SALEM — Farmers will face a lower risk of lawsuits over aviation and agritourism accidents under two bills that seem likely to become law in Oregon.
House Bill 2038, which absolves landowners of liability for aviation-related injuries on their property in most circumstances, was approved unanimously by the Senate on June 1 after earlier passing the House.
Legislation that protects agritourism operators from lawsuits, Senate Bill 341, was unanimously referred for a vote on the House floor with a “do pass” recommendation on June 2 by a key committee. The bill has already been approved by the House.
Both bills have overcome opposition from the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association, which feared the proposals would deprive negligence victims of their day in court.
Under the original language of HB 2038, aviation was simply added to a list of recreational activities for which landowners cannot be held liable unless they charge an entrance fee to their property.
An amended version of the bill clarifies that this protection doesn’t extend to landowners who cause harm to aircraft operators through gross negligence after allowing the use of their private airstrips.
Farmers who own airstrips testified in favor of the bill, arguing they shouldn’t be held legally responsible for pilots who routinely land on their property without permission.
While much of the debate focused on planes and airstrips, the bill also protects landowners from liability for accidents related to aviation sports such as hang gliding and parachuting.
Under SB 341, agritourism operators wouldn’t face liability for death or injury as long as they post notices that warn visitors of the inherent dangers of being on a farm.
The bill wouldn’t apply to growers who demonstrate “negligence or willful disregard” for safety, intentionally harm visitors, don’t properly inspect equipment that hurts someone, know of an undisclosed danger, or don’t comply with land use laws for agritourism.
Supporters of SB 341, including the Oregon Farm Bureau and Friends of Family Farmers, hope that reduced liability will encourage more agritourism and persuade insurers to offer coverage for such activities, eventually lowering premiums.
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Oregon is expected to see above-normal wildfire danger starting in July, and fire seasons imposing restrictions on open burning are starting in the southwestern corner of the state.
The National Interagency Fire Center’s latest report on nationwide wildfire potential shows much of Oregon at normal in June, with drier areas of the state moving into above normal. By July, above normal fire potential spreads across the Northwest, and continues through September.
“The focus of above normal fire activity during the core of the fire season will likely be in the Northwest,” the report said.
East of the Cascades, more lightning than usual is expected in July and August, which the report says “will prove to be the deciding factor for the intensity of fire season 2015.”
Last year Oregon saw more than 3,000 wildfires burn nearly 1 million acres — about 1,500 square miles — of forest and rangeland, the fire center reports.
Long-range forecasts from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center call for summer to be warmer and drier than average.
In the short term, late spring rain has moistened trees, brush and grass, but as summer wears on, wildfire activity is expected to become “robust,” the report said.
“This will be amplified by the lack of snowpack at higher elevations, which should allow the conditions necessary for long duration timber fires to occur unusually early,” the report said.
Fire seasons are starting in the southwestern corner of the state. The Oregon Department of Forestry is declaring fire season starting Friday in Jackson and Josephine counties. That is about the same time as the past two years, said Department of Forestry fire prevention specialist Brian Ballou. Fire danger will begin at moderate. Outdoor burning and fireworks will be prohibited on state-protected lands.
“This will be the third drier-than-normal fire season in a row for southwest Oregon,” state District Forester Dan Thorpe said in a statement.
Fire restrictions also went into effect on the so-called wild section of the Rogue River, popular with whitewater rafters, the U.S. Forest Service said.
Six small lightning fires were put out after being ignited Sunday evening in Douglas County.
Pendleton Grain Growers sold or closed several divisions after losing nearly $8 milllion in 2014 but has refocused on core business areas and hopes to regain profitability this year, its chief executive said.
Rick Jacobson, a Pendleton native and former Norpac executive called out of retirement in 2012 to get PGG back on its feet, said restructuring and cost containment measures implemented over the past three years are paying off.
“I’m sitting here feeling pretty optimistic,” Jacobson said. “We’re positioned to make money in the 2015 crop year.”
PGG, a grain marketing and supply cooperative founded in 1929, spread itself too thin as it diversified, Jacobson said. The co-op jettisoned agronomy services, an auto shop, farm supply business and an irrigation service. The discontinued services accounted for about $7.5 million of the company’s losses in 2014, Jacobson said.
The co-op also sold excess inventory and recapitalized its debts into a new loan package. Jacobson said PGG has a $20 million line of credit and is in good position at this point.
The troubles came to light in 2012 when the USDA temporarily suspended PGG’s grain license. The suspension meant growers’ grain deposits were not guaranteed and was a “serious issue,” Jacobson said. The co-op’s board approached Jacobson and asked him to step in as manager.
Digging into PGG’s books revealed severe accounting problems, including earnings being overstated by about $10 million over the years. Jacobson said the co-op’s accounting procedures were “inadequate” but said there was no evidence of fraud or criminal malfeasance.
PGG will now concentrate on grain, seed, fuel and other energy products and transportation, Jacobson. A subsidiary irrigation business, Precision Rain, operates in Island City, Ore.
PGG has a network of 19 grain elevators and serves wheat, barley, corn and canola growers.
In a prepared statement, PGG board Chairman Tim Hawkins said the co-op will provide local market services for years to come.
“We have done the hard work together,” he said, “and although some of the steps were difficult, we are now in a stronger financial position and have put in place a meaningful foundation for the future.”
The Oregon Senate has approved a bill giving farm regulators the authority to revoke nurseries’ shipping permits to prevent the spread of plant diseases.
Senate Bill 256, which also raises the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s cap on nursery license fees, passed 23-5 during a Senate vote on June 2.
The Oregon Association of Nurseries supports the bill, which the group has likened to a “nuclear deterrent” against nursery producers who ignore plant health standards.
The risk is that a diseased shipment from a negligent company will create an out-of-state outbreak and endanger Oregon’s entire nursery industry, according to OAN.
The maximum license fee on nurseries would increase from $20,000 a year to $40,000 a year under SB 256 and the millage rate on their revenues would increase from five to 10 mills. A mill is a tenth of one percent.
The Oregon Department of Agriculture’s inspection authority is also revised under the bill to allow for a more “document-heavy” approach that focuses on prevention and auditing rather than on-the-ground inspection.
The legislation will now be considered by the Oregon House.
The legal battle over grazing on public lands has flared up in southern Oregon with a new lawsuit over the Fremont-Winema National Forest.
Environmentalists are accusing the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of signing off on grazing in the forest despite “incomplete and inaccurate information” about harms to the Sprague and Sycan river basins.
The plaintiffs — Oregon Wild, Friends of Living Oregon Waters and the Western Watersheds Project — claim cattle are trampling streambanks, widening channels and raising water temperatures to the detriment of fish.
Negative impacts to the threatened bull trout have resulted in violations of the Endangered Species Act, while the degradation in water quality contravenes the Clean Water Act and National Forest Management Act, the lawsuit claims.
Damage to the “scenic value” of the area also breeches the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, according to the plaintiffs.
The complaint alleges repeated problems with overgrazing, poor fence conditions and unauthorized cattle in at least 10 grazing allotments are within the bull trout’s “critical habitat.”
Some allotments also haven’t been monitored for grass stubble height and other parameters of rangeland health, the complaint said.
The Forest Service’s own data shows that water temperatures in the streams exceeded Clean Water Act standards in “multiple years,” but despite these issues the government concluded “livestock grazing was not likely to adversely affect newly designated bull trout critical habitat,” the plaintiffs claim.
The environmental groups have asked a federal judge to declare the government’s grazing authorizations to be unlawful and issue “temporary, preliminary or permanent injunctive relief” as necessary.
The Forest Service had no comment and a representative of the Fish and Wildlife Service said the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
Jerome Rosa, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, said he was disappointed that ranchers in the area will be subject to litigation at a time they’re already contending with water shortages.
The OCA will look into the situation and seek to assist ranchers in the area, said John O’Keefe, the group’s president-elect.
“We’re definitely concerned,” he said.
The recent lawsuit comes after a couple years of relative calm in the controversy over grazing on public land in Oregon.
In 2012, several consolidated complaints over grazing in the Malheur National Forest came to an end after the federal government established new conditions for ranchers to follow.
In 2013, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block grazing in the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s half-million-acre “Louse Canyon” area while the agency re-evaluated grazing authorizations.
Oregon State University plant pathologist Chris Mundt reported at Hyslop Farm Field Day May 27 that sharp eyespot is back infecting Willamette Valley wheat, and doesn’t appear to be leaving any time soon.
“We were hoping it would go away,” Mundt said, “but that’s not the case.”
Sharp eyespot appeared in the valley at unheard of levels last year, causing yield losses as high as 50 percent in one field and between 10 and 20 percent in others, according to Mundt.
The disease was indiscriminate last year, appearing in wheat fields up and down the valley and on nearly all the common varieties, he said.
This year appears no different. Sharp eyespot is just as prominent, he said, and has been spotted in Central Oregon wheat stands as well, dousing hopes that last year’s outbreak was an anomaly that wouldn’t be repeated.
Mundt said he is finding it in every clump of wheat he pulls up in the valley.
Plants infected with the disease will exhibit black areas on stems, Mundt said, and at high infestation levels will lodge.
Mundt is speculating that a new strain, or population, of the sharp eyespot fungus, Rhizoctonia cerealis, is responsible for the infestation. He said literature shows it also is appearing in China.
The disease has appeared sparingly in the valley over the years, Mundt said, but never at high levels.
Among research being conducted on the disease, researchers are studying whether certain fungicides, such as the strobilurins, are effective at controlling it. “We’ll know at the end of this year,” Mundt said.
Researchers also are planning to put out trials this fall to study whether delaying planting can lower plant susceptibility.
Mundt also reported that barley yellow dwarf virus is appearing at unusually high levels in Willamette Valley wheat this year.
“This is the worst barley yellow dwarf I’ve ever seen in the valley,” he said.
He speculated that last fall’s high temperatures facilitated aphid survival, contributing to the spread of the disease. Aphids transmit barley yellow dwarf virus between plants.
Mundt said certain varieties, such as Bobtail, are showing better resistance to barley yellow dwarf than others. And, he said, if growers can hold off planting wheat until the end of October, it can help slow the spread of the disease.
“If you have any way to back off seeding to mid- to late October, it would be good not only for your individual farm, but for the valley as a whole,” he said.
In general, Mundt said, planting late lowers plant exposure to diseases.
PORTLAND — The unexpected collaboration of industry, environmentalists and government agencies that saved mill jobs in Oregon’s Grant County could be a model for restoration forest policy elsewhere, panelists said at a May 27 timber symposium.
Working with the U.S. Forest Service, the Blue Mountains Forest Partners forged a 10-year agreement to restore 272,000 acres of the Malheur National Forest through thinning projects and other work. The work, funded by a $2.5 million allocation from USDA, provides logging and mill jobs, reduces fire danger and improves the ecosystem, panelists at the Forests and the Economy Symposium said.
“We had the idea we were the smartest guys in the room,” said Bruce Daucsavage, president of Ochoco Lumber Co. “When we hit the wall a couple years ago, we needed help.”
The company in 2012 announced it would close its John Day sawmill because it could not get a sufficient supply of logs from the national forest. The mill was Grant County’s biggest private employer, providing 70 to 80 jobs in a county of 1,700 people, and the prospect of closure was grim news.
But the potential job losses, combined with issues of forest health and the prospect of catastrophic fire in overgrown woods, provided common ground for finding a solution, panelists agreed.
The agreement, essentially science-based, long-term landscape management contracts, required Ochoco Lumber to make some changes, Daucsavage said.
“I have to take that science and figure out how to make a profit with it,” he said. “We go out in the woods and figure out what will work.”
Processing and marketing small logs removed during thinning work is “always a challenge,” Daucsavage said. The company invested $12 million in new facilities. It installed a whole log shaver, which produces shavings for use as animal bedding, and added the capacity to make wood chips or compressed wood bricks for heating.
In joining partners such as Sustainable Northwest and the Western Environmental Law Center, the company “opened ourselves up,” Daucsavage said. “We will never get everything we want, but what we’ve got going right now is wonderful.”
“They gave up management as usual and embraced a (forest) restoration approach,” said Susan Jane Brown, staff attorney with the law center.
The approach was different for the law center, as well. “I’m a litigator. My day job is suing the Forest Service and BLM (Bureau of Land Management) over forest practices,” Brown quipped. The task of “bringing science to the table” involved experts and community stakeholders going out on the ground where forest policy issues are coming up, she said.
Daucsavage, Brown and Patrick Shannon, forest program director with Sustainable Northwest, said collaboration may work in Eastern Oregon because so many involved in forest policy issues, from all sides, have hit bottom and are looking for solutions.
“Industry wasn’t seeing logs come off (the national forests) and my side wasn’t seeing old growth protection,” Brown said.
Other issues covered during the symposium included panel discussions of the “missing middle” in forest policy and the cost of wildfire suppression.
The event was hosted by InvestigateWest, a nonprofit investigative newsroom, and the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communications.
A federal judge has rejected a request by two Oregon alfalfa farms to block Jackson County’s ban on genetically engineered crops from going into effect.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Clarke has found the GMO ban is not pre-empted by the state’s “right to farm” law, thereby allowing the ordinance to become effective on June 5.
The “right to farm” statue prohibits ordinances and lawsuits that treat a common farming practice as a trespass or nuisance, but it does not protect activities that harm commercial agriculture, the judge said.
Oregon’s legislature passed the law to shield farmers from urban encroachment and complaints about smells, noises and other irritations, he said.
“While farming practices may not be limited by a suburbanite’s sensitivities, they may be limited if they cause damage to another farm’s crops,” Clarke said.
Growers are able to file lawsuits over such grievances under the “right to farm” statute, and Jackson County’s ordinance simply “serves to prevent such damage before it happens” — even if it hasn’t yet occurred, he said.
Clarke also found that lawmakers intended to permit the GMO ban when they excluded Jackson County from a 2013 bill that pre-empted other local governments from regulating biotech crops.
He pointed to testimony from lawmakers representing the county who claimed the ordinance was necessary to avoid unwanted cross-pollination between biotech crops and those that are conventional or organic.
Former Gov. John Kitzhaber also stated that Jackson County was specifically exempt from Senate Bill 863, the state pre-emption law, when he pushed lawmakers to approve it, said Clarke.
Plaintiffs in the case — Schulz Family Farms and James and Marilyn Frink — claimed that SB 863 did not affect the “right to farm” law, which they interpreted as protecting their genetically engineered alfalfa crops from being destroyed.
While Clarke has dismissed the farmers’ arguments regarding “right to farm,” their claim seeking $4.2 million in compensation from Jackson County remains alive in the case.
The growers argue that forcing them to remove about 300 acres of herbicide-resistant “Roundup Ready” alfalfa amounts to the county condemning their property for public use, which requires just compensation.
Capital Press was unable to reach the plaintiffs or Jackson County for comment.
The Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit critical of biotech crops, considers the ruling a “big win” but expects the plaintiffs will challenge it before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said George Kimbrell, senior attorney for the group.
The judge has recognized that genetically engineered crops pose a significant commercial threat to non-biotech growers, which was a key issue in the litigation, Kimbrell said. “This case is a resounding affirmation of the right of farmers to protect themselves from GE contamination.”
A bill aimed at expanding government oversight of “rails-to-trails” across farmland in Oregon, intended to prevent disruptions to agriculture, has died in committee.
House Bill 3367 would have required conditional use permits for certain projects in farm zones, such as converting railroad tracks to bike paths, which would allow neighboring farmers to weigh in on such proposals.
The Oregon Farm Bureau and conservation groups supported the bill, arguing that dealing with ongoing public recreation poses a much greater challenge for farmers than the passage of an occasional train.
Growers know when trains will travel across their property and can plan their operations accordingly, but they face greater difficulties when spraying, tilling or moving livestock near bikers and other visitors, proponents of HB 3367 said.
The Oregon Recreation and Park Association opposed the original version of the bill for allegedly threatening to interfere with a process that’s successfully created hundreds of miles of trails in the state.
Trails rarely encounter the type of problems anticipated by farmers, opponents of HB 3367 said.
Even trails that cross the farmland of willing landowners would be subject to greater scrutiny by county governments under the bill, ORPA said.
“Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water,” said Stephanie Redman, the group’s executive director, during a recent legislative hearing.
The original version of HB 3367 passed the House by a strong margin, but during Senate hearings, ORPA pressed for an amendment that would only require permits when the land is acquired through eminent domain.
Representatives of Oregon’s Department of Land Conservation and Development testified that permits are already required for certain trails, though not those which modify existing transportation easements.
Several park officials, however, told lawmakers that this process hasn’t been followed unfirmly across the state.
In the end, the Senate Committee on Environment decided to let the bill die during a May 27 work session rather than schedule further deliberations.
Cindy Robert, lobbyist for the ORPA, said the concept isn’t necessarily a “dud” but more time is needed to clarify existing regulations and how they’ve been applied.
Hopefully, a solution that makes sense for everyone can be found during a future legislative session, she said.
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Checks totaling $20 million are being sent to 18 timber counties in western Oregon under terms of a federal subsidy renewed by Congress.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced Thursday that the money is being distributed to the so-called O&C counties under terms of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act.
The counties once received so much money as a share of logging on the so-called O&C lands that some didn’t have to levy taxes. But when logging was drastically cut in the 1990s to protect the northern spotted owl and salmon, Congress created a series of safety nets. The latest one had expired, but was revived by Congress.
The money has been steadily decreasing, and counties that depend on it the most have trouble providing services.
Associated Press
Armed with rifles equipped with silencers, government hunters have started shooting seabirds on an uninhabited island at the mouth of the Columbia River, to reduce their consumption of juvenile salmon migrating to the ocean.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged Wednesday that wildlife control personnel from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services started over the weekend implementing the corps’ plan to cut by more than half the numbers of double-crested cormorants nesting on East Sand Island between Oregon and Washington, where they eat millions of juvenile salmon migrating to the ocean. The island is the biggest double-crested cormorant nesting site in North America, and some of the salmon are protected species.
Bob Winters, program manager for the corps, said a team of three to four wildlife control personnel armed with .22-caliber rifles would be killing birds on the island through August. The goal is to reduce the colony from about 14,000 breeding pairs to 5,600 pairs by 2018.
The Audubon Society of Portland has challenged the killing in a federal lawsuit that argues the corps is ignoring the biggest threat to salmon, hydroelectric dams on the Columbia. Conservation director Bob Sallinger called on the corps to allow independent observers on the island so the public can know how the killing is being carried out, and to call off the killing until the lawsuit has run its course.
“The idea of turning the largest cormorant colony in the United States into as shooting gallery and killing cormorants on the nest is a low point in terms of recent wildlife management efforts,” Sallinger said.
Winters said Wildlife Services personnel are focusing on portions of the colony where eggs have yet to hatch, so as not to create a situation where chicks are left without parents to feed them. Numbers of how many birds have been killed and eggs oiled to prevent them from hatching are to be posted on a corps website on Thursdays each week.
He added that the corps has a contract with people who are verifying the culling is being done in accordance with the environmental impact statement.
ONTARIO, Ore. — Oregon State University researchers have alerted onion growers in the region to be on the lookout for the iris yellow spot virus in this year’s crop.
The virus has been detected in several volunteer onions, said OSU Cropping Systems Extension Agent Stuart Reitz.
“I haven’t seen it in the crop yet but if we’re seeing it in the volunteers, it’s only a matter of time before it shows up in the crop,” he said. “I expect to see it showing ... up in the crop any time basically.”
About 25 percent of the nation’s fresh bulb onions are grown in Eastern Oregon and Southwestern Idaho and the virus is one of the industry’s top production challenges.
It weakens the onion plant and can significantly reduce growth, which is important in the onion industry because larger-sized bulb onions fetch higher prices.
The virus is transmitted to onions by thrips and the insect’s populations are starting to build up rapidly, Reitz said.
“We’re consistently seeing 1 to 2 adult thrips per plant, which is a healthy population for this time of year,” he said.
The virus was detected in last year’s crop in early June.
Reitz said growers should be focusing on controlling volunteer onions, since they act as early season reservoirs for thrips and the virus to move into the crop.
“People need to get all of the volunteer stuff away,” said Nyssa farmer Paul Skeen, president of the Malheur County Onion Growers Association.
Nyssa grower Reid Saito said the virus is one of the industry’s top two problems, along with the nutsedge weed.
“We don’t have a real good handle on it,” he said. “You just never know when it’s going to show up. Year to year and area to area, the virus pressure varies.”
Saito said he has seen onion fields that look great “and then when the virus shows up, I’ve seen the whole complexion of the crop change from good to terrible in a matter of days.”
Reitz and Skeen credit an aggressive thrips control program with helping keep virus pressure low last year compared with the previous several years.
2013 was a bad year for the virus but last year was mild by comparison, Skeen said, and that was due in part to farmers spraying earlier and more often for thrips.
Farmers should be out scouting their fields now and acting quickly if any virus pressure is detected, Reitz said.
“People should be checking their crop very carefully to see if any virus shows up,” he said. “The people who had less severe pressure last year were the ones who stayed on top of it.”
For more information about thrips and the virus, contact Reitz at (541) 881-1417.
