LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Nevada rancher who was accused of leading an armed uprising against federal authorities has walked out of a federal courthouse in Las Vegas as a free man.

Supporters cheered Monday as Cliven Bundy hugged his wife. He says that he had been jailed for 700 days as a “political prisoner” for refusing to acknowledge federal authority over the land around his cattle ranch.

A judge who found what she called “flagrant misconduct” by prosecutors dismissed criminal charges against the 71-year-old states’ rights figure, two of his sons and a Montana militia leader.

The collapse of the case is a stunning failure for the U.S. attorney’s office in Nevada.

Newly appointed Interim U.S. Attorney Dayle Elieson (el-AYE’-eh-sun) didn’t immediately respond on whether the government will take the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Jenny Freeborn of Oregon was the runner-up in the Young Farmers & Ranchers Discussion Meet Monday at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 2018 Annual Convention & IDEAg Trade Show.

Freeborn, who is from Rickreall, Ore., was elected chair of the Oregon Farm Bureau Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee in December. Her father, Dean Freeborn, is a member of the Oregon Farm Bureau board of directors, according to Anne Marie Moss, spokeswoman for the Farm Bureau. Her sister, Kathy Hadley, has served as YF&R chair as well.

As runner-up, Freeborn will receive a Case IH Farmall 50A tractor courtesy of Case IH.

The Discussion Meet simulates a committee meeting in which active discussion and participation are expected. Participants are evaluated on their ability to exchange ideas and information on a predetermined topic, according to a Farm Bureau press release.

Martha Smith of Colorado won the Discussion Meet. She will receive a new Ford truck, courtesy of Farm Bureau Financial Services and will receive paid registration to the AFBF YF&R Leadership Conference in Reno, Nev., Feb. 16-19.

Jared Knock of South Dakota placed third, receiving a Case IH 40-inch combination roll cabinet and top chest and a $500 Case IH parts card, courtesy of Case IH. In addition, he will take home $2,000 worth of Stanley Black & Decker merchandise, courtesy of Black & Decker.

Fourth place went to Matt Jakubik of Michigan. He receives a Case IH 40-inch combination roll cabinet and top chest and a $500 Case IH parts card, courtesy of Case IH.

The Discussion Meet was held along with the Young Farmers & Ranchers Achievement Award and Excellence in Agriculture competitions, the winners of which were also announced Monday.

Young farmers and ranchers from around the country competed for the awards by demonstrating knowledge of and achievement in agriculture, as well as commitment to promoting the agriculture industry.

Russell and Amelia Kent of Louisiana won the Achievement Award. They are the winners of a new Ford truck, courtesy of Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance, and will also receive paid registration to the AFBF YF&R Leadership Conference in Reno.

The runners-up in the Achievement Award contest are Justin and Lori McClellan of Virginia. They will receive a Case IH Farmall 50A tractor courtesy of Case IH.

Ben and Katie Furnish of Kentucky are the third place finalists, receiving a Case IH 40-inch combination roll cabinet and top chest and a $500 Case IH parts card, courtesy of Case IH. In addition, they will take home $2,000 worth of Stanley Black & Decker merchandise, courtesy of Black & Decker.

Fourth place went to Cassie Lyman of Arizona. She receives a Case IH 40-inch combination roll cabinet and top chest and a $500 Case IH parts card, courtesy of Case IH.

The Achievement Award recognizes young farmers and ranchers who have excelled in their farming or ranching operations and exhibited superior leadership abilities. Participants are evaluated on a combination of their agricultural operation’s growth and financial progress, Farm Bureau leadership and leadership outside Farm Bureau.

Greg and Rose Hartschuh of Ohio won the Excellence in Agriculture Award. They will receive a new Ford truck, courtesy of Country Financial, and will also receive paid registration to the AFBF YF&R Leadership Conference in Reno.

The runners-up in the Excellence in Agriculture contest are Casey and Stacey Phillips of Virginia. They will receive a Case IH Farmall 50A tractor courtesy of Case IH.

Robert and Lindsay Elliott of Tennessee won third place, receiving a Case IH 40-inch combination roll cabinet and top chest and a $500 Case IH parts card, courtesy of Case IH. In addition, they will take home $2,000 worth of Stanley Black & Decker merchandise, courtesy of Black & Decker.

Fourth place finalists Wade and Shelby Hampton of Maryland receive a Case IH 40-inch combination roll cabinet and top chest and a $500 Case IH parts card, courtesy of Case IH.

The Excellence in Agriculture Award recognizes young farmers and ranchers who do not derive the majority of their income from an agricultural operation, but who actively contribute and grow through their involvement in agriculture, their leadership ability and participation in Farm Bureau and other organizations.

Also at the convention, members of the AFB YF&R Committee elected Russ Kohler of Utah as the committee’s chairman for 2018. Kohler will take over in February, at the end of the committee’s leadership conference, and will serve for one year. He will also serve a one-year term on the AFBF board of directors.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A decision is due Monday from a judge in Las Vegas about whether the federal government can try again to prosecute a Nevada rancher and followers accused of leading an armed uprising against federal authorities in April 2014.

Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro signaled when she declared a mistrial last month that she might dismiss the case outright against 71-year-old Cliven Bundy, sons Ryan and Ammon Bundy, and Montana militia leader Ryan Payne.

The judge severely criticized prosecutors for what she called “willful” violations of due process rights of defendants, including failing to properly turn over evidence to their lawyer.

But she gave the government a chance to submit written documents opposing dismissal of all charges.

The decision is sure to reverberate among states’ rights advocates in the Western U.S., where the federal government controls vast lands that some people want to protect and others want used for grazing, mining and oil and gas drilling.

The tense armed standoff outside Bunkerville, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, stopped a federal Bureau of Land Management roundup of Bundy cattle from public land including what is now Gold Butte National Monument.

About three dozen heavily armed federal agents guarding corrals in a dry riverbed faced hundreds of flag-waving men, women and children calling for the release of some 400 cows. The cattle had been rounded up under court orders issued over Bundy letting his herd graze for 20 years without paying government fees.

No shots were fired before the outnumbered and outgunned federal agents withdrew.

Several gunmen among the protesters who had assault-style rifles were acquitted of criminal charges in two trials last year.

Ryan and Ammon Bundy also were acquitted of federal criminal charges in Oregon after an armed occupation in early 2016 of a national wildlife refuge to demand the government turn over public land to local control.

Payne awaits sentencing in that case but is trying to withdraw his guilty plea to a felony conspiracy charge that is expected to bring a sentence of more than three years in prison.

In Las Vegas, Navarro declared a mistrial Dec. 20, leaving Cliven Bundy as the only one of the four defendants still jailed after refusing the judge’s offer of release to house arrest.

His lawyer, Bret Whipple, says Bundy is holding out to walk out a free man.

SALEM — A solar power developer claims that Oregon’s land use laws don’t prohibit the construction of an 80-acre solar project on high-value farmland in Jackson County.

Origis Energy had won the county’s approval to build the facility near Medford, Ore., but that decision was overturned last year by Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals.

The developer is now seeking to convince the Oregon Court of Appeals that LUBA wrongly found the project doesn’t qualify for an exception to the state land use goal of preserving farmland.

During Jan. 5 oral arguments in Salem, Ore., attorneys for Origis claimed that if their project didn’t qualify for an exception to build on farmland, it’s difficult to envision any renewable energy facilities that would.

Federal and state government priorities for the development of renewable energy provide a valid reason for the exception, said Josh Newton, an attorney for an Origis subsidiary developing the site.

“The county properly considered those policies in justifying its decision,” Newton said.

Contrary to Jackson County’s opinion, LUBA decided that building new renewable energy facilities isn’t a requirement of the state land use goal of improving energy conservation.

The proximity of the proposed 80-acre solar project to an electrical substation roughly a mile away in Medford should not have been relevant to the county’s approval of the project, according to LUBA.

It’s not unusual for substations to exist in the outer industrial zones of an “urban growth boundary,” so this doesn’t justify building on nearby farmland, the ruling said.

Flat ground and access to sunlight are also hardly unique, so siting a solar facility at that location isn’t justified by those factors, LUBA said.

The developer argued there was a demonstrable need to locate the solar facility on farmland.

“There were no other parcels of land available for the project,” said Newton, its attorney.

The hurdles to renewable energy development on farmland would be practically insurmountable under the reasoning of 1,000 Friends of Oregon — a nonprofit that opposes the project — and Oregon’s Department of Land Conservation and Development, he said.

“I did not hear a viable path for an exception anywhere in the state,” Newton said.

Meriel Darzen, an attorney for 1,000 Friends of Oregon, countered that renewable energy policies don’t override Oregon’s protections for farmland.

“These solar arrays don’t actually have to be on rural lands,” she said. “There’s nothing about federal and state energy policy that pushes it onto farmland.”

The desire to put renewable energy facilities on farmland is no different than the desire to build residential subdivisions or other developments, she said.

“If you want to put it in a certain place, you have to go through the appropriate pathway,” Darzen said.

Just because Origis didn’t obtain its desired outcome in this case doesn’t mean that LUBA didn’t appropriately apply state land use law, said Denise Fjordbeck, attorney for DLCD.

“Exceptions are supposed to be exceptional,” she said. “It should be an uphill lift.”

Solar facilities are allowed on prime farmland in Oregon as long as they’re under 12 acres and receive a conditional use permit from the local county government.

Projects larger than that size must contain an exception to Oregon’s goal of conserving farmland, which means the development site must contain a unique resource or a comparative advantage over other locations.

Farmland preservation groups such as 1,000 Friends of Oregon don’t oppose solar development but they argue facilities should be on marginal lands or other areas where they won’t disrupt agriculture and take high-value soil out of production.

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission will consider adopting a long-awaited update to the state’s Wolf Conservation and Management Plan at its April 19-20 meeting in Astoria.

A decision was scheduled for Jan. 19 in Salem, but the commission decided more time was needed to work on the proposal after drawing criticism from ranchers and environmentalists alike.

At the last commission meeting in December, environmental groups argued the plan would move to lethal control of wolves too quickly in cases of livestock predation. Cattlemen, on the other hand, said they would like to see management zones for wolves across the state, with population caps.

The Oregon wolf plan was last updated in 2010, and a scheduled five-year update is now three years overdue.

Public testimony about the plan will be taken at the Astoria meeting, or can be submitted via email at odfw.commission.state.or.us.

Lawmakers in the Pacific Northwest said they’ll defend state cannabis laws after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to lift an Obama-era policy that took a hands-off approach to federal enforcement.

In rescinding the Cole Memorandum, which is widely understood to have opened the door for legalized cannabis across the country, Sessions plans to let federal prosecutors decide how aggressively to enforce federal cannabis laws in places where it is legal.

Yet the prosecutors Sessions has tasked with deciding what that regulation will look like for the region’s marijuana industry haven’t said much about how they plan to interpret and execute those laws, leaving shop owners in a haze over state and federal industry rules.

“Right now there’s just a lot of uncertainty, a lot of anxiety,” said Ramsey Hamide, the co-owner of Main Street Marijuana in Vancouver, the top-selling cannabis shop in Washington.

“That’s going to take some time to digest exactly how that’s going to impact us day-to-day.”

Hamide says the decision could temporarily impact investment in the cannabis industry, though he believes larger stores like his won’t immediately be affected. Hamide is optimistic that reworking federal policies could bring some much-needed clarity to the industry. In response to Sessions’ decision, Oregon and Western Washington’s federal prosecutors did not say how their state’s marijuana laws would be immediately impacted.

“We will continue working with our federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement partners to pursue shared public safety objectives, with an emphasis on stemming the overproduction of marijuana and the diversion of marijuana out of state, dismantling criminal organizations and thwarting violent crime in our communities,” Oregon’s federal prosecutor Billy J. Williams said.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said at a news conference Thursday afternoon Sessions’ memo was “literally ripping the rug out from underneath the marijuana industry.”

Brown said she spoke to Williams Thursday morning and hoped to get clarity from him about the memo in the next 48 hours.

Western Washington U.S. Attorney Annette L. Hayes said she will continue to prosecute cases involving organized crime, violent threats and financial crimes related to marijuana, though she didn’t speak specifically about how marijuana enforcement would change.

State lawmakers in Oregon and Washington have raised concern over Sessions’ decision and the precedent it sets for states’ rights violations, citing voter-approved legalization efforts.

“In Washington state we have put in place a system in place that adheres to what we pledged to the people of Washington and the federal government; it’s well regulated, keeps criminal elements out, keeps pot out of the hands of kids and tracks it all carefully enough to clamp down on cross-border leakage,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement.

“We are going to keep doing that and overseeing the well-regulated market that Washington voters approved,” Inslee said.

Brown echoed Inslee, saying in a statement released before the news conference that voters were clear when they decided to legalize marijuana in Oregon and “the federal government should not stand in the way of the will of Oregonians.”

“My staff and state agencies are working to evaluate reports of the Attorney General’s decision and will fight to continue Oregon’s commitment to a safe and prosperous recreational marijuana market,” Brown said.

Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer said Sessions’ decision violates President Donald Trump’s campaign promise not to interfere with state cannabis laws. Yet Blumenauer said he’s optimistic that Sessions’ decision will only fuel the fire of efforts to legalize marijuana at the federal level. 

“Ironically, this may be the catalyst that brings about the reform we all know needs to happen to make federal policies consistent with what voters are acting on all over the country,” said Blumenauer, a fierce proponent of marijuana legalization.

Oregon’s senior Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden co-sponsored the Marijuana Justice Act last month, which would make marijuana legal at the federal level.

“Trump promised to let states set their own marijuana policies. Now he’s breaking that promise so Jeff Sessions can pursue his extremist anti-marijuana crusade,” Wyden said in a statement.

Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley called Sessions’ move a “destructive decision” and a “huge step backwards.”

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said she plans to make sure the Oregon Department of Justice continues to ensure the state’s marijuana industry thrives.

Molly Solomon contributed to this report.

SEATTLE (AP) — In a story Dec. 8, 2016 about the state of Washington filing a lawsuit against Monsanto, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Monsanto stopped producing PCBs in 1979 when Congress banned the compounds. The company voluntarily stopped producing them in 1977.

A corrected version of the story is below:

By GENE JOHNSON

Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — Washington has become the first U.S. state to sue the agrochemical giant Monsanto over pervasive pollution from PCBs, the toxic industrial chemicals that have accumulated in plants, fish and people around the globe for decades. The company said the case “lacks merit.”

Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced the lawsuit at a news conference in downtown Seattle Thursday, saying they expect to win hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars from the company.

“It is time to hold the sole U.S. manufacturer of PCBs accountable for the significant harm they have caused to our state,” Ferguson said, noting that the chemicals continue to imperil the health of protected salmon and orcas despite the tens of millions of dollars Washington has spent to clean up the pollution. “Monsanto produced PCBs for decades while hiding what they knew about the toxic chemicals’ harm to human health and the environment.”

The suit arrives just days before Monsanto shareholders vote whether to accept a $57 billion buyout offer from Germany’s Bayer. The extraordinary meeting of shareholders takes place just outside of St. Louis on Tuesday.

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were used in many industrial and commercial applications, including in paint, coolants, sealants and hydraulic fluids. Monsanto, based in St. Louis, produced them from 1935 until 1977, two years before they were banned by Congress.

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

In a company release, Monsanto spokesman Scott S. Partridge said that the “case is experimental because it seeks to target a product manufacturer for selling a lawful and useful chemical four to eight decades ago that was applied by the U.S. government, Washington State, local cities, and industries into many products to make them safer. PCBs have not been produced in the U.S. for four decades, and Washington is now pursuing a case on a contingency fee basis that departs from settled law both in Washington and across the country. Most of the prior cases filed by the same contingency fee lawyers have been dismissed, and Monsanto believes this case similarly lacks merit.”

In response to a similar lawsuit filed last year by the city of Spokane, Washington, Monsanto said a previous incarnation of the company produced the PCBs, which it said “served an important fire protection and safety purpose.”

“PCBs sold at the time were a lawful and useful product that was then incorporated by third parties into other useful products,” Charla Lord, a company spokeswoman, wrote. “If improper disposal or other improper uses created the necessity for clean-up costs, then these other third parties would bear responsibility for these costs.”

Several other cities — including Seattle, Portland, Oregon, and Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose, Long Beach and San Diego, California — have also sued Monsanto over PCB pollution, the Attorney General’s Office said. Those cases are ongoing.

Ferguson, a Democrat, pointed to internal Monsanto documents that show the company long knew about the danger the chemicals posed. In 1937, an internal memo said testing on animals showed “systemic toxic effects” from prolonged exposure by inhaling PCB fumes or ingestion. In 1969, a company committee on PCBs noted, “There is too much customer/market need and selfishly too much Monsanto profit to go out.”

“There is little probability that any action that can be taken will prevent the growing incrimination of specific polychlorinated biphenyls ... as nearly global environmental contaminants leading to contamination of human food (particularly fish), the killing of some marine species (shrimp), and the possible extinction of several species of fish eating birds,” a committee memo said.

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

Ferguson said that infuriated him. He noted that his great-grandparents settled along Washington’s Skagit River in the late 19th century. The Skagit was one of more than 100 water bodies in the state listed in the lawsuit as being polluted with PCBs.

“That river, the Skagit River, which my family depended on to a great degree in the 19th century as they homesteaded here, is now contaminated by PCBs, as are the fish,” he said. “That makes me mad.”

Ferguson said his office had been in touch with counterparts in other states, but it remained unclear if other states would follow Washington’s lead in suing the company.

Washington’s lawsuit seeks damages on several grounds, including product liability for what it described as Monsanto’s failure to warn about the danger of PCBs; negligence; and even trespass, for injuring the state’s natural resources.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GILLIAN FLACCUS

Associated Press

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some questions and answers about the new policy:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Payne received a similar order.

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

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

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

The photos were posted on Ritzheimer’s Facebook page.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s pretty overwhelming,” she said.

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