SALEM — Two Oregon lawmakers plan to introduce bills that would ratify the decision by state wildlife officials to delist wolves as an endangered species.

The proposals, which will be considered during the upcoming legislative session in February, are planned by Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, and Rep. Greg Barreto, R-Cove, in reaction to a lawsuit filed by environmental groups.

In November 2015, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission voted to delist the wolves under the state’s version of the Endangered Species Act after several criteria for their recovery had been met.

Under a management plan for wolves first created in 2005, the species could be delisted after having established four breeding pairs for three years and no longer facing a substantial risk of extinction in a significant portion of its range, among other criteria.

Wolves were delisted by the federal government in the easternmost portion of the state, but remain protected in the rest. Oregon wildlife officials have the jurisdiction over those wolves under the state ESA.

However, Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands and the Center for Biological Diversity recently challenged the state’s delisting decision in court, arguing the decision unlawfully ignored the best available science about wolf recovery.

The bills, which will be introduced in the House and Senate, will provide the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife — which is overseen by the commission — more ammunition in defending itself in court, Barreto said.

“We’re shoring up what the commission has already decided,” he said during a Jan. 14 hearing before the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Oregon has 81 documented wolves, but the actual population is likely in the range of 100-120 animals and a delisting is necessary for the ODFW to eventually manage the species, said Sen. Hansell.

Such management could involve hunting to keep populations in check

Ranchers in Oregon have abided by restrictions on wolf management for the past 10 years, so now that the criteria for delisting have been met, the state government should uphold the wolf plan’s credibility, said Rocky Dallum, political advocate for the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association.

“The goal was to strike a balance between reestablishing wolves in Oregon and meeting the needs of those producers,” he said.

During the decade that the plan has been in place, ranchers have felt a great deal of “heartburn” as state wildlife officials have refused to remove wolves that repeatedly prey on livestock, said Todd Nash, a rancher and chairman of the OCA’s wolf committee.

The wolf plan should be followed as planned rather than allowing the courts to take over the process, he said. “I want to bring some sanity to this and let the scientists and wildlife managers manage, instead of some conservation groups and a judge.”

Environmental groups oppose the proposed legislation, claiming that it will unnecessarily interfere with the authority of the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Oregon has fewer than 90 wolves, but the state could sustain up to 1,400 of them, said Sean Stevens, executive director of Oregon Wild.

Currently, the species occupies only 12 percent of its potential habitat, he said. “The status of wolves in Oregon is still tenuous.”

In the past year, wolves have only been confirmed to have killed four cows, while the state has more than 1.3 billion cattle, he said. The cattle industry generatied more than $1 billion in revenues, making it Oregon’s top agricultural sector.

“The industry’s growth has not been stymied by the arrival of wolves,” Stevens said.

The proposed bills would set a dangerous precedent of the legislature inserting itself into delisting decisions on a species-by-species basis, said Quinn Read, Northwest representative of the Defenders of Wildlife environmental group.

“We’re concerned by initiatives that would circumvent the (wolf) plan,” she said.

Scott Beckstead, state director for the Humane Society of the United States, an animal rights group, said he’s worried about the possibility of trophy hunting of wolves in Oregon.

Hunters in Idaho, where such hunting is allowed, have demonstrated a “cruelty and depravity” in killing wolves that wouldn’t be tolerated by the public in Oregon, he said.

“It’s certainly something I don’t want to see in Oregon, and I worry about us heading down that path,” Beckstead said.

SALEM — Forty-six people from Malheur County, half of them involved with agriculture, traveled 400 miles across icy roads Jan. 14 to Salem to tell Oregon lawmakers that increasing the state’s minimum wage would devastate Eastern Oregon’s economy.

The group, which wore “Any raise equals lost jobs” stickers on their backs, were heavily outnumbered by supporters of the various proposals to significantly raise the state’s minimum wage, who loudly chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, poverty wages have got to go” as they entered the Capitol building.

After arriving in Salem following an eight-hour bus ride, the Eastern Oregon contingent was told they could not carry their picket signs to counter-demonstrate at a rally held on the Capitol steps in support of a minimum wage increase.

They were told that state police decided there was a high risk of a conflict occurring and were concerned about their safety.

But members of the Republican minority party praised them for making the trip and told them their very presence at the statehouse was a loud message.

Though outnumbered, testimony during a three-hour public hearing on the issue was split between supporters and opponents because committee members gave preference to people who had traveled more than 100 miles.

The group traveled by charter bus and headed back to Ontario after the meeting to complete its 800-mile round trip.

“Coming from 400 miles away and spending (more than a day) getting here and back is unbelievably powerful,” said Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, who helped organize the event along with farm industry leaders.

“I can’t tell you how important it was for you to have come here today,” said Sen. Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day. “The fight you are making today is the fight that may be the key skirmish in this whole (issue).”

During public testimony, the Malheur County residents told legislators that increasing the state’s minimum wage any amount would result in businesses and jobs moving to Idaho.

They reminded them that Oregon’s minimum wage of $9.25 is already $2 higher than Idaho’s rate of $7.25 and Malheur County borders Idaho.

Owyhee Produce General Manager Shay Myers said that if Oregon increases its minimum wage, it will force his onion packing facility to automate or move to Idaho. Either option kills Oregon jobs, he added.

As an example, he said that increasing Oregon’s minimum wage to $13.50 would increase Owyhee Produce’s overall costs by 10 percent, while the company’s margin is only 8 percent, Myers said.

If it comes down to staying in business, “There’s really only one decision for us to make,” he said. “And if we’re going to stay in business, it’s either automate or move to Idaho.”

Tim Newton, who has worked for Peterson Farms in Nyssa for 26 years, said a lot of businesses would move to the Idaho side if the minimum wage goes up.

“What we’re hearing is that the majority of the onion sheds (in the area) will be moving to the Idaho side because of the difference in the minimum wage,” he said.

Nyssa farmer Paul Skeen and others asked the state to leave Malheur County out of any minimum wage increase because farmers and businesses there compete directly with their Idaho counterparts.

“Carve us out (of any increase) and save our jobs,” he said. “You’re going to ruin us if you don’t.”

The Malheur County contingent included several small business owners, who said that if agriculture suffers because of a minimum wage increase, they will suffer also.

If the minimum wage increases, “our onion shippers will move to Idaho,” said John Kirby, a hardware business owner. “It’s not a threat, it’s a promise; they will move to Idaho.”

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown defended her minimum wage proposal, which she released while the Eastern Oregon group was en route.

It would raise the minimum wage outside the Portland area by $1 in 2017 and gradually increase it to $13.50 by 2022. The Portland area minimum wage would be set at 15 percent above the statewide rate and would increase to $15.52 by 2022.

Phasing in the increase over several years will provide “a glide path for Oregon businesses to plan and prepare for the increase,” said Brown, who added that a single parent in Oregon would have to work 72 hours a week or make $16.61 an hour to afford the state’s average monthly cost of $864 for a two-bedroom apartment.

Brown said she felt her proposal would stop the need for the various, stiffer minimum wage ballot initiatives that have been proposed.

“We are concerned about the number of families that struggle to make ends meet,” she said. “We felt this was middle ground.”

Members of the “Oregonians for 15” group that is pushing for a statewide $15 minimum wage told lawmakers that if they don’t pass a proposal this year that raises the state’s minimum wage to $15 within three years, a ballot initiative is guaranteed.

“We’re not here to debate or negotiate,” said Jamie Cartridge, who added that legislators have two options: “$15 or the ballot.”

LANGLOIS — An eight-week clay hand-building class will be offered to adults starting on Friday, Feb. 5, at the Village Gym in Langlois.

LANGLOIS — An eight-week clay hand-building class will be offered to adults starting on Friday, Feb. 5, at the Village Gym in Langlois.

Members of the armed group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge traveled to John Day Tuesday to ask the Grant County sheriff to join their cause.

He declined, but county commissioners throughout Eastern Oregon have discussed the possibility that the protest could “migrate” elsewhere in the region.

Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer said three members of the militia asked him to travel to Harney County, but he refused to do so without the approval of the Harney County sheriff. Palmer would not say whether he agreed with the occupation, but described those participating as “patriots.”

“I think it’s brought some things to light that might not have otherwise got the attention that they did,” he said of the occupation. “I do believe that the resolution and solution to the way this is going to be handled, if it’s handled properly, could have a long-lasting effect on our county as well.”

Palmer said any positive outcome, however, would require the government to make some concessions.

“I believe the government is going to have to concede to something,” he said. “I don’t think these guys are going to give up without knowing that they’ve done something that benefits the people of our country or our region.”

Palmer said the members of the group did not discuss their future plans of their occupation with him. He said he met the militants Tuesday at a John Day restaurant. He was invited to lunch by a constituent and was unaware members of the militia group would be there. He said “a few” other Grant County residents attended the meeting as well.

“I had no idea who I was meeting with when we had lunch (Tuesday),” he said. “I walked in, I realized who they were and I sat and listened to them ... They actually wanted me to come down there and make a stand, and I said ‘Not without the (Harney County) sheriff’s blessing.’”

Palmer said he has spoken to Harney County Sheriff David Ward and told him he would not interfere without permission. Palmer said he has “a pretty good working relationship” with the sheriff from the neighboring county.

Palmer said, however, that he was not willing to excoriate the occupation either.

“About the only thing (Ward) really told me is I’m welcome to come down there if I would shame and humiliate them into giving up and I said, ‘No, I won’t do that,”’ Palmer said. “I’m not in the business of denouncing or shaming or humiliating anybody.”

Ward could not immediately be reached for comment.

Grant County Court Judge Scott Myers said his Harney County counterpart Steve Grasty warned him that members of the armed group may have been traveling to Grant County.

Myers said he participated in an Association of Oregon Counties conference call with Grasty and leaders of most Eastern Oregon counties on Wednesday. They discussed the possibility that the armed group could migrate elsewhere.

“Grasty said that we should all be concerned about the likelihood of arrival (of the armed group) and the safety of our citizens,” Myers said. “My biggest concern would just be public safety. I don’t know that they would try to take over a building or anything like that ... I am concerned, but I don’t expect an occupation. I don’t expect them to come and hold up (here), but there’s always that possibility.”

Palmer has previously expressed disappointment with some federal land management policies, specifically U.S. Forest Service road closures in Grant County. In 2015, he deputized a group of residents to create a county natural resources plan in hope of providing local government more leverage when working with federal agencies. The plan was not approved by county governance, but a petition has been filed to put it up for a county-wide vote.

U.S. Rep. Greg Walden didn’t have much of an audience Jan. 5 when he stood on the floor of the House of Representatives to talk about the militia takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in southeast Oregon. That’s how it works; Members of Congress give even their most impassioned floor speeches to empty chairs and a single camera.

But in the days since, attention has turned to Walden’s 24-minute description of the area he represents and the “decades of frustration, arrogance and betrayal that has contributed to the mistrust of the federal government.”

Judging from more than 120,000 YouTube views of his speech and even-handed editorial response from the largest news organizations, Walden and others who represent, live in and work in the rural West appear to have gained the nation’s attention.

The message: No, we do not approve of the armed men who took over the refuge. But the underlying frustration and anger at federal land management and loss of economic opportunity is real.

So now what? Walden said he’s discussed such issues with the Republican leadership, but it’s unclear how much can be accomplished in the current political atmosphere.

On Wednesday, the House voted 253-166 to overturn the EPA’s “Waters of the U.S.” rule, which farmers and ranchers say gives the feds control over what Walden called “every stock pond and intermittent ditch.” Walden said the vote sends a “very clear message” to the Obama administration about environmental “over-reach.”

The Senate approved a similar measure in November, but the White House has threatened to veto it. Congress is unlikely to assemble the two-thirds majorities required to override a veto, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Meanwhile, Walden said it’s unlikely federal land will be turned over to the states or counties, as many in the West favor.

But he and others said a number of incremental changes would help matters. For starters, the statute requiring the five-year mandatory minimum sentence for Dwight and Steven Hammond, the Harney County ranchers at the center of the issue, could be revised, Walden said.

He said the statute was written after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City and was aimed at acts of domestic terrorism that damage federal property. The fires set by the Hammonds burned acreage managed by the BLM. “But in Oregon, the punishment doesn’t fit this crime,” he said.

The idea received support at the recent American Farm Bureau Federation convention in Orlando, Fla.

Delegates approved a policy recommendation that Congress prohibit prosecution of farmers and ranchers under federal anti-terrorism statutes for common agricultural practices, like setting back burns to protect their property from wildfires.

If this threat isn’t neutralized, it will have a “chilling effect” on farm practices among growers who fear facing mandatory minimum prison sentences, said Barry Bushue, Oregon Farm Bureau president.

The American Farm Bureau Federation has long been engaged with congressional leaders about problems with fire management and reduced grazing on federal lands to seek a legislative fix, Bushue said.

Zippy Duvall of Georgia, who was elected AFBF president during the convention, said federal land management agencies should find common ground with ranchers instead of behaving like “bullies.”

“Everybody needs to step back from it to look for solutions,” he said. “With every challenge, there should be an opportunity to find solutions.”

Walden, the only Republican among Oregon’s congressional delegation, said President Obama could defuse tension by backing away from proposals to establish an Owyhee Canyonlands national monument or wilderness area on 2.5 million acres in Malheur County, in Oregon’s southeast corner. County residents say the designation would cover more than 40 percent of the county, would eliminate grazing on federal land and decimate the cattle industry.

“The community is beside themselves,” Walden said. “They’re being told either cut a deal with the enviros or have it shoved down their throat.”

Walden said he hopes to tell the president, “If you do this, it will put gas on the fire for no good reason.”

He and others say a barrage of litigation against logging, ranching and mining is encouraged by a process that pays legal fees to environmental groups when they prevail on even a single point of a lawsuit.

Walden said environmental groups have already shut down the timber industry and now want to get cattle off the range. “It’s a pretty cold-hearted strategy,” he said.

Walden said the administration and Congress need to realize that rural poverty and inner-city poverty are quite similar, brought on by a loss of opportunity.

“If they understood the rate of poverty and the rate of despair in our rural communities, in rural Oregon, maybe they’d go, ‘Gosh there’s a problem we need to address.’” Walden said.

Retired Harney County rancher Bill Wilber said he welcomes the renewed attention to the area’s problems and hopes federal agencies will resume a partnership role with ranchers, loggers and others.

Wilber was on a steering committee that met 39 times to hammer out greater sage grouse habitat conservation plans on private property. The Harney County agreements between ranchers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service became a model that kept the sage grouse off the endangered species list in 2015, and the collaboration was widely praised.

But Wilber said the BLM’s subsequent sage grouse plan on land it manages, and on which many ranchers graze cattle, is much more restrictive than in the past.

“We busted our butts and did the right thing for the bird, and get screwed in the end as if we hadn’t done anything,” he said.

“I would submit the rancher is the ultimate environmentalist,” Wilber said. “If they don’t take care of that ground, that grass, that water, they’ll be out of business.”

SALEM — Linn County plans to seek more than $1.4 billion in damages in a class action suit against the state for breach of contract in management of forestland in 15 counties.

Linn County special counsel delivered a letter to Gov. Kate Brown and State Forester Doug Decker Wednesday to notify them of the county’s plan to file the suit after a mandatory 30-day waiting period.

Up to 150 local taxing districts that receive timber sales receipts from harvests from the Oregon Forest Trust Lands contract could be eligible join the suit. That includes schools, libraries, public safety agencies and other districts.

The other counties that benefit from the trust are Benton, Clackamas, Clatsop, Columbia, Coos, Douglas, Josephine, Klamath, Lane, Lincoln, Marion, Polk, Tillamook, and Washington.

“There have been general discussions and angst for years about the distribution formula and how counties have been deprived of revenue by state,” said attorney John DiLorenzo, who is representing Linn County in the suit. “It’s no surprise they’re not getting as much of a return from the arrangement as they should be.”

The 15 counties have contracted with the state since the 1930s to manage forestlands for the land’s “greatest permanent value.” Linn County and the state are at odds over the meaning of that term. The county claims that the term means greatest economic value allowable under state and federal regulations and that returns ought to match what a private land manager could glean off the land. The state in 1998 defined the term to mean economic, ecological, recreational and aesthetic returns and implemented a management plan based on that definition starting in 2000, DiLorenzo said.

Linn County estimates that the 150 local districts in the 15 counties have missed out on $35 million per year in revenue in the past 15 years from the state’s management of the forestland. That number is based on forest modeling, much of which was borrowed from the Department of Forestry, DiLorenzo

“All of those local districts in need of funding especially in the area of public safety,” he said. “Lives would be vastly improved if these monies were distributed to these districts.”

DiLorenzo and Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist declined to specify whether the county first approached DiLorenzo’s law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine, or whether the law firm approached the county to propose the class action suit.

DiLorenzo said the class action suit was “one of those perfect storms when everything came together.” He said he had been watching how the state had been managing the forestland. Meanwhile, timber counties had expressed growing contention over the state’s performance.

The Governor’s Office was not immediately available to comment.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — You work, you get paid. You don’t work, you still get paid.

It’s a deal that helped longshore union members at the Port of Portland collect more than a million dollars in salaries last year, even as cargo container traffic almost ground to a halt and workloads fell fast.

The longshore union has reaped the benefits for decades of a port-supported fund that pays members whether or not they work. During a lockout at the Port of Portland’s grain terminal in 2013, the fund paid $1 million over the course of a year — while no work was going on at all.

Terminal 6, Portland’s container port and the former lifeblood of the state’s small and medium-sized exporting industry, now receives a single ship per month. Between April and July, the container terminal had no work at all.

Elvis Ganda, the head of terminal operator ICTSI Oregon, said the company hires for just 30 eight-hour shifts a month now — down from 500 jobs a week before February. That means longshore workers are doing 1 percent of the work they were doing before.

But dock worker pay at the Port of Portland barely took a hit. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union has a pay guarantee plan that assures many longshore workers will be paid for nearly a full week of work at nearly four times minimum wage, regardless of how much work there is to do.

Union advocates say the plan gives members financial certainty in a business that can ebb and flow over time.

But critics of the longshore union say the plan is why union members aren’t working with the port operator to bring shipping lines back to Terminal 6. “It’s not much incentive to go back to work,” Ganda said.

Without the union on board, port officials say bringing Portland’s direct ties to Asia and Europe back is a hard sell. Greg Borossay, a general manager of the Port’s marine trade development, said that ongoing litigation between the Port of Portland, the union and ICTSI Oregon doesn’t necessarily need to be resolved to bring interested carriers back, but a workforce with a history of slowdowns could hurt Terminal 6’s chances.

“It would certainly be helpful if the labor issue could be fully resolved,” Borossay said at an Oregon Board of Agriculture meeting in December.

The Portland chapter of the union has been found guilty by the federal labor board and judges several times in the past few years of intentionally slowing work on the docks at the container terminal, making threats to ICTSI Oregon officials and other unfair labor practices. Hanjin Shipping Co. and Hapag-Lloyd both stopped calling at Terminal 6 in the midst of a West Coast-wide slowdown, but the Port or Portland issue started before and likely will continue long after other ports are back to normal.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union did not respond to repeated requests for comment. In 2013, a union spokeswoman said the pay guarantee plan is necessary for workers who have families and mortgages to survive during disagreements with the port.

The Pacific Maritime Association, which represents 29 West Coast container port operators, maintains the pay guarantee fund and each port contributes based on the tons of cargo going in and out. That means the ports in the Puget Sound and in Los Angeles are heavily subsidizing the lack of work in Portland.

In 2014, the fund paid out just over $600,000 to Oregon longshore workers in total, with Portland workers averaging less than one day of pay without work over the year, according to the Pacific Maritime Association’s annual report.

Last year, the 426 eligible longshore workers in Portland exceeded that total by August. The full 2015 tally will be released in a few weeks, and will likely climb much higher than the $1.2 million figure racked up as of the end of September.

Longshore workers are hired in batches, when a ship is pulling into port. They load and unload containers, which are then sent by truck, train or barge elsewhere to be filled and returned.

Usually, unions use members’ dues to create their own contingency funds for strikes and downtimes. The ILWU negotiated the pay guarantee fund into its contract with the port operators as early as 1971, according to previous reporting from The Oregonian/OregonLive.

There are three classes of longshore workers who can receive money from the pay guarantee plan. When 2015 started, the highest class, Class A, could earn up to 38 hours of pay at a rate of $35.68 per hour — $1,355.84 per week. Under a newly struck contract, Class A workers are now eligible for 40 hours of pay, regardless of available shifts.

Many longshore workers make six-figure salaries with a busy port, so the $70,000 yearly wage of the pay guarantee plan is a drastic cut.

Some of the longshore workers are likely commuting to Seattle and Tacoma ports, which are much larger and busier. The pay guarantee plan numbers indicate that many are staying in the Portland region, even though no other port or terminal has filled the void left by Terminal 6.

“That work is not being shifted anywhere else in the Columbia River region,” Ganda said. “No one is adding those kinds of man hours to this port.”

Southeast Oregon’s Harney County, the scene of the militia takeover that brought the area national media attention, has been economically stagnant for nearly 40 years.

Residents and elected officials who represent the area say that’s the reality at the root of the area’s muted support for the takeover, even as they disavow the militia’s tactics.

While the rest of the state increased jobs 74 percent since the late 1970s, the number of jobs in Harney County dropped by 10 percent, according to a study by the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis.

The county has lost 99 percent of its wood products jobs since 1978, dropping from 768 then to six in 2014, analyst Josh Lehnersaid in a new report.

“Relative to the late 1970s — just before the state went into the severe early ‘80s recession and timber industry restructuring — the number of jobs today in Harney County is 10 percent below back then,” Lehner said. “Clearly, that is a really long time with essentially no growth.”

Harney County residents know that first-hand.

County Judge Steven Grasty said there is a “feeling of despair” in the county due to job losses. Federal and state agencies, primarily the Bureau of Land Management, manage about 75 percent of the land in the county. Those agencies are so locked into process and so fearful of lawsuits from environmental groups that they become paralyzed and do no management at all, Grasty said.

As a result, many residents are no longer able to depend on logging, mill or ranching work to sustain themselves.

“We believe the wealth of a nation is based on its natural resources,” he said. “We’ve lost access to natural resources, in particular, timber.

“Our community wants to be good stewards of the land,” Grasty said. “When we managed the land it looked better than when the BLM does it. Because of rules and pressure from special interest groups, it forces them to focus on single (wildlife) species and spend their dollars on planning rather than on the ground.”

The decline of Pacific Northwest timber industry is an old story, but rural residents point out that nothing has replaced it, economically. The government’s role is borne out by statistics: In Oregon, the federal government manages 60 percent of the state’s forestland but produces only 12 percent of annual timber harvest, according to the Oregon Forest Resources Institute.

Harney County’s population stood at 7,126 in 2014, a 4 percent drop since the 2010 U.S. Census. Since 1980, when the population was 8,314 and the job losses began, the county has lost nearly 1,200 people.

Those remaining represent an aging demographic, as young people seek opportunity elsewhere. As of 2014, 22 percent of county residents were 65 or older, compared to 16 percent statewide.

The county unemployment rate was 7.3 percent in November 2015, compared to the statewide average of 5.7 percent.

Bill Wilber, a retired rancher in Harney County, said a drumbeat of government action or proposals involving the federal EPA, BLM, state Department of Environmental Quality, sage grouse, “waters of the U.S.” and other issues is tough for residents to take.

“It’s continued rules and regulations that do everything to make it more difficult to make a living, to pay your bills educate your kids, pay your mortgage and lead a good life.” Wilber said.

State Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, whose district includes Harney County, said the actions of the “Bundy bunglers” who took over the wildlife refuge should not diminish the “incredible problems” that dog rural residents.

Bentz said the Forest Service spends its budget fighting fires instead of preparing timber sales, and the BLM creates “study after study” and “haystacks of regulation” in anticipation of litigation. The complexity of management rules becomes “crazily exaggerated,” he said.

“Pretty soon nothing happens because the land managers are so busy trying to create a plan that’s bulletproof, and fail,” he said.

Meanwhile, struggling rural business owners are faced with such things as a state proposal to raise the minimum wage, Bentz said. Businesses operating in larger cities may be able to absorb the increase, but in rural Oregon, only businesses that are part of national chains will be able to pay it.

He said the small town of Halfway, in Baker County, needs $4 million to build a sewage treatment plant as required under the federal Clean Water Act, but has no way to afford it.

Grasty, the Harney County judge, said economic problems in rural areas have ripple effects that might not be noticed elsewhere. If a ranch goes out of business, for example, the local firefighting association loses someone who’s out on the ground and can spot problems early, he said.

Grasty said he’s trying to put together an economic strategy for the county.

“People are so frustrated that they’re slowly being undermined out of existence,” he said. “We’re not being heard. We’re listened to, but not heard.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The armed activists occupying a national wildlife refuge in southeastern Oregon said Tuesday that they plan to hold a community meeting this week to explain themselves and inform residents when they will leave.

A member of the anti-government group told reporters that the meeting will be held Friday evening in Burns, 30 miles from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, The Oregonian newspaper reported.

Arizona rancher Robert “LaVoy” Finicum said the location has yet to be determined. He said “there should be a dialogue” but declined to give any specifics about the group’s exit plans.

The small group is under pressure from many locals to end the occupation that began Jan. 2. The activists are there to oppose federal land-management policies.

Ammon Bundy, the group’s leader, has previously said the group would not leave until a plan was in place to turn over federal lands to local authorities. They also want the release of Dwight and Steven Hammond, father-and-son ranchers convicted of arson who returned to prison last week to serve longer sentences.

The Hammonds’ case set off the occupation, but they have distanced themselves from the activists.

Federal, state and local law enforcement are monitoring the occupation but have not taken action. Officials with the Harney County Joint Information Center declined to comment because of the ongoing investigation.

The group tore down a stretch of government-erected fence near the refuge Monday to give a local rancher access to the range. The armed men also have accessed government files and equipment.

At a community meeting that hundreds attended that night, Harney County residents repeatedly asked the group to leave. They included a Burns High School freshman, who got a standing ovation from the crowd.

“And I just want them to go home so I can feel safe and I can feel like it is home again,” 15-year-old Ashlie Presley said with tears in her eyes, referring to the armed men. “I shouldn’t have to be scared in my own hometown.”

But some residents also said they share the activists’ frustration with the federal government — though they don’t agree with their tactics.

That same frustration was also at the heart of a message about the refuge occupation delivered by Republican Oregon Congressman Greg Walden on the U.S. House floor last week. The speech by Walden, whose district includes Harney County, has gone viral online.

Walden told the AP on Monday that while he does not condone the occupation, the armed men “have elevated the knowledge of frustration people feel in this high desert county.”

Walden said that frustration stems from constant pressure by environmental groups who want to leave public land untouched and from the arrogance exhibited by some federal government bureaucrats who don’t follow the law and disregard the opinions of residents in the rural region.

“Western culture, it’s being threatened,” Walden said.

YAKIMA, Wash. — Agricultural labor conferences abound in Central Washington and one is set in Oregon in the next few weeks.

First up is Washington Growers League’s annual meeting and labor conference, Jan. 26, at the Yakima Convention Center.

Craig Regelbrugge, senior vice president of AmericanHort, Washington, D.C., is among top speakers. AmericanHort formed two years ago from the consolidation of the American Nursery & Landscape Association and the Association of Horticultural Professionals.

Regelbrugge previously was vice president of government relations for ANLA and was co-chairman of the Agricultural Coalition for Immigration Reform in 2013.

Kerry Scott, a program manager for Mas Labor, a foreign worker provider in Lovingston, Va., and Brendan Monahan, a labor and agriculture attorney with Stokes Lawrence law firm, Yakima, also will speak.

The conference is from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Yakima Convention Center. Registration and agenda: www.growersleague.org.

“We have a growing industry and along with it growing demand for labor,” said Mike Gempler, the league’s executive director in Yakima.

While H-2A-visa foreign guestworkers are helping seasonal labor supply, it still is tight and declining and qualified people are hard to find, Gempler said. It’s essential to look at the situation strategically and plan for the future, he said.

Immigration reform and how to deal with efforts by organized labor and foreign governments to place conditions on use of foreign labor will be discussed.

WAFLA, formerly known as the Washington Farm Labor Association, will hold workforce summits from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 26 at the Clackamas County Event Center in Canby, Ore., and at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wash., Jan. 28. The summits focus on how seasonal employers can use the federal H-2A program. WAFLA is a provider. Housing, transportation, recruitment, wages and other aspects of the program will be explained.

WAFLA’s annual labor conference will be at CWU, Feb. 18. Immigration the Affordable Care Act, rest break pay for piece rate workers and proposals to increase the state’s minimum wage will be discussed. For more information on that and the workforce summits: www.wafla.org.

BURNS, Ore. (AP) — The leader of a small, armed group occupying a national wildlife refuge in southeastern Oregon said Monday he and his followers are going through government documents stored inside refuge buildings.

Ammon Bundy told reporters the documents will be used to “expose” how the government has discriminated against local ranchers who use federal land for cattle grazing.

Bundy said the documents would also help secure the release of Steven and Dwight Hammond, two area ranchers convicted of arson who returned to prison last week to serve longer sentences. The Hammonds’ case set off the occupation of the Burns-area refuge on Jan. 2.

Bundy said his group is not accessing government computers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, including personnel files.

After the news conference, the group drove in a convoy to a ranch near the refuge and tore down a stretch of government-erected fence. The goal, according to the armed men, was to give the rancher access to the range that had been blocked for years. It’s not clear where the fence was located or which rancher sought the group’s help.

The refuge is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Spokesman Jason Holm said because the documents and files at the refuge may have personally identifiable information, the agency “is taking necessary steps to ensure employee and family safety.”

The agency strongly condemned the destruction of the fence and said the action undermines hard-earned conservation impacts achieved in the area.

“Removing fences, damaging any Refuge property, or unauthorized use of equipment would be additional unlawful actions by the illegal occupiers,” Fish and Wildlife said in a statement. “Any movement of cattle onto the Refuge or other activities that are not specifically authorized by USFWS constitutes trespassing.”

Sixteen full-time employees and one part time employee usually work at the refuge, Holm said. Some who can’t work away from the refuge have taken administrative leave, while others are working from home or another office.

In Burns, about 30 miles from the refuge, schools reopened after being canceled for a week over safety concerns due to the refuge standoff.

Government offices in the area remained closed, including those of the Bureau of Land Management. BLM spokesman Randy Eardley said about 60 BLM employees were working from home.

“There is a very clear threat to BLM employees,” Eardley said, but he did not cite any specific threats.

Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward said at a community meeting Monday night that members of the armed group have been harassing law enforcement officers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife employees as they go about their business in the community.

He said officers and employees have reported being followed to their homes and observed while inside and that self-identified “militia members” have tried to engage them in debates about their status as federal employees.

Ward said law enforcement at every level “will not be intimidated from doing their jobs.”

Ward told community members, “there’s an hour glass and it’s running out,” The Oregonian reported.

Federal, state and local law enforcement officials are monitoring the occupation but have not taken any action.

The county sheriff and many locals have asked that Bundy and his group leave. But Bundy says he is not ready to go.

Ammon Bundy called his group’s occupation of the refuge “peaceful” and said the armed men would not leave until the Hammonds are out of prison and abuses against ranchers are exposed. Bundy called the occupation a “moral and righteous stand for the future of this country.”

A man representing hunters and anglers, who arrived in Oregon from New Mexico this weekend, condemned the Bundy group at the earlier news conference.

“What I see is a lunatic fringe of extremists who have taken my land over,” said New Mexico Wildlife Federation executive director Garrett VeneKlasen. The group represents sportsmen, including hunters and anglers.

Ammon Bundy is a son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who was at the center of a tense standoff with federal officials in 2014 over unpaid grazing fees.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture expects to resume issuing licenses to grow industrial hemp in 2016 by the end of February, but some problems continue to dog the new crop.

The state issued 11 hemp licenses in 2015 before cutting off the process in August. Nine of the licensees planted a crop and three harvested a product, said Lindsay Eng, ODA’s program manager. But the crops of two other growers, one in Grants Pass and one in Bend, are embargoed because the plants exceeded the .3 percent THC limit required under state law, Eng said. The crops will have to be destroyed or remediated in some way, she said, perhaps by using the plant stalks without the flowers or seeds.

Industrial hemp is related to marijuana, but doesn’t contain nearly the level of THC, the chemical compound that makes pot users high.

Instead, advocates say industrial hemp fiber and oil can be used to make clothing, food, rope, cosmetics, plastics and other products. They’ve long said hemp could replace cotton or petroleum in some uses.

Ag researchers say some conventional farmers might eventually be interested in growing hemp as a rotational crop, but for now the market appears to involve small-scale farmers who want to process hemp themselves to make lotions or other products.

Eng said details in Oregon’s hemp law may need tweaking by the Legislature when it meets in February. A section requiring 2.5-acre hemp plots causes some growers problems, as does a requirement that the plants be directly seeded instead of started in greenhouse pots. In addition, it’s hard to obtain seed, Eng said. Canada is the most common source.

Oregon State University has asked the federal Drug Enforcement Agency for permission to import hemp seed and conduct basic crop research. Jay Stratton Noller, head of OSU’s Department of Crop and Soil Science, said he anticipates the DEA will approve the request and test plots could be planted in April. Three to five years of experiments would be necessary for OSU to produce useful data for growers, he said.

Researchers are starting from scratch because hemp germ plasm had to be destroyed in the 1970s when the federal controlled substances act classified hemp the same as pot and other drugs, Noller said.

Noller said hemp was a viable crop in the past and is grown around the world. In the U.S., the first American flag was made of hemp, Noller said.

“In terms of the number of uses, it obviously buoys a lot of people’s optimism,” he said. “Farmers are always looking for an alternative crop: One, for rotation, and two, for the alternative markets.

“The enthusiasm is not hyperbolic,” he said.

The Oregon Legislature legalized hemp cultivation in 2009, but the law wasn’t implemented because the U.S. Department of Justice classified hemp the same as marijuana. The federal classification remains, but the justice department has said it won’t interfere with hemp production in states that have adopted a robust regulatory system. Industrial hemp was included in the November 2014 Oregon ballot measure that legalized recreational marijuana use, possession and cultivation, and the state issued the first hemp licenses as a result.

OKANOGAN, Wash. — It’s “outrageous and hypocritical” that the federal government imprisoned two Oregon ranchers for a backburn that got away from them and burned a little over 100 acres of public land while federal and state agencies backburned thousands of acres of private land in Okanogan County last summer and were not held accountable, the president of the Okanogan County Farm Bureau says.

“My definition of homeland security is America’s ability to feed itself. There is nothing more important. America has to stop the war on agriculture,” said Nicole Kuchenbuch, 36, Okanogan County Farm Bureau president.

“If this nation’s farmers and ranchers are forced out of business, America has succeeded in staging her own famine,” Kuchenbuch said.

“The media tendency is to turn things into racial or socio-economic issues and vilify ranchers as a bunch of ignorant honkies. It’s important to realize the American government is oppressive to all colors of people and everyone just wants to be free, healthy and prosperous,” she said.

Incidents like ranchers and militia occupying a seasonally closed national wildlife refuge near Burns, Ore., happen when people feel so “abused” by government that “they feel they have no other choice,” Kuchenbuch said.

“I don’t agree with having a standoff, but they captured the attention of the United States,” she said.

The re-sentencing of Harney County, Ore., ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond to five years in prison is just one of many examples throughout ranching areas of the West in the last several decades of the heavy handedness of federal agencies in acquiring more land and squeezing out ranches to satisfy environmentalists who want a national park from the Yukon to Yellowstone, Kuchenbuch said.

It’s not coincidence that agencies have bought many Okanogan County ranches and that there have been problems between the government and ranchers in Nevada and other Western states, she said.

“We believe they are systematically squeezing us out. They use every means possible. Direct buyouts, conservation easements, fire, sage grouse and wolves. The Endangered Species Act. Sometimes they pay 10 times the market value and every parcel sold jeopardizes those left,” Kuchenbuch said.

“We do not trust that they will leave people alone, as witnessed with the Hammond family,” she said.

A couple dozen ranches have been burned out by wildfires that burned more than 1 million acres of Okanogan County in the past two summers. State and federal grazing allotments cover 50 to 80 percent of that, Jack Field, executive vice president of the Washington Cattlemen’s Association, has said. Ranchers are hard-pressed to find grazing land. One-third of 600,000 acres burned in the Okanogan, Tunk Block and North Star fires in 2015 was caused by agency backburning, Okanogan County Commissioner Jim DeTro has said.

Ranches in several parts of the county lost private timber, grazing grounds, hay, barns and equipment to agency backburning that ranchers opposed.

Kuchenbuch, her husband, Casey, and her father, Rod Haeberle, fought a fire alongside firefighters on their ranch last summer and begged them not to backburn 1,000 acres of their private land.

The agency did it anyway to protect homes but jeopardizing people and livestock and destroying Haeberle Ranch timber, miles of fencing, the family’s mountain cabin and a set of corrals.

“We were told afterward that there is no restitution for our losses,” Kuchenbuch said.

Backburning is so touchy that agencies don’t talk about it on their radios, rather commands are given in person, she said.

The homes could have been protected had the USFS allowed the Kuchenbuchs and Gebbers Farms to continue building a firebreak from private ranch land onto USFS property, she said. But the agency never fought the fire offensively, only defended homes, she said.

Protecting towns was the priority and fire resources were spread so thin that rural residents were left to fend for themselves in many places, she said.

When that happens, they don’t have time to wonder whether a backburn they do or other efforts are legal, she said.

“We are forced to defend ourselves in any manner we know. If the Hammonds (in Oregon) are arson-terrorists, then so were a whole lot of people up here including the agencies and civilians who did whatever they needed to save their property,” she said.

“It’s hypocritical for the government to employ the same practices they convicted the Hammonds of,” she said. The Hammonds, who have already served sentences in jail, should be pardoned, she said.

“The law needs to be fixed,” she said. “So they don’t make common citizens into criminals.”

BURNS, Ore. (AP) — The occupation of national wildlife area by a small, armed group upset over federal land policies stretched into its second week as the mother of the group’s leader asked supporters to send supplies — everything from warm blankets to coffee creamer.

The group that seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon’s high desert country on Jan. 2 planned no media briefings. It was quiet at the entrance to the refuge Sunday.

The leader of the occupation, Ammon Bundy, has repeatedly rejected calls to leave buildings at the refuge despite pleas from the county sheriff, from many local residents and from Oregon’s governor, among others. He has said the group will leave when there is a plan to transfer control of federal land to locals.

So far, the authorities have not moved in to remove Bundy’s group. Ammon Bundy is the son of rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a 2014 Nevada standoff with the government over grazing rights.

On Saturday, Ammon Bundy’s mother, Carol Bundy, sent an email to supporters asking them to send her son’s group supplies from a list of more than 80 items, including sleeping bags, wool socks, cigarettes, toiletries, food, coffee and “French Vanilla Creamer.”

An Oregon state legislator met with the group on Saturday, despite requests from local officials that he not do so.

Rep. Dallas Heard, a Republican from Roseburg, talked with the group, The Oregonian reported. Heard’s legislative district is in western Oregon, outside the area where the standoff is occurring. Rep. Cliff Bentz, the Republican state representative whose district includes the wildlife refuge, told Heard not to come because it would be “inappropriate.”

Harney County Judge Steven Grasty, another local official, says he too advised Bentz against the visit. Grasty said Bentz and five other out-of-state elected officials from Washington, Idaho and Nevada accompanied Heard. It wasn’t clear who the other elected officials were. Heard did not return a call Sunday from The Associated Press.

Also Saturday a separate group of armed men arrived but left several hours later after occupation leaders told them they weren’t needed.

The Pacific Patriot Network showed up Saturday in a convoy of about 18 vehicles, carrying rifles and handguns and dressed in military attire and bulletproof vests. They said they were there to help with security. They departed the refuge area after LaVoy Finicum said the network’s help was appreciated, but “we want the long guns put away.”

The standoff is the latest flare up of tensions over federal management of Western lands.

The federal government manages most of the land in many Western states, including 53 percent of Oregon. While ranchers and others object to what they say are unfair rules, environmentalists say mining, logging and ranching have run roughshod for decades on public land and left a legacy of pollution for taxpayers to clean up.

BURNS, Ore. (AP) — The leader of an armed group occupying a national wildlife refuge to protest federal land management policies said he and his followers are not ready to leave even though the sheriff and many locals say the group has overstayed its welcome.

On Friday, Ammon Bundy, leader of the group that on Jan. 2 seized the headquarters of the refuge in southeastern Oregon, said: “How long will this go on? We say to you, ‘Not a minute too early.’”

Bundy met Thursday with Harney County Sheriff David Ward, who asked Bundy to heed the will of locals and leave the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Ward also offered to escort Bundy and his group out of the refuge to ensure safe passage.

“We will take that offer,” Bundy said on Friday. “But not yet.”

A few hours later, Ward said via Twitter that because of Bundy’s stance he was calling off plans to have another meeting with him.

“During this morning’s press conference, the people on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge made it clear that they have no intention of honoring the sheriff’s request to leave. Because of that, there are no planned meetings or calls at this time,” Ward said.

But Ward said he is “keeping all options open.”

About the same time, members of another armed group known as the 3% of Idaho began arriving at the bird sanctuary, The Oregonian reported.

“They just keep an eye on everything that is going on to make sure nothing stupid happens,” Bundy told The Oregonian on Friday afternoon outside refuge headquarters.

“If they weren’t here,” Bundy said, referring to the Idaho group, “I’d worry” about a Waco, Texas-style siege by federal officials in the early 1990s.

Spokesmen for the Idaho group said they are there to keep the situation peaceful and reassure the community that it isn’t in danger.

Bundy’s group — calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom — comes from as far away as Arizona and Michigan.

Bundy’s protest at the refuge is a continuation of long-running arguments that federal policies for management of public lands in the West are harming ranchers and other locals. Bundy is the son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who in 2014 was at the center of a tense standoff with federal officials over grazing rights.

Ammon Bundy has been demanding that federal land in Oregon’s Harney County be turned over to local residents to be managed.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Thursday called the occupation of the wildlife refuge “unlawful” and said it had to end.

“It was instigated by outsiders whose tactics we Oregonians don’t agree with. Those individuals illegally occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge need to decamp immediately and be held accountable,” she said.

Federal, state and local law authorities have been closely monitoring the situation at the refuge but have so far taken no action against Bundy and his followers, apparently to avoid a confrontation. Ward has been the most visible law enforcement authority during the occupation, and his strategy so far has been to try to show Bundy that locals oppose the occupation and want them to leave.

Ward got a lot of support during a packed community meeting Wednesday night.

At that meeting, local residents said they sympathized with the armed group’s complaints about federal land management but disagreed with their tactics and called Bundy and his followers to leave.

Bundy initially came to Burns to rally support for two local ranchers who were sentenced to prison on arson charges. The ranchers — Dwight Hammond and his son Steven Hammond — distanced themselves from Bundy’s group and reported to prison Monday.

The Hammonds were convicted of arson three years ago and served no more than a year. A judge later ruled that the terms fell short of minimum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.

By his own description, Eastern Oregon farmer Craig Coleman doesn’t like to get bored. So in addition to growing blueberries, hay, field corn and cut flowers — not to mention renting ground to a potato farmer – he and several partners decided to open a brewery in Boardman.

“Why not?” he said. “The way I look at things is, if we can do one, why not do 10?”

Ordnance Brewing, named for the ghost town across the highway from the defunct Umatilla Chemical Depot that once housed the deadly agents used in chemical weapons, opened for business around Halloween 2014 and this month announced a major expansion.

The brewery, in the Port of Morrow, will jump production from seven barrels per brewing cycle to 50. For perspective, one barrel equals 31 gallons. The company now produces two or three brews per week, head brewer Logan Mayfield said. Production eventually will increase to six or eight brews per day, he said.

The company will focus on producing four types of beer in cans and bottles: A Rye Pale Ale; an India Pale Ale called FMJ, for Full Metal Jacket; Rivercrest Kolsch, a German-style light lager; and an English-style ale called “Old Craig,” named after Coleman, the farmer. Ordnance will make seasonal beers as well. Mayfield, the brewer, jokingly described some of the company’s offerings as “lawnmower beer,” meaning the type you’d drink after yard work.

“I believe we have a very solid product,” said Coleman. “Is it the greatest beer in the world? Probably not, but we make good beer.”

Coleman is Ordnance’s manager; other partners keep the books, own the brewery building, oversee taphouses that serve the company’s beer and have other roles. Coleman hired Mayfield, originally from Ashland, to do the brewing.

Coleman previously farmed with his extended family in the Willamette Valley, but moved to Eastern Oregon to do something different.

“It was time for a change,” he said. “The business was maturing and it’s not as fun as when your hair is on fire.”

He and partners first opened a couple taphouses that served beer, then decided to up their game and make beer themselves.

Ordnance uses some of Coleman’s blueberries in one of its beer, and buys hops from the Willamette Valley and barley from Idaho. Coleman and Mayfield said they’re looking to use more local ingredients as the business develops.

In its promotional material, Ordnance describes itself as “smack dab in a beer desert,” with very few other breweries operating between Hood River and Pendleton.

An industry group, Oregon Craft Beer, said the state had 234 breweries in 72 cities as of July 2015. Of those, 91 are in the Portland metro area, which some in the industry have taken to calling “Beervana.”

Craft beer brewing, like wine before it and hard cider now coming on, has proven to be a hot economic sector in Oregon. Brewers produced 1.6 million barrels in 2014, a 17 percent increase over the previous year. Craft beer made in Oregon now accounts for 20 percent of the beer consumed in the state, according to the industry group.

Coleman, the Ordnance manager, said the business is in “great spot” geographically and market-wise.

“What I’ve found is, the more questions you ask, the more doors open,” he said. “We’ve been lucky. We have great people around us. The opportunities are out there if you’re willing to capitalize on them.”

BURNS, Ore. (AP) — Three Oregon sheriffs met Thursday with the leader of an armed group occupying a federal wildlife refuge and asked them to leave, after residents made it clear they wanted them to go home.

Harney County Sheriff David Ward said via Twitter that he asked Ammon Bundy to respect the wishes of residents. He said sheriffs from two other counties were with him.

Ward said the two sides planned to talk again Friday.

The Oregonian reported that Ward offered to provide Bundy and his group a safe escort out of the refuge.

“I’m here to offer safe escort out,” the newspaper reported the sheriff telling Bundy. “Go back and kick it around with your folks.”

On Wednesday night, residents attended a community meeting to air their views about the two dozen or so armed men hold up at the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge south of Burns.

Locals said they sympathized with the armed group’s complaints about federal land management policies but disagreed with their tactics.

On Thursday, LaVoy Finicum, a leader of the armed group, told reporters, “We want all people to be safe. We want all law enforcement to be safe. We want our lives to be safe.”

Ward said he hoped residents would put up a united front to peacefully resolve the conflict with the group.

“I’m here today to ask those folks to go home and let us get back to our lives,” Ward said.

Schools were closed following the seizure of the refuge because of safety concerns in the small town in eastern Oregon’s high desert.

The group, calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, says it wants an inquiry into whether the government is forcing ranchers off their land. Participants came from as far away as Arizona and Michigan.

Bundy came to Burns to rally support for two local ranchers who were sentenced to prison on arson charges. The ranchers — Dwight Hammond and his son Steven Hammond — distanced themselves from Bundy’s group and reported to prison on Monday.

The Hammonds were convicted of arson three years ago and served no more than a year. A judge later ruled that the terms fell short of minimum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.

Oregon farm regulators have cleared the expansion of four dairies classified as “confined animal feeding operations” over the objections of vegans and animal welfare proponents.

Earlier this year, five dairies requested that the Oregon Department of Agriculture approved changes to their waste management plans, with four those facilities seeking to increase their herds.

While such requests are usually routine, the expansion proposals attracted the attention of critics who complained the larger dairies will increase pollution, harm air quality, spur more antibiotic usage and lead to animal welfare abuses.

Many of these objections were heard during an ODA public meeting in September 2015, and critics also submitted written comments about the modified plans.

In a response to comments, ODA explained that it’s role is limited to water quality concerns. Complaints about air quality, animal welfare and antibiotic usage are outside its jurisdiction in enforcing the federal Clean Water Act.

“Most of the comments were not pertinent to our permit,” said Wym Matthews, manager of the agency’s CAFO program, noting that this fact probably won’t appease critics. “They probably will not be happy with our response.”

However, the agency will impose new conditions on the five dairies, which are located in Tillamook, Marion, Coos and Klamath counties.

In fields where manure is applied, the dairies will have to test soil nutrients annually instead of every five years. Those tests must also specifically check the soil’s nitrate levels, in addition to total nitrogen and phosphorous levels.

Dairies were previously required to only check for total nitrogen and phosphorous, but they must now break out nitrates because federal standards set limits for that particular soluble nutrient in drinking water, said Matthews.

While these conditions will currently apply only to the five dairies that requested waste management plan changes, ODA is in the process of updating its overall Clean Water Act permit for CAFOs, which will require other facilities to also comply with these measures later in 2016, he said.

Friends of Family Farmers, a non-profit group that submitted comments about water quality concerns, is heartened that soil tests will check specifically for nitrates and that samples will now be taken more frequently, which is aimed at preventing excessive nutrient buildup.

“Those were all issues we had flagged. We were making sure they weren’t engaged in a rubber-stamp exercise,” said Ivan Maluski, the group’s policy director. “I think it’s encouraging they included our suggestions.”

Any new regulatory requirements create challenges for dairies, particularly smaller ones without many employees, but producers tend to be agile in meeting such standards, said Tammy Dennee, assistant director of the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association,

As for the controversy over the expansions, Dennee said it’s hard to say whether to expect similar objections in the future.

“Unfortunately, it was much to do about very little,” she said.

COOS BAY — The Zonta Club of the Coos Bay Area is sponsoring the second annual GIRLS ROCK event 1-4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30, at Sunset Middle School Commons, 245 S. Cammann St., in Coos Bay.