For a few weeks in late summer, Chetco Bar was the nation’s top priority fire. It burned in an area of more than 191,000 acres, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate and destroying several homes. It also – along with other major fires — created unhealthy air quality over western Oregon and northern California. As the fire grew and the air thickened, tempers flared.

“It’s horrific. And there is no f#@%ing excuse for it whatsoever. The US Forest Service could have prevented this easily, and they didn’t.”

That’s Rogue River resident Ken Lewis. On his YouTube video blog, Lewis accused the Forest Service of allowing the Chetco Bar fire to burn as part of a liberal agenda. Conservative talk radio host Bill Meyer at KMED in Medford repeatedly blasted the Chetco Bar Fire response.

“I have no doubt that the terrain where this started, the original quarter acre, is very difficult and possibly dangerous for on the ground,” he said. “But it could have been taken care of back then with a few helicopter buckets. And then we would be talking about what a great summer we’ve having.”

Angry tweets and Facebook posts amplified the indignation.

This is the atmosphere Forest Service officials faced at a public meeting in Brookings on Sept. 28. About 120 people showed up at the high school gym to hear what fire managers had to say.

Craig Trulock, with the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, denied the fire was deliberately allowed to burn.

“Just wanted to state right off, this was never a fire that we wanted,” Trulock told the crowd. “Y’know, this was a suppression fire. The decision was made within 15 minutes.”

Fire officer Monty Edwards assumed command of the fire on July 13, the day after it was first reported. Edwards said firefighters who rappelled into the remote scene struggled with steep, unstable slopes. He said it soon became clear the terrain was too treacherous to keep firefighters on the ground. 

“The lack of safety zones and escape routes became really evident that we’re probably gonna get somebody hurt if we remain engaged like we are,” he said.

The decision was made to pull back and figure out a better way to attack the fire. Edwards dismissed the claim that a few aerial water drops could have killed the fire early on.

“They can’t do it alone with just aviation assets,” he said. “You need someone (on) the ground to go in direct and knock out the fire on the ground. That’s basic firefighting.”

In fact, Edwards said, during the first day helicopters had dropped more than 50 buckets containing over 17,000 gallons of water.

Long-time Medford resident John Prendergast was on the national fire management team that took command on July 29. Prendergast told the crowd at Brookings-Harbor High School that a rising toll of firefighter deaths has led to a national policy.

“Before we expose our wildland firefighters to the hazards found in the wildland fire environment, there has to be a reasonable probability of success, and that we’re not going to place their lives at an unacceptable risk.”

Prendergast said that’s why crews were pulled back from direct engagement with the Chetco Bar Fire. Instead, managers decided to build a containment line miles to the southwest, to cut off the fire if it moved toward Brookings. The plan was to deliberately burn from that line back toward the wildfire, creating a safe buffer.

But before that could happen, the weather shifted, triggering the hot, dry wind conditions known as the Chetco Effect. Prendergast said that was the game-changer.

“Our fire behavior analysts, they factored in the Chetco Wind Effect into the models and even with that, it greatly outpaced the model predictions of how that fire was going to grow,” he said.

Starting Aug. 15, fanned by 45–mile-per-hour winds funneled down the Chetco River valley, the fire exploded. In five days it grew from 6,000 acres to more than 91,000, jumping the Chetco River and burning over the containment line meant to protect Brookings. Evacuations were ordered and the fire ultimately came within five miles of town before rain and cooler weather helped damp it down over the following weeks.

After the Sept. 28 meeting in Brookings, few in the audience seemed mollified by the official explanations. Several people told JPR they’d received information that contradicted those accounts, but they wouldn’t identify their sources. Curry County Commissioner Court Boice’s skeptical response spoke for many.

“They have a fairly convincing story that they tried to put the fire out early,” he said. “And it’s very, very difficult for us to accept that as really the reality of what happened.”

Boice said he’s pressing for a congressional investigation into not only the handling of the Chetco Bar Fire, but of federal forest policies he blames for wildfires across the West.

Kale Casey is with the incident management team on the Chetco Bar Fire. Casey said he understands people’s anger over property losses. But he said the fire’s zero casualty rate proved the value of management’s focus on firefighter safety.

“As hard as it is to see those different families speak about their lost homes, we didn’t have to talk about mothers and fathers and grandparents losing their children out here working on the fire line,” he said.As autumn arrives and the ashes cool, arguments about wildfire policy are sure to heat up northwest state capitals – and Washington, D.C. — for some time to come.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A Rhode Island grower is first in the world to achieve a trifecta in the hobby of growing gargantuan foods: world records for heaviest pumpkin, longest long gourd and now, heaviest squash.

After previously breaking two records, Joe Jutras got his third during the weekend when he smashed the giant squash record with one that weighed more than a ton. His green squash tipped the scales at 2,118 pounds during a weigh-in at Frerichs Farm in Warren on Saturday.

His other titles came in 2006, when broke the record for longest gourd, with a 126.5-inch gourd, and in 2007, when he broke the record for largest pumpkin, with a fruit that weighed in at 1,689 pounds. Both previous records have since been surpassed, but Jutras is the only grower so far to break world records in the three most competitive categories.

“It feels great,” Jutras said Monday. “It’s really been a goal of mine to try to achieve this.”

Jutras has been working on the trifecta for a decade, since his pumpkin win. He was close to the goal a few years ago, but then a squash on track to break the record split. Now 62, Jutras recently retired from his work as a high-end cabinet maker to devote more time to his hobby.

Jutras noted that others had won multiple world records for fruits and vegetables before, but in categories such as carrots that are not as competitive.

He credits a new soil cultivation technique and a seed from last year’s world record breaker for this year’s win.

Ron Wallace, a multi-time pumpkin record breaker, called Jutras’ feat “unbelievable.” He said Jutras’ accomplishment showed the best of the hobby. “It’s about people competing and pushing the boundaries,” he said.

Jutras said his fruit is headed to New York City, where it will be on display this month at the New York Botanical Garden.

In February, he’ll receive a coveted “green jacket” honor for his squash record during at the annual convention in Oregon of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, considered the NFL of giant fruit and vegetable growing.

Asked what he plans to do next after achieving the trifecta, he said he’s been thinking about the bushel gourd.

“I think the record now is about 279 pounds,” Jutras said. “That might be something I might want to get into a bit.”

NEWPORT, Ore. — Supporters of a prohibition against aerial pesticide spraying in Oregon’s Lincoln County are urging a judge to uphold the ordinance even though it’s pre-empted by state law.

Lincoln County Community Rights, which supports the ban, argues that Oregon law that pre-empt local governments from regulating pesticides is unconstitutional.

The ordinance was approved by voters earlier this year but is being challenged in a lawsuit filed by landowners Rex Capri and Wakefield Farms, who rely on aerial spraying.

During oral arguments on Oct. 9, the plaintiffs asked Lincoln County Circuit Court Judge Sheryl Bachart to declare the ordinance invalid because a local government can’t overrule Oregon law.

Not only does the county lack the general authority to enact such an ordinance, but the prohibition is specifically barred by Oregon statutes governing pesticides, forest practices and the “right to farm,” according to plaintiffs.

“There is no opportunity for local government to adopt laws that are different than state laws” regarding pesticides, said Gregory Chaimov, the plaintiff’s attorney.

Supporters of the aerial spray ban countered that the county has an inherent “natural right” to local community self-government that should be affirmed by the judge.

Under the Oregon Constitution, all power is inherent in the people, who may reform or abolish the government, said Ann Kneeland, attorney for Lincoln County Community Rights, which intervened as a defendant in the case.

“These concepts may seem radical or revolutionary to us now but these are concepts in our Constitution,” she said.

Voters had a right to approve a ballot initiative that protects the environment and public from the “toxic trespass” of aerially sprayed pesticides, according to ordinance proponents.

Oregon lawmakers don’t have the ability to create an upper limit or “ceiling” that precludes stronger protective local standards for health and safety, they claim.

“They do so at the behest of well-funded corporate interests,” Kneeland said. “We find ourselves in a legal system where corporations consistently have greater rights than the people.”

The county’s power to self-govern derives directly from the Oregon Constitution, therefore it supersedes state laws that limit the authority of local governments, proponents claim.

The government of Lincoln County recognizes there are valid arguments that it’s pre-empted from regulating pesticides to the extent envisioned in the ordinance.

Wayne Belmont, attorney for the county, said the ordinance supporters’ theory of local community self-government is “an interesting legal and philosophical argument but it has no basis in law and order.”

However, the county government argued the ordinance shouldn’t be entirely pre-empted — for example, it may legally prohibit aerial spraying on the county’s own property, Belmont said.

Municipalities within the county, such as the city of Newport, may also be able to restrict aerial spraying on their land, he said.

“It’s actually a bit broader than just the county,” Belmont said.

Lincoln County also disagrees with the plaintiffs argument that the ballot initiative was approved contrary to Oregon law due to the way it was written, he said.

“We do feel the election was valid,” Belmont said.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Bachart said she planned to issue a written ruling as soon as possible, but could not provide an exact timeline.

A select group of Wallowa County ranchers have permission until Oct. 31 to kill four more wolves from the Harl Butte Pack that has repeatedly attacked livestock in the area.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife on Oct. 6 announced it had authorized “lethal take” of wolves by either ODFW staff or by livestock producers affiliated with a grazing association. Ranchers are permitted to shoot wolves on public or private land on which their livestock are currently grazing, and there are no restrictions on the age of animals to be killed. They don’t have to be caught in the act of attacking livestock.

Todd Nash, a Wallowa County rancher who lost a calf to the Harl Butte Pack this summer and who is wolf committee chair for the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, said no wolves had been shot as of Monday morning.

Oregon Wild, the Portland-based group deeply involved in wolf management and other issues, condemned what it called ODFW’s “wolf killing campaign.”

The group said the area used by the Harl Butte Pack and other “wolf families” is among the wildest landscapes remaining in Oregon.

“If wolves are being killed for eating unattended livestock put right in front of them in a place like this, it’s fair to ask if there is anywhere wolves will be allowed to thrive in our state?” the group said in a prepared statement attributed to conservation director Steve Pedery.

ODFW killed four pack members in August after confirming 10 livestock attacks by the pack since July 2016. At the time, ODFW said it hoped its “incremental” response would work – and for six weeks there were no confirmed attacks, called depredations.

But ODFW confirmed attacks on private land Sept. 29 and Oct. 1 in which one calf was mostly consumed and another was badly bitten. Non-lethal deterrence methods haven’t worked, said Roblyn Brown, acting wolf program coordinator for ODFW,

“Grazing season is not over and these cattle will be on public land until Oct. 31 and private land even later depending on the weather,” Brown said in a prepared statement.

“As wildlife managers, we are responsible for balancing the conservation of wolves on the landscape with our obligation to manage wolves so that damage to livestock is limited. We need to take further action with this pack,” Brown said.

The Harl Butte Pack is thought to consist of six adults and three wolves born this past spring. The younger wolves are estimated to be 50 to 60 pounds by now; adult wolves range between 70 to 115 pounds.

In a related development, ODFW said the lethal take authorization against the Meacham Pack, in neighboring Umatilla County, has expired. One wolf was shot after ODFW authorized killing two wolves. The department initially said the wolf killed was a non-breeding female, but examination showed it had bred this year.

Environmentalists have failed to prove that grazing along two rivers in Oregon’s Malheur National Forest unlawfully harmed the threatened bull trout, according to a federal judge.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Papak has found that the U.S. Forest Service’s grazing authorizations along the Malheur and North Fork Malheur rivers haven’t violated environmental laws.

Papak has recommended dismissing a lawsuit filed against the agency by the Oregon Natural Desert Association and the Center for Biological Diversity.

The environmental groups have until mid-October to object to the recommendation, which will ultimately be decided by U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman.

The lawsuit was originally filed 14 years ago but was revived earlier this year after the plaintiffs weren’t able to reach a settlement with ranchers and the federal government.

Habitat degradation has caused bull trout populations in the two rivers to dwindle to about 100 fish, which the environmental groups blamed on grazing.

However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has concluded that grazing is unlikely to adversely affect bull trout or their habitat in the seven allotments in question, which encompass tens of thousands of acres.

The environmental plaintiffs nonetheless claimed grazing authorizations violated the National Forest Management Act and Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

Ranchers affected by the lawsuit and the Forest Service argued the environmentalists were impermissibly attacking the agency’s entire grazing program — which can only be changed through statute or regulation — rather than specific agency actions.

Though it was a “close question,” Papak nonetheless decided against throwing out the case on these grounds.

Even so, the judge rejected the claim that livestock grazing hadn’t met “riparian management objectives,” which must be followed “at the watershed or landscape scale, rather than stream by stream.”

While bull trout populations in the region were found to be at risk, Papak said the plaintiffs “have not shown that the Forest Service’s decisions to authorize livestock grazing caused the decline of the bull trout population or its habitat in the allotments here.”

According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, multiple factors have likely contributed to the bull trout’s misfortune, including dam-building, logging, irrigation withdrawals and the introduction of brook trout, a non-native fish, the judge said.

Papak also disagreed with the environmentalists’ claim that data collection about stream conditions was “so useless as to be equivalent to no data.”

“The record here establishes that the Forest Service reasonably monitored riparian conditions and analyzed the data collected,” he said.

The judge also rejected arguments that grazing violated the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, noting that cattle are generally excluded from the river corridors with fencing and steep terrain.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Interior Department said Thursday it is withdrawing protections for 10 million acres of federal lands used by the threatened sage grouse to open it up for energy development.

The plan would allow mining and other development in areas where it now is prohibited in six Western states: Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.

The Bureau of Land Management, an Interior agency, said a recent analysis showed that mining or grazing would not pose a significant threat to the sage grouse, a ground-dwelling, chicken-like bird that roams across vast areas of the West.

The proposal would affect less than one-tenth of 1 percent of sage grouse-occupied range across 11 states from California to the Dakotas, officials said.

The change comes as the Trump administration moves to reconsider an Obama-era plan to protect the sage grouse, a quirky bird with long, pointed tail feathers and known for the male’s elaborate courtship display in which air sacs in the neck are inflated to make a popping sound.

Millions of sage grouse once roamed the West but development, livestock grazing and an invasive grass that encourages wildfires has reduced the bird’s population to fewer than 500,000.

A proposal by the Obama administration to protect 10 million acres from development “to prevent 10,000 (acres) from potential mineral development was a complete overreach,” said acting BLM Director Mike Nedd.

He and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke pledged to work closely with states to protect the health of the sage brush-dominated lands. Interior said Thursday it is seeking comment on plans to revise sage-grouse conservation plans across the bird’s range.

“We can be successful in conserving greater sage grouse habitat without stifling economic development and job growth,” Nedd said, adding that officials intend to “protect important habitat while also being a good neighbor to states and local communities.”

Environmental groups said Interior was jeopardizing the bird’s habitat — and its survival.

“The Interior Department is traversing down a dangerous path that could put this vital habitat at risk,” said Nada Culver, a policy expert at The Wilderness Society.

Because of the importance of its sagebrush habitat, the sage grouse helps determines the health of an entire ecosystem, including the golden eagle, elk, pronghorn and mule deer, Culver said. A 2015 plan imposed by the Obama administration has reduced the threat of extinction by protecting the most important habitat while ensuring other activities continue on public lands, she said.

The 2015 plan was hashed out under President Barack Obama as a way to keep the bird off the endangered species list following a decades-long population decline caused by disease and pressure on habitat from energy development, grazing and wildfires.

Zinke ordered a review of the Obama plan this summer, saying he wanted to give Western states greater flexibility to allow mining, logging and other economic development where it now is prohibited. Zinke insisted that the federal government and the states can work together to protect the sage grouse and its habitat while not slowing economic growth and job creation.

Mining companies, ranchers and governors in some Western states — especially Utah, Idaho and Nevada — said the 2015 plan would impede oil and gas drilling and other economic activity. Republican governors in those states urged that conservation efforts focus on bird populations in a state rather than on habitat management, which frequently results in land-use restrictions.

On the other side, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Republican Gov. Matt Mead of Wyoming have said they oppose any changes to the habitat-management model.

John Swartout, a senior adviser to Hickenlooper, said changes to the conservation plan — developed over years with local and state involvement — could lead to a future Endangered Species Act listing for the sage grouse.

“We didn’t work this hard to throw it all away and get a listing” on the Endangered Species Act, Swartout told The Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction, Colo.

Comments on the plan will be accepted through late November.

An Oregon dairy farm whose cows escaped to trespass onto a neighbor’s property owes about $26,500 for trampling and manure damage to organic crops.

The incident occurred in 2014 but Simington Gardens, an organic produce farm, didn’t file a lawsuit against the dairy, Rock Ridge Farms, until last year.

According to court documents, the two farms tried to resolve the problem out of court but were unable to agree on the amount of compensation.

The plaintiff alleged that up to nine cows, as well as several dairy workers who later rounded them up, caused roughly $55,000 in destroyed property, lost profits and mitigations costs. Organic rules required Simington Gardens to leave the field where cows defecated fallow for 120 days.

In its lawsuit, Simington Gardens argued it was owed double or triple that amount under Oregon laws intended to discourage damages caused during trespass.

Rock Ridge Farms is owned by Chuck Eggert, an entrepreneur who also founded Pacific Natural Foods, which the Campbell Soup Co. agreed to buy for $700 million earlier this year.

The defendant argued the lawsuit could have been avoided, as Rock Ridge Farms offered to pay “out-of-pocket” costs and provide its own organic-certified property for Simington Gardens to plant replacement crops.

The trespass by cows was unintentional, so the organic produce farm wasn’t entitled to double or triple the amount of damages, according to the dairy.

After a four-day civil trial, a 12-person jury found last month that Rock Ridge Farms had committed trespass and awarded Simington Gardens about $20,800 in lost profits, $2,500 in property damage and $3,200 in mitigation expenses.

HILLSBORO, Ore. — As a crane lowered a “glulam” beam and construction workers on either end deftly guided it into connection with two upright wooden columns, a tour group member shook his head and said, “It’s like Lincoln Logs.”

Kind of. Which may in part explain some of the attraction of builders and designers to the potential use of strong, precisely engineered, carbon-storing wood beams, columns, wall panels and floor decking. As Chris Evans, a Swinerton Builders project manager put it, wood is the first building material people use to make the forts, homes and hideouts of childhood.

These days, builders and designers are joining mill owners, university researchers and policy makers in taking a fresh look at advanced wood products, “mass timbers” and what’s come to be called “tallwood” design. Advocates believe it can replace concrete and steel in mid- to even high-rise buildings, and provide an economic jolt to rural Oregon in terms of forest management and mill jobs.

In Hillsboro, Evans and Swinerton Builders are overseeing construction of the largest known U.S. building to date that uses cross-laminated timber, or CLT, for flooring, and glulam posts and beams.

The Oregon headquarters of First Tech Credit Union will be five stories and high and have 156,000 square feet of office space. Swinerton Builders is the general contractor.

Another tall wood building planned for Portland, called Framework, will be 12 stories high and will have five floors of affordable housing, That project was awarded a $1.5 million federal design competition grant to help with seismic and fire testing and certification.

Oregon is trying to jump start the technology and potentially revive its timber industry. CLT panels, made by layering lumber in alternating directions and bonding them with adhesive, can be up to 65 feet long and 20 feet wide. DR Johnson Lumber Co., in Riddle, Ore., was the first U.S. manufacturer certified to make CLT. Meanwhile, Freres Lumber Co., in Lyons, Ore., is opening a milling facility to make similar “mass plywood panels” out of veneer.

Oregon State University’s forestry and engineering programs have partnered with the University of Oregon’s architecture program to form the TallWood Design Institute at OSU.

About 50 people took part in an Oct. 3 tour of Portland-area projects organized by the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, and heard talks by architects, builders and developers. For now, speakers said, mass timber construction is more expensive than concrete and steel, but is much quicker because of the way pre-fabricated sections can be fitted together. Experts said the technology will be “open sourced,” meaning it will be available for replication elsewhere, which should speed market expansion.

At the First Tech building construction site, architect Scott Barton-Smith said wood is an authentic regional material in the Pacific Northwest and “part of the solution” when it comes to carbon sequestration.

He also talked about the warmth of wood products.

“The best reason to use wood on a building like this is because it’s beautiful,” he said.

Irrigators in the Klamath Basin whose water was shut off in 2001 to protect fish aren’t entitled to government compensation, according to a federal judge.

In some cases, the farmers were disqualified from obtaining damages for lost water for a variety of reasons, the ruling said.

Other farmers in the region held valid property rights in the water but the 2001 shutoff wasn’t a government seizure because several native tribes held senior water rights, according to Judge Marian Blank Horn of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

The lawsuit, filed about 16 years ago against the U.S. government, sought roughly $30 million for the shutoff, which was prompted by concerns about drought impacts on the threatened coho salmon and endangered Lost River and shortnose suckers.

Horn noted that the litigation has been “long and complicated,” involving several types of irrigators and having undergone review by “multiple judges” as well as a federal appeals court.

Ten months after holding a two-week trial in the case, the judge has determined the claims of one class of farmers was precluded by a previous court order, while others were blocked by revised lease terms on national wildlife refuges.

Others held contracts “immunizing” the federal government from liability during droughts or other circumstances where sufficient water was unavailable, she said.

Horn found that some growers proved they’d be eligible to be compensated for a permanent physical taking of their water, which would be a significant victory if not for the effect of tribal rights on their claims.

The Klamath, Yurok and Hoopa tribes have “time immemorial” water rights that precede those of the farmers, even though they can’t use them for “consumptive” uses like irrigation, the ruling said.

These in-stream tribal water rights entitle them “to prevent other appropriators from depleting the flows of the Klamath River below levels required to support the fish they take in exercise of their treaty rights,” according to the ruling.

By withholding water to fulfill its obligations under the Endangered Species Act, the federal government was preserving enough water to avoid violating the senior tribal water rights, Horn said.

Therefore, the government wasn’t seizing the irrigators’ property without just compensation, she said.

While Horn’s ruling is a setback for the plaintiffs, they can challenge the ruling before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

According to court documents, Farmers Grain, which opened in January 2013 and is headquartered in Nyssa, Ore., has $14 million in assets but as much as $23.8 million in liabilities.

That means some farmers and other ag-related businesses won’t be paid the full amount they are owed by Farmers Grain, which had gross revenues of $31.2 million in 2016 and $30.6 million in 2015.

The company’s financial struggles came as startling news to many of its creditors, including Payette, Idaho, farmer Bruce Cruickshank, who found out about them only after receiving a notice from bankruptcy court.

He was owed $137,000 on the date of the bankruptcy filing but has been paid all except $30,000.

Cruickshank said he’ll make it, as will most of the farmers who are also owed money. But the loss still hurts.

“We’ll survive, but it’s just like (anybody): if you take a $30,000 hit, it sure as hell ain’t going to make you feel very good,” he said.

He’s not sure how much of the remaining $30,000 that he’s owed he will actually see. “We’ll get something but it might be 10 cents on the dollar.”

Some Farmers Grain creditors are owed a lot more than Cruickshank. Court filings show many are owed several hundred thousand dollars and a few more than $1 million.

“A lot of my friends and neighbors have been hung out pretty bad,” said Ontario, Ore., farmer Bruce Corn, who sold corn to Farmers Grain but is not owed money by the company. “There are some people out there who are owed a lot of money.”

Malheur County Onion Growers Association President Paul Skeen, who hauled a small amount of wheat to the company this year but is not owed money, said two of his neighbors are owed $850,000 between them.

“It’s terrible,” he said of the company’s collapse. “It’s devastating.”

Jensen Farms in Vale, Ore., was owed $176,000 at the time of the original bankruptcy filing but was fortunate in that it delivered 1,000 tons of corn to Farmers Grain the day before the company declared bankruptcy and ended up getting paid the full amount it was owed.

“We were lucky, you could say that,” said co-owner Sheri Jensen.

However, the Jensen farm, like many others in the region, face a looming problem related to the bankruptcy that could end up costing them a significant amount of money.

Farmers Grain had contracted for tens of thousands of corn acres with local farmers, but those contracts are now void.

With harvest coming within the next few months, much of that corn has no place to go and no one to market it.

“There are a ton of farmers in the area scrambling trying to find out what to do with their corn,” Jensen said. “It’s not a pretty picture.”

The Jensens have on-site storage for their corn, but other farmers don’t, and Farmers Grain had the largest storage capacity in the region by far.

“The sheer volume of the corn means it will be hard for everyone to find a place to go with it,” Corn said. “Finding the storage and a place to market the corn is going to be a real problem this fall.”

Because the corn contracts are no longer valid, those farmers stand to lose a lot of money because prices have dropped more than $30 a ton since the contracts were signed, Cruickshank said.

He said a friend had 400 acres of corn contracted with Farmers Grain and if that corn is sold at today’s prices, he will lose about $280 an acre and more than $100,000 total.

Cruickshank had 130 acres of corn under contract with the company and would lose a similar amount per acre.

“That’s the tip of the iceberg with what (happened) with everybody,” he said.

Growers in the area said Farmers Grain was an excellent company to work with and many of them knew and liked Galen Jantz, 47, who managed the company and had a 40 percent interest in it, according to court documents.

Court documents show the company sought Chapter 11 protection after Rabo AgriFinance declared a default on a revolving line of credit to Farmers Grain and called the entire $8 million balance due.

The company asked the court for relief from “Rabo’s continued pursuit of the Jantz loans and property owned by (the) Jantz family.”

“This action by Rabo was one of the precipitating events leading to Farmers Grain filing its bankruptcy petition,” Farmers Grain stated in a court document. “Continued pursuit of the Jantz loans and collateral will severely impact the Chapter 11 proceedings and frustrate debtor’s ability to successfully reorganize.”

A June 15 letter from Farmers Grain authored by Jantz and sent to growers expressed hope the company could regain its financial stability and continue doing business.

But the court converted the Chapter 11 bankruptcy to a Chapter 7 liquidation filing on Aug. 15 after Rabo AgriFinance, in an Aug. 3 court filing, argued that Farmers Grain was losing too much money to recover.

An auction of the businesses’ assets has been scheduled for Oct. 27 beginning at 10 a.m. at the Farmers Grain facility in Nyssa.

In the Aug. 3 filing, Rabo attorneys said Farmers Grain assets “that secure repayment of (the company’s) loan appear to have diminished by almost $1.5 million in the two weeks after the bankruptcy filing.”

The company’s monthly operating report for the period ending May 31 showed further financial decline, Rabo added. In the six weeks that Farmers Grain had been protected by Chapter 11, Rabo said, its assets decreased by $3 million while its liabilities only decreased by $514,000.

While Farmers Grain claimed its total assets could generate about $20 million, a Rabo appraisal placed that value closer to $9 million, according to court records.

Rabo spokeswoman Sarah Kolell said the company does not anticipate being paid back in full from the liquidation of Farmers Grain’s assets.

“While Rabo does anticipate receiving some value from the liquidation of its collateral, we also anticipate that there will be a substantial deficiency remaining once the Farmers Grain case is concluded,” she told Capital Press in an email.

Complicating matters, Jantz suffered what Rabo, in court filings, said it was told was a mental breakdown and had left town, abandoning his farming and personal operations, as well as Farmers Grain.

As a result, the court appointed Steve Neighbors as a conservator to handle Jantz’s financial affairs. He is certified as a business turnaround specialist by the Turnaround Management Association.

Neighbors told Capital Press that according to Jantz’s family, he began having coherence problems in the past year and there is a history of early onset dementia in the family.

“He would be talking and babbling at times,” Neighbors said. “He was making a lot of irrational statements and decisions in his last year at Farmers Grain is what his family told me.”

Neighbors said Jantz became depressed as a result of the mental strain he was under. “He felt he had to get away from everything to prevent himself from being suicidal,” Neighbors said.

Jantz and his family of four are currently staying with a relative in another state, Neighbors said. “He had to get distance. He went away to get healthy.”

The Capital Press attempted to contact Jantz by leaving messages at several phone numbers connected with him, including at Farmers Grain’s main telephone number at its headquarters in Nyssa. None of the calls were returned. Other numbers, including his home number in Vale, Ore., were disconnected.

Neighbors said Jantz feels he let his community down and voluntarily turned over $8 million in personal assets to the court and asked Neighbors to make sure creditors are made as whole as possible and that no one creditor seizes everything.

“He asked me to make it as right as I can to all of his creditors,” Neighbors said. “I’m trying to make everything as transparent as I can to all the creditors so they have their fair shot at whatever” is owed them.

Neighbors said he has authorized $3,000 a month for eight months for Jantz to take care of his family during the bankruptcy proceeding.

“That’s all Mr. Jantz wanted,” he said. “He wanted everything else to go to his creditors.”

Neighbors said he believes a couple of main factors led to Farmers Grain’s financial collapse, including that some accounting and record-keeping that should have been done, wasn’t.

“I think those complexities went beyond his ... training,” he said.

“He didn’t understand his costs fully and didn’t understand the full implications of cash flow,” Neighbors added.

Some important business decisions that should have been made in the past year weren’t because of the mental strain Jantz was under, he said.

For many farmers affected by the company’s bankruptcy, their hope now is that another business will step in and take its place.

Corn, the farmer, said Farmers Grain was a good business for area farmers while it was running “but when it went bad, it went bad in a hurry. My hope is someone will buy it and make it work.”

Kolell, the Rabo spokeswoman, said what the liquidation of the Farmers Grain assets will look like is an open question.

“If someone wanted to step in and purchase all real and personal property assets and reopen the business, Rabo would be supportive of that,” she said.

A legal settlement intended to upgrade conditions for the Oregon spotted frog is having uneven impacts on the threatened species’ habitat, according to federal biologists.

The agreement was struck last year to resolve a lawsuit between environmental groups, irrigation districts and the federal government over the operation of several dams in the region.

While conditions for the spotted frog improved in portions of the basin during certain seasons, they were degraded in other locations and times under the deal, according to a recent “biological opinion” from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“We call this the push-down, pop-up system,” said Bridget Moran, field supervisor of the agency’s office in Bend, Ore.

In other words, when problems are suppressed in some areas they are aggravated in others due to the complexity of the irrigation system, which relies on water from the Crane Prairie, Wickiup and Crescent Lake reservoirs.

Under the settlement, the amount of water is reduced for growers in five irrigation districts to make more available to the frog, which is protected under the Endangered Species Act.

As reservoirs are drawn down, the water level falls below vegetation that spotted frogs rely upon for breeding and shelter from predators, said Moran.

“It’s really about whether the level of flow allows the frogs to access their habitat,” she said.

However, retaining water in one part of the system means that it’s reduced somewhere else, she said. For example, filling a reservoir requires reducing downstream river flows.

Nonetheless, the Fish and Wildlife Service concluded in its biological opinion that the water regime mandated by the settlement won’t jeopardize the frog’s continued existence or destroy its habitat.

“On the balance, there is slight improvement, most notably at the Crane Prairie reservoir,” which is important because it contains a healthy population of frogs, Moran said.

Moran characterized the legal settlement as the “bridge” to a more comprehensive “habitat conservation plan,” or HCP, for the spotted frog that’s due in 2019. At that point, the current deal is expected to expire.

“It will be many different features but they all build around increasing winter flows over time,” which provides frogs with the opportunity to reach overwinter habitat, she said.

Increased flows will be supplemented with habitat restoration work aimed at returning the system’s rivers to a more natural state.

Over the 70 years of reservoir operations, heavy water flows released from reservoirs during summer have “scarred” river beds, making channels deeper, said Moran. As a result, water doesn’t reach adjacent wetland vegetation, cutting off spotted frogs from habitat.

Meanwhile, what vegetation does grow along river banks is flooded, she said. “It comes up so high, everything gets inundated.”

Habitat restoration work aims to reconnect the river flows with nearby habitat. The HCP will also include control of bull frogs, which predate on spotted frogs and compete for habitat, and treatment of reed canary grass, an invasive species.

Due to a healthy snowpack last winter, the settlement wasn’t seriously damaging to irrigators in 2017, said Ken Rieck, general manager of the Tumalo Irrigation District, a defendant in the case.

On average, the district stands to lose about half the stored water that would usually be available for irrigation due to the agreement, he said. This year, it only lost about 20 percent, but in a “bad year,” the loss could reach 80 percent.

“We really didn’t get the full effect we could have,” Rieck said.

Under the settlement, water that would normally be stored in Crescent Lake for the district’s irrigation system is being redirected into winter stream flows for the spotted frog.

Traditionally, the district lost roughly half of available irrigation water to seepage in unlined canals, Rieck said. Now, it’s installing piping to stop the leakage, allowing more water to be devoted to frog habitat without reducing irrigation supplies as sharply.

“The more pipe we put in the ground, the more of that water we’ll be able to recover,” he said. “Our goal is to be as close to 100 percent efficient in our delivery system as possible and that will be our defense.”

The Harl Butte wolf pack killed a calf and injured another in attacks investigated by Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Sept. 29 and Oct. 1.

ODFW shot four pack members in August in what it described as an incremental response to repeated depredations.

Cattle ranchers in the area predicted the department’s response wouldn’t work and now are likely to renew their call to have the entire pack killed. ODFW has confirmed 10 attacks on cattle by the pack since July 2016, all within nine miles of each other. As of Oct. 4, ODFW had not announced how it will respond to the latest attacks. Even with four killed in August, the pack is thought to consist of six adults and three pups, according to ODFW reports.

On the morning of Sept. 29, a volunteer range rider found a dead 425-pound calf on private grazing land in the Marr Flat area of Wallowa County. An estimated 40 percent of the carcass had been consumed, according to an ODFW report. Tracking collar data showed a wolf designated OR-50, the only pack member wearing a collar, was at the carcass about 90 minutes before the range rider found it.

The injured calf found Oct. 1 had a large open wound on the inside of its upper left rear leg, according to ODFW, which estimated it had been attacked Sept. 25. The calf weighed 570 pounds.

The attack also happened on private land in the Marr Flat area. OR-50 was in the area Sept. 23-25, according to ODFW.

ODFW wolf attack investigation reports are online: