PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree is among a trio of lawmakers that wants to more than double funding for a key U.S. Department of Agriculture organic research program.

Pingree, a Democrat, is working with Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Washington Republican, and Rep. Jimmy Panetta, a California Democrat, on the Organic Agriculture Research Act. The legislation increases the funding of the Organic Research and Extension Initiative from $20 million to $50 million annually.

The program helps pay for research projects that help organic farmers improve operations and meet consumer demand. Pingree cites the fact that sales of organic food have doubled in the U.S. in the last ten years as evidence that the added funding is needed.

The bill has the backing of the Organic Trade Association and other organic industry groups.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has extended an emergency closure of the commercial rock crab fishery in Northern California.

The commercial rock crab fishery north of Pigeon Point in San Mateo County to the Oregon border has been closed since last fall after state health agencies found unhealthy levels of domoic acid.

The closure was set to expire Tuesday but will now remain in effect until officials determine that domoic acid levels no longer pose a significant risk to public health.

The fishery is clean from Bodega Bay south along the entire California coast.

The acid is a potent neurotoxin produced naturally in marine algae whose levels can increase under certain ocean conditions.

CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — In a pen surrounded by 8-foot-high fences, at a research station by the side of a winding canyon road in southeast Wyoming, stand seven elk that are going to die.

The creatures don’t look sick yet. Their caramel-colored fur still covers round bodies the size of small horses. They run back and forth with each other and two bighorn sheep ewes that share their pen, greedily eating food offered at the gate. How long they’ll last is a question researchers can’t answer.

Each animal has been exposed naturally to chronic wasting disease, a killer that can lie dormant for years before corroding their brains with tiny, sponge-like holes.

But these female elk are unlike most others. They have rare genetics, which might just prolong their lives.

The cow elk are one small piece of a complicated puzzle that has confounded researchers, scientists, wildlife managers and federal disease specialists for decades, threatening deer and elk in more than a dozen states and three Canadian provinces.

At stake is Wyoming’s identity. The Cowboy State’s iconic herds not only draw thousands of hunters and wildlife viewers each year, they’re why many people live here in the first place.

The puzzle started in the 1970s in a Colorado State University lab. Late-CWD researcher Beth Williams noticed that some deer acted disoriented and weak before they eventually died. She diagnosed the killer as chronic wasting disease, a cousin to “mad cow disease,” scrapie in sheep and the always-fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Her discovery led to a nationwide panic over fears it could spread to humans, followed by relative apathy when it seemed more and more like it would not.

Now the seven elk behind the 8-foot fence could possibly be the key, even in the smallest sense, to solving the mystery of a disease that first appeared in Wyoming in the mid-1980s and is creeping northwest, permanently infecting everything it touches.

“As one question is answered, two more pop up,” said Hank Edwards, wildlife disease specialist for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. “It is frustrating. It’s hard to get a handle on controlling this disease when there’s so much left to learn.”

After decades of work, wildlife managers are, in some ways, starting over in figuring out how to manage the disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still don’t recommend humans eat an infected animal, but there have been no cases of transmission. Nor did the disease initially tear through herds as quickly as first predicted.

But that’s all starting to change. New models are showing that in the long term, mule deer numbers, particularly in central Wyoming, could plummet.

Instead of raging through like an ancient plague, the disease kills slowly, taking years or even a decade, and spreading in ways no one quite understands. So Wyoming wildlife managers and researchers are regrouping, working at ground zero with new information and seeking input from the public as they race to grasp the full impact of — and possible solution to — one of the most deadly wildlife diseases facing the state.

One crisp morning in late winter 2016, cattle rancher Peter Garrett opened his front door and found a four-point deer leaning against the side of his house.

The rancher’s dogs — black and white McNabs — raced outside without noticing the buck. Startled, Garrett tried shooing the buck, but the animal just stood and kicked, then laid back down.

Ten minutes later, the buck was still there. Nothing could make it move. Not the dogs coming back. Not Garrett. Not his wife.

“Maybe he was looking for warmth against the house,” Garrett said. “It was right there where the sun beats and by the fireplace.”

The Garretts ultimately called Game and Fish, as they always do when they find sick deer on their ranch, which sprawls on both sides of Highway 487 southwest of Casper. When the game warden arrived, he removed the buck. Later, he told Garrett that it tested positive for CWD.

It wasn’t the first.

More and more deer were dying on and near Garrett’s ranch in what Game and Fish calls Hunt Area 66. It has the inauspicious distinction of carrying the second-highest rate of CWD in the state.

But the mule deer herd is part of Garrett’s life. It helped keep the lights on in his family ranch 50 years ago when he and his new wife were short on cash and worked as outfitters on the side. It kept them alive when the couple couldn’t afford to eat the beef they were raising for market. Shed antlers cover chandeliers in his log home tucked at the base of a mountain. Mounts of some of the deer he and his sons have shot nestle in corners.

Garrett, 70, has spent years working with Game and Fish on habitat projects in the area to try to improve food for the deer. His list of accolades from organizations such as Game and Fish and Wyoming Stock Growers Association for good stewardship of his land grows longer each year.

But a solution still eludes him.

“I don’t like it, but what can you do?” he said. “Our deer numbers — when my kids were in school, you could count 400 to 500 between here and the highway, and now you’re lucky if you count 50.”

“And that’s on a good day,” said his wife, Ethel Garrett. “Now it’s 10 or 15. Then we complained about too many deer. But we’d like to have a happy medium.”

Game and Fish estimates that in that particular herd, about 23 percent of the buck deer will die in less than two years.

Chronic wasting disease is certainly not the only wildlife illness to confound specialists.

But finding a solution is particularly tricky because, like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, CWD can’t be targeted and killed like a bacteria or virus. It doesn’t have a cure or vaccine. It doesn’t die if you simply cook it long enough or let it sit in the sun.

“Diseases like brucellosis, we know how to work with that,” said Scott Edberg, deputy chief of Game and Fish’s wildlife division. “There’s no silver bullet, but we’re trying to find one. It’s not like a common cold.”

Edberg, Hank Edwards, the disease specialist; Dr. Mary Wood, the state wildlife veterinarian; and a handful of other researchers and wildlife experts in Game and Fish are all part of a CWD think tank of sorts. They meet periodically to talk about new research, changes in the herds around the state and new cases of the disease.

At a February meeting at the Tom Thorne and Beth Williams Wildlife Research Center at Sybille, they explained CWD’s complexities and its infamous history in Wyoming.

CWD, Edwards said, is a prion. That means it’s a protein, a natural part of a body, which mutates and becomes infectious. The mutated protein then attacks other cells living in the body’s nervous system. As it forms tiny, sponge-like holes in an animal’s brain, the animal begins to act lethargic, become emaciated and drool excessively before eventually dying.

Chronic wasting disease itself affects only mule and white-tailed deer, elk and moose in Wyoming, but there was a time after the disease was first discovered in southeastern Wyoming in 1985 when fears ran rampant.

“The threat that this prion disease could go to humans, that really drove a lot of our research and awareness, but now, based on our information, we don’t believe the disease will go to humans,” Edwards said. “I think it is time to switch the focus away from human health to herd health.”

Yet for every question researchers seem to have answered, they find new ones that are more confounding.

The prions that cause scrapie, for example, have changed over time, forming multiple strains, said Wood. Something is keeping the strains from crossing into other species; researchers don’t know what that biological reason could be and whether it’s strong enough to continue to prevent crossover.

Researchers also don’t know why CWD seems to kill deer at higher rates than elk or moose or why it kills more males than females.

It spreads by contact, researchers believe, but it also sheds off animals and can likely live in the ground for more than a decade. So far only incineration above 1,000 degrees, lye and bleach can actually kill the prion.

“What we don’t know in a free-ranging herd on the landscape is: How significant is animal-to-animal transmission versus environment-to-animal transmission? We don’t know what’s going on on the landscape,” Wood said. “That makes it hard. Knowing key transmission is the most important thing to model what is going to work.”

The disease is always fatal but takes more than a year and a half, depending on genetics, to actually kill an animal.

“Along those lines, how high does CWD prevalence get in a herd? How much can a herd withstand? Every herd is going to be different,” Edwards said. “As time goes on, we will figure this out, of course. It’s a big question of how much CWD these herds can stand without seeing a pretty big population reduction.”

Scientists are starting to get a better idea. Research by Melia DeVivo, a former University of Wyoming graduate student, concluded that the mule deer bucks in Hunt Area 65 southeast of Casper have a 40 percent prevalence, which means if nothing changes, the herd could be essentially gone in about 50 years.

Researchers are still investigating whether it can pass to humans. But over time, federal money for testing has dried up.

Each CWD test costs about $15. It’s not much, but when a resident deer license nets the state $38 and a resident elk license costs $52, the processing fee starts to eat into money used for management, said Edwards, the Game and Fish disease specialist.

The lack of federal involvement, however, doesn’t mean research has stopped.

Wood, the state wildlife veterinarian, participated in a CWD vaccine trial at the Sybille Canyon research station. A Canadian company produced it and hoped it would provide that long-anticipated silver bullet. Unfortunately, it proved ineffective.

A study of genetics in elk showed that those with an MM genotype died first. Those with an ML genotype were the next to go, and those with an LL lived the longest. It’s why the seven elk at the research station in Sybille could be a key to solving the CWD puzzle.

Edwards and Wood caution against putting too much stock in genetics. Even if those elk can survive, it could take a century for the genes to eventually help change the population. And the fear is, with longer lives, they have more time to spread the disease.

In the meantime, CWD continues to march northwest. West to some of the largest elk herds in the Rocky Mountains, and west to 23 feedgrounds, places where animals congregate and diseases can spread like wildfire.

And so while specialists like Wood and Edwards continue to research biological solutions to the disease, others on the CWD team are beginning to go to the public for answers.

Some states have increased hunting to thin herds. Others have tried sharpshooting to drop numbers and possibly slow the spread.

Game and Fish officials don’t yet have formal proposals for strategies. They want to hear from hunters, ranchers and wildlife watchers. Are Wyomingites noticing herd numbers decline? Are they willing to have antler-point restrictions on hunting seasons or increase numbers hunted to perhaps decrease the rate the disease spreads? Should feedgrounds be changed?

“We manage wildlife for the public trust, and the public has a voice in how to make these decisions,” Wood said. “If we ignore that voice, we won’t be successful. Likely any management that is done will take a long-term commitment from the public and the wildlife agency.”

The answer may come from the public, or another vaccine trial, or something no one has yet thought of. Or maybe the answer — even part of the answer — is in those seven elk living out their days behind a fence off a highway in southeast Wyoming.

Nov. 19, 1955 - April 29, 2017

SUSANVILLE, Calif. (AP) — The U.S. Forest Service has filed criminal charges against a California State University, Chico fraternity for cutting down 32 trees in a Northern California national forest during an initiation of new pledges.

The complaint was filed Tuesday against the school’s Pi Kappa Alpha chapter and its president, Evan Jossey, in federal court. Jossey was not available for comment Wednesday.

The fraternity is charged with cutting the trees at a campground in the Lassen National Forest during a weekend initiation in April.

This is the second time in a year that a California recreational area has been damaged by college social organizations.

Last May, a Lake Shasta campsite was wrecked after about a thousand University of Oregon fraternity and sorority members left a half-mile-wide swath of trash after an annual trip.

Public review of the contentious way Oregon manages gray wolves continues May 19 with a hearing in Portland.

Not surprisingly, a draft plan from Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has been criticized by livestock producers and wildlife activists alike. The ODFW Commission will hear testimony and eventually will adopt a five-year management plan. No date for adoption has been set. A first hearing April 21 in Klamath Falls saw 40 people testify.

Department biologists say the draft management plan builds on what they’ve learned over the years. Oregon had no documented wolves when the first plan was adopted in 2005; the state now has a minimum of 112 wolves, including 11 packs and eight breeding pairs. Russ Morgan, ODFW wolf program leader, has described wolves’ population growth and geographic spread as a biological success story.

Livestock producers and other rural residents question that thinking, while urban environmentalists generally favor the return of wolves to the state’s landscape.

The management plan is where those differences get argued.

Oregon Farm Bureau and Oregon Cattlemen’s Association said the draft plan makes it harder for ranchers to protect their animals because it increases the number of confirmed attacks required before allowing lethal control of wolves.

The draft plan requires three confirmed depredations or one confirmed and four “probable” attacks within a 12 month period. The previous standard was two confirmed depredations or one confirmed and three attempted attacks, with no time period set.

The groups also believe ODFW should continue collaring wolves, and should set a population cap for wolves in Oregon.

Groups such as Oregon Wild and Cascadia Wildlands find fault with the plan as well.

They believe Oregon took wolves off the state endangered species list prematurely. They oppose a population cap and plan provisions that might allow killing wolves if deer and elk populations drop, saying that proper habitat is a greater factor in ungulate populations.

They’ve also criticized a draft plan provision that would allow USDA Wildlife Services to conduct livestock depredation investigations for ODFW. Nick Cady, legal director for Cascadia Wildlands, has said the agency is too quick to blame wolves for every attack.

Meanwhile, 10 Oregon counties will distribute $184,039 to compensate ranchers who lost livestock to wolves and to help pay for non-lethal defensive measures.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture allocated the money, which comes from a grant called the Oregon Wolf Depredation Compensation and Financial Assistance Program. It’s intended to compensate livestock owners for actual losses or injuries caused by wolves, for missing livestock and for defensive measures. County-based committees review claims; the counties are reimbursed for their administrative costs as well.

Most of the grant money, about 70 percent of the money, is to help pay for defensive action meant to deter or scare off wolves. Non-lethal measures include removing carcasses and bone piles, putting up fencing or electrified ribbons, hiring range riders, deploying guard dogs, setting up flashing lights and noise-makers, and other methods.

Wallowa, Klamath, Umatilla, Lake and Jackson counties filed claims for confirmed or probable livestock losses. Baker, Umatilla and Wallowa counties filed claims for missing livestock.

Foundation awards $71,000 in grants

A last-minute weed management plan filed by an organic farm may be “workable” if the farm managers follow through, a Sherman County official said.

The operators of Azure Farms, a 2,000-acre organic farm on the outskirts of Moro, filed a weed management plan 24 hours before the Sherman County Court was scheduled to discuss the issue. The county had warned it would seek a quarantine on the farm if it didn’t get a handle on what it describes as “rampant” noxious weeds.

County officials, responding to complaints from neighboring farmers who don’t want their fields infested, said they will spray the weeds with herbicide and bill the farm for the work if necessary. The farm says it will lose valuable organic certification for three years if it uses the chemical herbicides conventional farmers use.

In an email, County Commissioner Tom McCoy said he discussed Azure Farms’ plan with county weed control Supervisor Rod Asher.

“He is researching some of the measures, but believes the plan may be workable if Azure is really willing to implement it. So far, their follow through has not been good,” McCoy wrote.

The Oregon Wheat Growers League urged a “prompt and rigorous review” of Azure’s proposal.

“From our members on the ground, it’s become clear that even a casual observation of Azure’s property makes it clear that their noxious weed problem is severe and has been worsening for many years,” league CEO Blake Rowe and growers Bryan Cranston and Chris Moore said in a prepared statement.”

“Neighboring farms, including those at some distance from Azure, are being impacted by the spread of noxious weed seeds from Azure’s property. The ability of surrounding wheat farms to continue to produce certified wheat seed and the reputation of the entire area for producing high quality wheat, with virtually no weed contamination, are at risk.”

The farm proposed methods that, depending on the weed, included heavy fertilization and then deep cultivation to get at roots, spot use of Boron, citrus pulp mulch, covering weeds with landscaping fabric, salt, mowing before seeds form and spraying with calcium, manganese and boron before cultivation. “This causes the new blooms to wilt and not seed out; doesn’t kill the entire plan, though, but controls the spread,” the farm suggested.

McCoy, the commissioner, said the county court has received more than 40,000 emails about the issue, “and the number is increasing rapidly.” On social media, critics have called the county’s stance outrageous and accused the county of trying to poison the organic farm on behalf of “Big Ag” or Monsanto, which has no apparent role in the matter. McCoy said the charges against county officials are inaccurate.

In a memo prepared for the county’s May 17 meeting, weed Supervisor Asher laid out the timeline of his interactions with the farm.

March 2: Asher sent the farm’s parent company, Ecclesia of Sinai at Dufur, a weed control ordinance violation notice. The letter listed 15 company properties covering 1,922 acres in the Moro area. It gave the farm 30 days to submit a plan to control Rush skeleton, classified by the county as a Class A noxious weed, and Canada thistle, Morning Glory and White Top, all Class B noxious weeds.

March 27: Ecclesia of Sinai responded that the county didn’t have jurisdiction over it and cited biblical justification for not spraying.

April 19: The County Court discussed the issue. By then, some of the properties had been mowed, “but this was seen as a poor method of control as the weeds will grow back and root systems will flourish and continue to spread, as they have done over the many years,” Asher wrote.

Local residents attending the meeting expressed “deep concern” over weeds and were skeptical that methods other than herbicide would control them.

May 1: Asher sent a second letter to the farm, suggesting various control methods.

May 2: The county’s Weed Advisory Board agreed to defer to the county court on further action.

May 5: Asher met with Nathan Stelzer, the Azure Farm manager, who said he was unaware weeds were such a big problem. Asher felt he’d made progress in the discussion.

May 11: Asher viewed Azure’s social media campaign and said it “clearly misstated the situation.”

“My thoughts of progress and working together in the future were dashed,” Asher wrote.

The campaign, which included videos of the farm’s principals urging viewers to express their outrage at the county’s stance, resulted in an estimated 40,000 emails to county officials from around the world

May 16: Azure Farms submits a weed management plan. It lists methods the farm will use to control Rush skeleton, Canada thistle, Bindweed and White Top.

May 17: The county court meets to discuss the issue. The meeting is moved from the courthouse to the high school gym, the only space large enough for the anticipated crowd.

The City of John Day has obtained a $50,000 grant to study the possibility of using wastewater for hyroponic crop production or pasture irrigation.

The award was one of eight grants totaling more than $400,000 approved for water project feasibility studies by the Oregon Water Resources Commission.

John Day currently stores treated wastewater in four ponds near the John Day River, but the system may not pass regulatory muster in the future due to potential adverse impacts on water quality.

For this reason, the city wants to examine re-using the wastewater, which amounts to 87.6 million gallons annually, in hydroponic greenhouses.

The other option would be to pipe the water to two 40-acre lagoons north of town, which would feed a 120-acre center pivot irrigation system.

The total cost of the study is expected to be $110,000, with matching funds provided by the city and another state grant program.

After the approval of the eight grants, the Oregon Water Resources Commission still has more than $600,000 available for future water project feasibility studies.

One of the proposals submitted to the commission — $93,935 to study removing sediment from the Applegate Reservoir in Southern Oregon to increase storage capacity — was rejected.

The Oregon Water Resources Department, which is overseen by the commission, recommended against funding the study because it only proposed removing sediment, which is a temporary solution.

The study would be stronger if it also looked at preventing future sediment buildup by reducing it from upstream sources, according to OWRD.

Following is a summary of the other water project feasibility grants approved by the commission:

• $30,000 to study the re-use of wastewater from Baker City for agricultural purposes.

• $60,000 to study expanding the City of Carlton’s water reservoir.

• $72,500 to study whether to rehabilitate or remove the City of Brookings dam and reservoir.

• $50,330 to study the possibility of paying landowners to forgo irrigation to increase stream flows in the Hood River Basin.

• $65,680 to study above-ground and below-ground water storage in the Upper Klamath Basin.

• $42,297 to study aquifer storage and recovery in the Milton-Freewater area.

• $40,505 to study natural water storage in a wet meadow in the John Day River Basin.

PENDLETON, Ore. — Dan Roeser rode Sanjo Gold calmly and confidently into the Pendleton Round-Up Pavilion Saturday, ready to show what the 7-year-old palomino gelding was capable of doing.

It was several hours before the Western Select Horse and Working Dog Sale would begin inside the Pendleton Convention Center — part of the annual Cattle Barons Weekend — and ranchers huddled inside the pavilion for a preview of the animals in action. Some scrawled notes in their programs as the horses ran alongside steers for a live roping demonstration.

Roeser, who runs Roeser Ranch in Marsing, Idaho, has been training horses for 40 years and taught a number of local cowboys the finer points of horsemanship. He regularly attends Cattle Barons Weekend, now in its 10th year, which helps raise scholarships for local students looking to pursue a career in agriculture.

Along with Sanjo Gold, Roeser also brought a second horse, Dealers Kid, to market at the sale. Whereas Sanjo Gold is a gentle ranch horse for riders of all abilities, Roeser said Dealers Kid is more fit for high-caliber ropers. It is Roeser’s job to show both animals at the best of their abilities in the arena and auction ring.

“It’s a lot of work,” he said. “You have to use a lot of consistency in your methods so the horses know what they can expect from you.”

Once the sale begins, trainers like Roeser take center stage in the convention center where buyers bid up to tens of thousands of dollars for horses to add to their operation. Selling horses is a big part of Roeser’s business, and he said Cattle Barons Weekend has proven to be a great venue.

“It’s a good market for the horses,” he said. “The people who run the sale do a really good job.”

Cattle Barons Weekend also featured a Western-theme trade show and Buckaroo BBQ Challenge, where teams competed for the best ribs and tri-tip beef. Proceeds go toward raising scholarships that event leaders say keep the Western tradition alive in northeast Oregon.

“That’s why we do what we do, to maintain it into the future,” said Andy VanderPlaat, Cattle Barons president.

Roeser’s return to Pendleton reunited him with at least two of his former pupils in Justin Bailey, of Pilot Rock, and Ryan Raymond, of Helix. Bailey worked eight years for Roeser on the ranch in Idaho, and described him as a highly regarded mentor.

Bailey now runs his own training business, Bailey Performance Horses, and showed three of his own animals during the Western Select auction.

“What we’re trying to show is a quality horse that can handle ranch-like situations,” Bailey said. “You’re trying to show their willingness and quiet mind.”

Bailey Performance Horses is located on the home ranch of Anderson Land & Livestock, operated by Terry and Debby Anderson who won this year’s Cattle Barons Legacy Award.

Raymond, a fifth-generation rancher who runs cows for Raymond & Son, worked three years for Roeser and continues to ride plenty of horses. Showing horses at sales like Cattle Barons Weekend takes honesty and integrity, Raymond said, with the trainer’s reputation on the line.

“These guys know what they can sell here,” he said. “You can’t bring a horse here you can’t lope around and rope on.”

Cattle Barons Weekend is just another fun event to bring more people into Pendleton, Raymond said, while promoting ranching businesses that are the lifeblood of small Eastern Oregon communities like Helix.

“If we don’t do more things to involve people in local agriculture, I would think those places will be gone,” he said.

LANGLOIS -- Interesting Langlois presents local fantasy author Kandi J. Wyatt at 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 24, at the Langlois Public Library.

The issue of gorse has been on our minds for many years, as evidenced by the first picture I am sharing, which was taken during a mutual aid training course hosted by the Bandon Fire Department in May of 1965.…

LANGLOIS -- Southwestern Oregon Preppers will hold a meeting at noon on Saturday, May 20, at the Langlois Community Church, 94284 Main Street, Langlois.

JOSEPH, Ore. – For more than 40 years the Joseph Oregon’s Associated Ditch Company has struggled to find the money to fix its aging Wallowa Lake dam. This spring the private company announced it is exploring an old idea with new enthusiasm.

Exhausting several avenues over the years, including selling water to a downstream user, the ditch company’s board has found the support it needs to form an irrigation district, making funding such as low-interest Clean Water State Revolving Fund loans easier to access.

Following a rash of dam inspections in the wake of the 1976 Teton Dam failure in Idaho, the dam was deemed unsafe to store the ditch company’s entire water allotment. In order to bring the dam back to full storage capacity and protect water used by upper Wallowa Valley farmers valued at $36,079,000 per year, the dam needs to be rebuilt. Any reconstruction, Tom Butterfield, former Associated Ditch Company president said, must include fish passage. That dollar amount, he said, is still being studied.

Butterfield’s son Dan is now the ditch company’s president. He said forming a district had been considered in the past.

Jay McFetridge, a multi-generational Wallowa Lake water user, said when his grandfather was president of the ditch company in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s and his father in the ‘90s the worry was over the equitability, or perceived lack there of, in how votes are tallied among water users under the rules of a district versus the one vote per acre agreement currently used.

“My dad said his biggest reason that it wouldn’t work, and they would not pursue at all, was because of the voting,” McFetridge said.

This time the suggestion came from Nate James of the Natural Resource Conservation Service when he was asked to help the board with its irrigation modernization plan.

Butterfield said, “About a year ago we met with Nate to look at financing for piping spur ditches, screening the ditches and possibly even putting in water measuring devices.”

James said he has worked with Wallowa Lake water users individually to upgrade their systems, but with the scope and scale of the ditch company’s modernization needs, including reconstruction of the dam, they needed extra funding sources not available to a private ditch company. A district, formed under state statute, would hold public meetings and be able to vote and process decisions in a timely manner.

“They could see the benefits were very positive to going down this path,” James said.

For technical assistance, James asked Farmers Conservation Alliance to work with the ditch company’s modernization committee. During their initial meeting, fixing the dam was discussed.

The alliance’s executive director, Julie O’Shea, said her organization started out manufacturing fish screens for irrigation districts, but after years of designing and installing screens she said her staff found it difficult to fix one piece of an irrigation system without opening a box of other issues.

“We realized there was a great need for irrigation districts to have people come in with expertise – not just from an engineering perspective, but a financial and community-based one,” O’Shea said.

With help from Energy Trust of Oregon, the alliance started working with districts all over the state, serving as project manager. To date, they’ve worked with 11 districts on irrigation modernization plans.

In April, a little more than a year after their first meeting with NRCS and the alliance, the Associated Ditch Company’s board of directors presented their irrigation district proposal to the Wallowa County Commissioners. Rebecca Knapp, the Associated Ditch Company’s attorney, said following the publication of a series of notices, the commissioners will sign an order calling for an election of the landowners within the boundary of the new district.

Dan Butterfield said besides overwhelming backing from the landowners, there is a lot more support statewide to repair the dam than the ditch company realized.

“Everyone seems to know where Wallowa Lake is,” Butterfield said.