty was $10 per animal in 1911 and $25 by 1925.

“The most effective and devastating method was poison,” Derek Broman, carnivore coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Statesman Journal earlier this year.

The number of animals dropped sharply to an estimated 200 by the 1960s.

But, unlike wolves, cougars never went extinct in Oregon. A few pockets remained, mostly in the southwest and northeast.

“My belief is that unlike wolves, which are pack animals and easier to find, cougars are solitary and prefer really difficult terrain for humans,” Broman said. “They likely persisted because there were pockets of them where humans just couldn’t reach.”

In 1967 cougars were declared a “game animal” and subject to regulation by state officials. Bag limits were established for hunting cougars, which allowed their numbers to rebound to around 2,000 animals by 1987, according to ODFW.

Should there be a statewide cap on cougars?

Once the number of cougars rebounded, their numbers continued to grow and expand into just about any place with a food source — mainly, deer and elk.

The number of cougars increased at a consistent clip, growing steadily to today’s estimated total of 6,600.

A big question has been whether the state should establish a hard cap on cougar numbers.

Broman told the Statesman Journal earlier this year that they project Oregon being able to support around 7,600 cougars statewide, although that wasn’t a number they necessarily believe they’ll reach.

“The arrival of wolves has brought a lot of uncertainty, so trying to pick a hard number right now would be tricky and might end up being inaccurate in the future,” Broman said.

For the moment, state officials haven’t commented on whether the current situation will mean any change in cougar management policy going forward.

A bankruptcy judge in California will appoint a trustee to operate Lost Valley Farm, Oregon’s second-largest dairy, after finding owner Greg te Velde is “unwilling, or unable to comply with his duties as a fiduciary.”

The ruling, handed down Sept. 12, states te Velde has continued his long-standing pattern of drug use and gambling while owing creditors $160 million — including $68 million to Rabobank, a Netherlands-based agricultural lender.

In addition to Lost Valley Farm near Boardman, Ore., te Velde will lose control of his two dairies in California — GJ te Velde Ranch in Tipton, and Pacific Rim Dairy in Corcoran — with a combined total of 53,382 cattle.

When reached Friday, te Velde said he had no comment on the ruling.

The U.S. Department of Justice asked Judge Frederick Clement to appoint a trustee for all three of te Velde’s dairies, citing his alleged drug use, gambling and lack of financial transparency. Since filing for bankruptcy, te Velde has continued to use methamphetamine two or three times per week, and has gambled away $2,000 to $7,000 per month, according to court documents.

Te Velde has blamed his financial problems not on his lifestyle, but rather on market forces outside his control, such as low milk prices and construction cost overruns at Lost Valley. But creditors in court papers say they believe that “darker forces have caused his insolvency, or if not the cause, preclude te Velde from effectively resolving his debt problems.”

Te Velde also does not abide by the orders of the bankruptcy court, Clement stated in his ruling. For example, after declaring bankruptcy, te Velde borrowed $205,000 from Pasco Farms without court approval. Between May 8 and June 2, te Velde was authorized to personally withdraw $10,000, but instead took $38,420, explaining he was “unaccustomed to personal bank accounts, took the cash he needed, and authorized his bookkeeper to pay his personal bills from the dairy accounts.”

Lost Valley Farm opened in April 2017 after receiving a wastewater management permit from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Agriculture, which jointly manage the state’s confined animal feeding operation, or CAFO, program.

Almost immediately, the dairy began racking up permit violations, including 32 infractions related to waste storage between June 28, 2017 and May 9, 2018. The state attempted to revoke the permit in June, though a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge ruled in August that Lost Valley Farm could stay in operation while te Velde and regulators worked out an agreement to get the dairy back in compliance.

Lost Valley is within the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area, established by DEQ in 1990 for elevated levels of groundwater nitrates. A spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Agriculture said regulators continue to inspect the facility routinely, and have conducted 11 inspections since June 1.

Meanwhile, te Velde also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April after Rabobank sought to sell the Lost Valley herd to repay debts. Lost Valley has 10,500 dry and milking cows, along with 4,000 replacement heifers. The dairy is permitted for up to 30,000 animals.

Projecting ahead after a 25-year career, retired Oregon State University weed scientist Carol Mallory-Smith said to expect more regulations in coming decades surrounding the use of herbicides.

“Around the world, they are talking about banning herbicides, and in Europe, a lot of herbicides have already been banned,” Mallory-Smith said. “Even in the last two or three weeks, we have read about talk of banning glyphosate in Brazil. It is real, and it is out there, and we have to look at it.”

In a sweeping discourse at the OSU Extension Seed Crop and Cereal Production Meeting in Salem, Ore., Sept. 12, Mallory-Smith reflected on her career and addressed what growers might expect in the future.

In addition to an increase in herbicide-use regulations, she said growers can expect a buildup of resistance within weed populations and shift in weed populations promulgated by climate change.

“What we are seeing across the U.S. is a lot of the weeds that only used to occur in the South have started to move north,” she said. “We are going to see different weeds in our system than what we see now.”

In many cases, she said, the new weeds will outcompete weeds currently in Western Oregon production systems, which, in some cases, might not be a bad thing.

“But,” she said, “usually the weed that comes in is a worse problem than the weed that you just took out.

“And something to think about is that all of the crops that we grow in Oregon, with the exception of wheat, are minor crops, and it takes a long time to get registration for many of the crops that you are growing, so it is not an easy task to get a herbicide labeled for a new weed,” she said.

Oregon farmers also can expect to see more issues surrounding co-existence in the years ahead, she predicted, as crop diversity continues to increase in the Willamette Valley.

“Off-target pesticide movement is going to continue to be a problem, and it is going to be a bigger problem, both because of the kind of crops that we are growing and because herbicide use, in general, (is coming under attack),” she said. “A lot of people are opposed to any kind of pesticide use, so I think you are going to see more pushback on that.”

In reflecting back on her career, Mallory-Smith identified the discovery of unauthorized Roundup Ready wheat in a field in Eastern Oregon in May of 2013 — a discovery she made in her lab from a sample sent in by a grower and a discovery that shut down some export markets for many months — as one of the biggest issues she faced.

She also identified the escape of Roundup Ready bentgrass in Eastern Oregon and in Central Oregon, and the issue of whether to allow widespread canola production in the Willamette Valley as top issues.

“The last three years of my career have been spent dealing with this issue,” she said of the canola issue. “It is now turned over to the Oregon Department of Agriculture and they will be making a decision by mid-November.”

As for the most difficult weed-management issues she faced, Mallory-Smith listed several grass weeds that are problematic for grass seed growers, including annual bluegrass, Italian ryegrass, roughstalk bluegrass and rattail fescue. She also identified the broadleaf weed wild carrot as a major challenge in weed management and jointed goatgrass, which is a problematic weed in the eastern half of the state, and small broomrape, a problem weed in clover production, as significant weeds in her career.

As for identifying her biggest rewards, Mallory-Smith said working with the agricultural community ranks high.

“Growers have been fantastic,” she said. “We’ve worked on their land. They accommodated us in all kinds of ways. The industry has really helped through the years.”

Mallory-Smith closed her presentation with a call for growers to speak out and educate the public about agriculture.

“We need to become more visible and more vocal,” Mallory Smith said, “and becoming more vocal doesn’t mean becoming louder. It means being there when we should be there.

“I think we have to help the public understand what we do, why we do it, where their food comes from, how safe their food supply is in the U.S.,” she said.

“And remember that we have reduced political clout. When I first came here 25 years ago, agriculture had much more clout in this state than it does now,” she said. “So, making friends on both sides of the aisle is really important. We need advocates wherever we can find them, and the people who are not sympathetic with agriculture are the people we should be sitting down with and explaining: ‘Here’s what we do, why we do it, why we have to do it this way, and why that is important.’

“Agriculture is still extremely important to the economy in Oregon,” she said, “but it doesn’t have the voice that it used to have, and we need to make sure that we keep it out there.”

Wildlife advocates are pushing federal officials to stop using spring-loaded cyanide devices to poison predators in Oregon. They filed a petition Thursday asking for an official rulemaking to ban the practice and remove the devices currently out on the land.

The petitioners call the M-44 devices “cyanide bombs” because when triggered, they shoot a burst of deadly cyanide powder in the air. Federal animal control agency Wildlife Services states it uses M-44s to kill problem coyotes, foxes and feral dogs.

In the petition, about one hundred physicians, vets, scientists and environmental groups stated the unintentional consequences of the devices are unacceptable.

“They kill everything. People have been poisoned, endangered species, the wolf in Eastern Oregon. So there’s this decades and decades long history of M-44s killing non-target species,” said Brooks Fahy of Predator Defense, the group leading the effort.

Wildlife Services’ literature on the M-44 program states the devices are “effective and environmentally sound.” They help prevent livestock losses to predators, which costs ranchers and producers more than $100 million each year. 

Fahy says there’s a wide variety of non-lethal methods available to control these predators that don’t put people in harm’s way.

Last year in Idaho, a teenaged boy and his dog triggered an M-44 near their home. The dog died at the site, and the boy suffered headache, vomiting and couldn’t sleep for weeks after the incident, according to the Idaho State Journal.

Wildlife Services halted use of the devices in Idaho after the incident.

One of Oregon’s collared wolves — OR48 — died in 2017 after triggering an M-44. After that incident, Wildlife Services agreed to halt use of the devices in six eastern Oregon counties with significant wolf populations.

Fahy says Oregon is currently the only state in the Pacific Northwest where M-44s are actively used.

After a separate process, a federal court ordered officials earlier this year to formally review the safety of a chemical used in M-44s and decide by 2021 whether the devices should be banned.

Also Thursday, U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio sent a letter to Gov. Kate Brown, a fellow Oregon Democrat, urging her to use her influence to push for the elimination of M-44s in the state.

Four environmental groups are suing the U.S. Forest Service to stop a major logging project on the east shoulder of the Mount Hood National Forest near the White River in north-central Oregon.

The complaint, filed by Bark, Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands and WildEarth Guardians, claims the 11,742-acre Crystal Clear Restoration Project threatens habitat for endangered species — including a new breeding pair of wolves.

Kameron Sam, district ranger for the Barlow Ranger District on the Mount Hood National Forest, signed off on the project in June to reduce wildfire hazards, provide sustainable timber and boost forest health. It is the largest timber sale in the Mount Hood National Forest in more than a decade, and would roughly double the annual forest-wide timber harvest.

Conservationists, however, take issue with nearly 4,000 acres of commercial logging in old growth forest, which they argue is not in need of environmental restoration and would damage habitat for northern spotted owls. The project would also build nearly 36 miles of temporary roads, spilling sediment into rivers and further fracturing wildlife habitat.

“Removing and rehabilitating unneeded roads would improve watershed health and habitat connectivity, but the Forest Service did not prioritize this type of real restoration work,” said Marla Fox, an attorney for WildEarth Guardians.

Last year, the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife confirmed gray wolves for the first time in the White River area in more than 70 years. The agency recently confirmed the pair had at least two pups, spotted by a trail camera on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation.

Nick Cady, legal director for Cascadia Wildlands, said impacts of the Crystal Clear project could destabilize the new pack.

“The northern Oregon Cascades are a wilder place with wolves back on the landscape and their presence confirms that habitat in this area is recovering after a century of heavy logging,” Cady said.

According to the lawsuit, the Forest Service failed to adequately analyze the impacts of the project or consider alternatives, as required by law. It alleges Sam, the district ranger, introduced the Crystal Clear project to the Wasco County Forest Collaborative Group in 2016, but would not be developing the project collaboratively.

“Instead, Ranger Sam described the project sale as a ‘straight up timber sale’ with the purpose of creating ‘shelf stock’ of timber to meet Mt. Hood National Forest’s annual timber production target,” the complaint reads.

A spokeswoman for the Mount Hood National Forest said the agency cannot comment on pending litigation.

In its biological opinion of the project, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wrote that, while logging is likely to impact spotted owl habitat, it would not “appreciably reduce the likelihood of survival” for the species. The agency also determined the project is not likely to affect wolves, or the threatened Oregon spotted frog.

Kevin White was 20 years old when he made it his goal to raise $1 million for the National FFA Organization.

Mission accomplished. And then some.

In seven years as executive director of the Oregon FFA Foundation, White helped raise more than $3 million for state programs, enlisting several dozen corporate sponsors to throw their support behind agriculture education.

White stepped down from the position Aug. 31 after accepting a new job with Deschutes County Title. Doug Hoffman will serve as interim executive director while the foundation searches for a full-time replacement.

The Oregon FFA Foundation is the primary funding vehicle for Oregon FFA, which lost state funding in 2011. Oregon FFA had received financial support from the Oregon Department of Education, though budget cuts at the state level prompted FFA to become independently funded, or risk becoming the first state to lose its program.

“When we lost that money, the foundation had to step up and figure out how we’re going to support Oregon FFA,” White said.

The foundation hired White as its first executive director. White is an FFA alum from Anderson, Calif. who served as national FFA secretary in 1992-93. It was then that he decided to put the $1 million target on his bucket list.

“I had been able to get a lot out of FFA in terms of my own personal growth,” White said. “FFA teaches a lot about service. It’s something where you feel compelled to give back.”

White moved to Oregon in 1995 to attend Western Baptist College — now Corban University — in Salem. He then moved to Terrebonne, just north of Bend, where he lives on a small ranch.

During White’s tenure, the Oregon FFA Foundation went from raising around $6,000 per year to $600,000 per year.

“It changed dramatically,” White said. “Obviously, I think we were able to exceed a lot of expectations.”

The FFA Foundation funds a large portion of basically anything that isn’t covered by student dues or registration fees, including staff, programs and the annual state convention. The strategy, White said, is instead of asking for charity, the foundation asks for business sponsors to partner with FFA. As a career-oriented organization, he said the alliance makes sense on both ends.

“Don’t underestimate the potential that the agriculture industry is willing to support FFA,” White said.

Hoffman, who serves as president of the foundation’s board of directors, said he appreciates White’s work and looks forward to continuing the group’s mission as interim executive director.

“We have a great team in place, and we’re well-positioned to continue the important work of funding the programs and activities that benefit thousands of students each year,” Hoffman said.

Kirk Maag, president-elect of the foundation, said they are fortunate to have Hoffman step into the role on a temporary basis. Hoffman was CEO of the Wilco Co-op for more than 20 years before retiring in December 2017.

“Doug has decades of leadership and management experience,” Maag said. “It’s important to have someone with Doug’s experience at the helm.”

The foundation intends to start reviewing applications Sept. 21, and Maag said they hope to hire someone before the end of the year.

“We’re looking for somebody who is a self-starter, and who has a vision of how to best support the Oregon FFA Organization,” he said.

For more information, or to suggest candidates, contact Maag at 541-881-9613 or Elin Miller at 415-613-5251.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Timm Locke relishes a chance to drive around Portland and showcase the latest commercial buildings made with mass timber, a construction material that uses wood beams and panels instead of concrete and steel.

First stop: Albina Yard, a four-story office building that opened in 2016 featuring cross-laminated timber panels from D.R. Johnson, a lumber company south of Roseburg, Ore.

Every piece of cross-laminated timber — or CLT for short — is prefabricated, designed for a specific part of the building, said Locke, director of forest products at the Oregon Forest Resources Institute. That means buildings go up faster, with fewer workers.

Wood is also environmentally superior to steel and concrete, Locke said, because it sequesters carbon and takes less energy to produce.

“There are so many benefits, it doesn’t matter which one you choose to start with,” Locke said.

First developed in Europe, mass timber is now catching on in the U.S., and Oregon is working to position itself as the industry hub, kick-starting rural economies that have traditionally relied on forest products. On Aug. 1, Oregon became the first state to approve language in its building codes allowing for wood-framed buildings up to 18 stories tall.

Albina Yard was the first building to use Oregon-made CLT as a structural element. Other examples of mass timber construction in Portland include Carbon 12, an eight-story condominium building on Northeast Fremont Street. Catty-corner to it across the street is One North, an 85,540-square-foot business complex.

First Tech Federal Credit Union also opened its new headquarters in neighboring Hillsboro last June. At 156,000 square feet, it is the largest mass timber building in the nation.

Locke, who was hired by OFRI in 2015 to help develop markets and supply chain for mass timber, said he believes momentum will only increase as the projects gain wider recognition.

“People like wood. It’s a nice material,” Locke said. “It has a great environmental story, and a great aesthetic.”

Mass timber refers to several construction materials made of wood, including CLT, glue laminated beams, laminated veneer and mass plywood.

CLT, a prominent example, has been described as “plywood on steroids.” It is made by gluing planks of wood in perpendicular layers, creating thick panels that can be used for walls and floors.

The first CLT buildings were constructed in 1993-95 in Germany and Switzerland, and the majority of production remains in Europe. The first U.S. commercial CLT building was completed in 2011 in Whitefish, Mont. D.R. Johnson became the first U.S. company certified by APA — The Engineered Wood Association — to make structural CLT panels in 2015.

A study by Grand View Research, a market research company in San Francisco, anticipates the global CLT market will be worth more than $2 billion by 2025, tied to demand for “green” homes.

The U.S. Senate in June added provisions to its version of the 2018 Farm Bill that would establish a federal research program for mass timber. Originally known as the Timber Innovation Act, the bill was sponsored by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and co-sponsored by 19 other senators, including Republicans and Democrats from Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Montana, Minnesota, Maine and Mississippi.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said he wants to see Oregon become the national leader in mass timber, an industry with “enormous potential.”

“We think about the fact that we build these medium high-rise buildings out of concrete and steel,” Merkley said. “If we can open that market effectively to mass timber, then it could be huge.”

Locke describes himself as a “wood guy.” Before joining OFRI, he ran a marketing agency, Pipeline Public Relations, in Portland, serving clients in the construction industry.

Locke is the first director of forest products for OFRI, a position created in 2015 and partially funded by a two-year, $250,000 Wood Innovation Grant from the U.S. Forest Service. He said the job was a perfect fit.

“They wanted to promote Oregon wood products into commercial construction,” Locke said. “That has always made sense to me.”

First, Locke said, there are cost savings on construction and installation with mass timber. He explained how each floor panel at Albina Yard was installed in three hours, whereas with steel and concrete it would have taken twice as big a crew up to a week to do the job.

Then there is the environmental element. Production of CLT emits 26 percent less greenhouse gases than making steel, and 50 percent less than concrete. Carbon 12, the Portland condo building, also stores up to 577 metric tons of carbon dioxide in the wood — equivalent to taking roughly 105 cars off the road for one year.

CLT was initially developed to create a high-end use for lumber. Locke said it could also provide a market for small-diameter trees and the wildfire fuels building up in western forests.

Others, however, have tempered expectations. According to University of Washington and Washington State University researchers, the predicted demand for softwood lumber to manufacture CLT panels is still less than 1 percent of the annual Pacific Northwest timber harvest, making it a boutique industry at best.

Doug Heiken, conservation and restoration coordinator for the environmental group Oregon Wild, described CLT as a side product of the timber industry that would not change its overall carbon footprint. He said there is no guarantee wood for mass timber would come from sustainable forestry practices, and not industrial clear-cuts.

“Mass timber isn’t really that different from any other timber in that way,” Heiken said.

The main limiting factor, Locke said, are the international building codes, which are slowly being adapted to catch up to tall wood buildings.

In April, the International Code Council moved to update codes allowing for wood buildings up to 18 stories, although the proposed changes would not be adopted until 2021 at the earliest.

Oregon took the extraordinary step in August of adopting the recommendations under its Statewide Alternate Method — the first state to do so. Locke said mass timber has passed every required test and is proving to be just as safe as concrete or steel.

Such tests are conducted at the TallWood Design Institute, a collaborative research program of the University of Oregon College of Design and Oregon State University’s College of Forestry and College of Engineering.

Iain Macdonald, associate director of the institute, said 20 to 30 professors are working in research and product development, studying fire performance, building physics, environmental impact and economics.

“Urbanization is going to drive a huge demand for housing around the world,” Macdonald said. “Our role is to do applied research on this, to put together educational programs for stakeholders like architects, structural engineers and construction companies.”

Macdonald acknowledged fears about mass timber, especially regarding fire safety. Fire tests involve roasting panels in a furnace at 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit for up to two hours, and Macdonald said the results so far are promising.

While the surface does char, Macdonald said the interior of the panel remains insulated from the heat. He compared it to throwing a whole log onto a campfire, versus small pieces of kindling.

William Silva, pre-construction manager for Swinerton Builders — the Portland company that built the First Tech’s Hillsboro headquarters — said that as product testing and building codes come together fellow builders should get over their fears.

“It’s become more than just a progressive concept,” Silva said. “I see a lot of developers looking at this as a value proposition.”

Not everything has gone smoothly for mass timber development in Oregon.

Just outside Macdonald’s office at the OSU College of Forestry in Corvallis, work is underway on the new Oregon Forest Science Complex that will house the College of Forestry, TallWood Design Institute and replace Peavy Hall on campus.

The project is supposed to be a showcase building for the materials, but was hampered earlier this year by a costly and potentially dangerous setback. On March 14, two of seven layers in a third-story CLT panel measuring 30 feet long by 4 feet wide, weighing a half-ton, delaminated and fell 14 feet onto the second floor below. Panels for Peavy Hall were manufactured by D.R. Johnson.

Nobody was hurt, but the incident did bring construction to a halt while officials investigated what went wrong. Evaluations were conducted by the general contractor, Andersen Construction, as well as D.R. Johnson and APA — The Engineered Wood Association. OSU also hired KPFF Consulting Engineers of Portland as an independent consultant.

They determined D.R. Johnson employees erred when they pre-heated lumber in stacks outside during a period of cold weather before gluing them together into CLT. This caused premature curing of the adhesive, weakening the bond.

Valerie Johnson, president of D.R. Johnson Wood Innovations, said the incident was the product of a “well-intentioned, but unfortunate” change in the manufacturing process. She added the company has added quality control measures, and built a climate-controlled glue layup room in its facility to ensure delamination does not happen again.

“We are confident we have rectified the problem permanently and have an even better production process as a result,” Johnson said.

Andersen Construction authorized D.R. Johnson to resume making panels for Peavy Hall, and construction resumed in July.

In its project specifications, OSU stipulates that CLT components for Peavy must be manufactured within 300 miles of Corvallis. D.R. Johnson is the only certified CLT fabricator that meets the requirement.

OSU spokesman Steve Clark said engineers are still determining how many panels already installed at the complex may need to be replaced. The project is divided into three zones, with Zone 3 needing 45 of 71 panels replaced. Analyses are not yet competed for Zones 1 and 2.

“Ultimately there is some expense and delay,” Clark said. The 95,000-square-foot complex is now expected to open by January 2020. The total cost is now $79 million, of which $30 million comes from state bonds, $38 million in donations and $11 million in university funding.

Despite the problem, supporters of CLT do not appear to be fazed. Clark said the university remains “very committed and confident” in the future of CLT. Locke described it as a “blip” in the process. Macdonald said it was an anomaly.

“We really have not heard about this happening on a CLT project around the world,” Macdonald said. “It’s good that this deviation in the manufacturing process was caught. We’re not concerned about the long-term impact.”

Set in the forested canyon near Lyons, Ore., Freres Lumber Co. has pioneered a new form of mass timber to sustain its business and 470 employees.

The company, founded in 1922, debuted its new mass plywood factory in December 2017, a sparkling $40 million, four-acre facility that manufactures panels using veneer lumber up to 12 feet wide, 48 feet long and 24 inches thick.

Tyler Freres, co-owner and vice president of sales, said the company received patents for its mass plywood panels earlier this year. He believes mass plywood is a more efficient product than CLT, using 20 percent less wood while holding up in every facet of construction.

“This is a truly unique facility,” Freres said. “We had to design all the processes ourselves.”

Freres, who lives in nearby Stayton, said the prosperity of local schools and communities is tied to the success of the timber industry. Mass timber can be a lifeline, he said, though it will require a more productive approach to thinning federal forests to boost volume.

In the 1970s, Oregon’s timber harvest totaled more than 8 million board-feet, according to the state Office of Economic Analysis. Today, the timber harvest has dropped by more than half that amount, and logging on federal lands is down nearly 90 percent.

“It’s been an absolute disaster, losing timber,” Freres said.

Freres said mass plywood will be key to supporting his family’s business for another 100 years. He said the company receives many inquiries from builders interested in mass plywood.

“The potential is almost limitless,” he said.

New facility set to open Sept.24

By Aliya Hall

Capital Press

Salem, Ore. — Massachusetts-based Griffin Greenhouse Supplies Inc. is making the move to the West Coast, opening a location in Salem, Ore., this month.

The distribution center is expected to open Sept. 24, and is bringing hard goods and retail products to match their broker presence for West Coast growers.

“Our sales presence in Oregon for a long time was through brokerage. We have a solid customer base and representation,” Tracey Gorrell, marketing communications lead for Griffin, said. “It was a natural fit to bring the next branch to where we already have that customer base and presence.”

Gorrell said the company is primarily known as an ornamental crop broker by the Pacific Northwest customer base, but the distribution center will provide access to the retail side, with which customers may be unfamiliar.

“Now they have access to supplies, equipment and retail products they couldn’t previously get,” she said. “They have access to things like poly film and containers, production supplies that are needed to produce ornamental products.”

For nursery retailers, the center will also sell gift and holiday supplies, as well as bird baths.

“The things we’re bringing to the West Coast are more than just plant material,” Gorrell said.

The company is leasing the 24,000 square-foot facility at 3315 Aumsville Highway SE in Salem, which will become Griffin’s 16th branch location, according to the company.

The new Oregon warehouse’s product mix will support both greenhouse growers and nursery owners.

“We understand (nurseries) are a significant segment in the Pacific Northwest,” Gorrell said.

Griffin will also supply specific items and vendors to cater to the needs and preferences of Pacific Northwest growers, such as HC Companies, T.O. Plastics, Premier Tech Horticulture, JR Peters, Syngenta and Lumite.

Gorrell anticipates the Salem branch will house around 1,500 different products when fully stocked.

Griffin has been a family owned business based in Tewksbury, Mass., for 71 years, specializing in greenhouse and nursery production and independent garden centers. In 2012, Griffin acquired Syngenta Horticultural Services that focused on national ornamental brokerage, distributing live goods such as seed, cuttings and young plants. As a national broker and distributor, the company’s annual sales exceed $200 million.

“The Oregon distribution center fulfills our longtime goal of achieving coast-to-coast coverage with all parts of our product offer,” said Craig Hyslip, chief operating officer at Griffin, in a press release.

The Salem location follows Griffin’s opening of an Aurora, Colo., facility in early 2017. The company also has locations in Connecticut, Illinois, Georgia, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia.

“We’re looking forward to being a more full service resource to our existing customers, and hoping it will open new doors to customers we haven’t been able to adequately serve,” Gorrell said. “We’re interested in end-to-end solutions with this expansion, and we’re hoping to be a more valuable partner to the accounts in the Northwest.”

SALEM — The Oregon Department of Agriculture is considering whether to put all of its laboratories under one roof.

The agency wants to fund a study on whether combining the facilities is feasible, and will likely seek the money for that analysis in the 2019 session.

ODA maintains five testing and inspection facilities: an animal health lab at ODA headquarters in Salem, a plant pathology lab, an insect testing program, a weights and measures lab, and the department’s first and largest lab, the Food Innovation Center in Portland.

Lauren Henderson, the department’s assistant director, says testing has become more complicated and more rigid since the Food Innovation Center opened in 1999.

For example, the state now requires that legal cannabis products be tested for certain contaminants, including pesticides.

While certified private labs perform the required testing, if those labs find a certain contaminant outside the allowable range in a cannabis sample, ODA investigates.

“Times have changed and the complexities have changed, and cannabis was just one more piece of work that, in the current space and the footprint we have, if we try to add that, it’s just going to be harder to do because we frankly don’t have the room to add any more equipment really up in the Portland area,” Henderson said. “So we want to look at a bigger footprint to put all of our labs.”

Centralizing the labs could mean certain processes could be more efficient, and it may require fewer administrative staff like receptionists or managers, Henderson said.

Henderson says they want to request about $200,000 for the feasibility study, which is expected to take 10 to 12 months, in the state’s next two-year budget, which begins in mid-2019.