NYSSA, Ore. — The snow is gone, but much of the devastation remains.

Many members of the region’s vibrant onion industry are rushing to rebuild their storage and packing facilities after four feet of snow and ice crushed the buildings and destroyed the onions and equipment inside.

The damage is extensive — most estimates place the total at $50 million to $100 million. That includes about 100 million pounds of onions — about 7 percent of the year’s crop — that were lost.

The industry must rebuild in time for this fall’s 1 billion-pound-plus harvest. Most of the Spanish big bulb onions grown along the border between southwestern Idaho and southeastern Oregon are stored to be marketed later in the year.

About 60 onion storage sheds and packing facilities either collapsed or sustained major damage, according to Stuart Reitz, an Oregon State University Extension cropping systems agent in Malheur County.

Owyhee Produce in Nyssa, Ore., lost four storage sheds, which had a combined capacity of about 33 million pounds of onions. The company’s packing facility was damaged but is still operating.

The shipper lost 22 million pounds of onions, and general manager Shay Myers estimates the company sustained about $10 million in damage to the buildings.

He said at least three other shippers sustained the same degree of damage.

Demolition of damaged buildings is occurring now and the rebuilding is underway.

Though Owyhee Produce, which had insurance coverage on its buildings, will experience significant financial pain in rebuilding, it will emerge stronger, as will the entire industry, Myers predicted.

“It’s forced us to make some changes that, frankly, otherwise we would have taken longer to do,” he said.

That includes updates in technology in storage sheds and additional automation in packing facilities.

“I don’t mean it’s a positive thing that this happened but the end result will be positive for the industry as a whole because it forces updates that otherwise wouldn’t have happened,” he said.

According to Jay Breidenbach, a National Weather Service meteorologist, the areas where most of the damage occurred were blanketed by unprecedented amounts of snow. No official records exist for snow accumulation in Nyssa, but total accumulation in nearby Ontario, Ore., peaked at 48 inches on Jan 19.

“That looks like the most snow they have ever had on the ground,” he said.

But the big question is whether the rebuilding will be finished in time for the 2017 harvest, which will start in earnest in September and wrap up by mid-October.

Snake River Produce in Nyssa lost three of its storage sheds, three others that it leased and about 25,000 50-pound bags of onions, said general manager Kay Riley.

The shipper had good insurance coverage and should be fine financially, Riley said, but a lot of the storage sheds that were lost were owned by individual farmers, some of them retired.

It’s unknown how many of those structures had adequate insurance and how many will be rebuilt.

“I don’t know if building an onion storage is a good retirement scheme or not,” Riley said.

He agrees with Myers that the industry will be stronger in the long term because of the modernization that will occur with rebuilding.

“But in the short-term I’m very ... concerned because I don’t think there’s enough contractors, time, money and insurance claims to get all of this put back together by this fall,” Riley said.

Reitz said it’s a major question mark whether there will be enough storage in the region.

“People have to be careful about that,” he said. “They have to make sure they have a place to put their crop at the end of the year.”

Almost all of the region’s lost onion packing capacity will be replaced by this fall, Myers predicted. “I don’t think there are long-term ramifications from a production standpoint. Where there may still be some is on the storage side.”

John Wong, owner of Champion Produce in Parma, Idaho, which lost one storage shed and part of another, said he has heard that most people plan to be rebuilt in time for this year’s harvest.

“I think a lot of people in the industry wonder how likely that is to occur,” he said. “But I wouldn’t bet against the American farmer.”

Another unknown is how many Oregon shippers that suffered major damage will move to Idaho.

Several industry leaders have told Capital Press in the past year that some shippers are seriously considering relocating in Idaho because of Oregon’s much higher minimum wage. Oregon’s current non-urban rate of $9.50 an hour will increase to $12.50 by 2022. Idaho’s minimum wage is $7.25.

Myers said this winter’s catastrophe could well push his company and others to move. Owyhee Produce and several other onion shippers are a few hundred yards from Idaho. The Snake River separates the two states.

“There’s a high probability we’ll be across the river in a new place,” Myers said. He said he knows of at least three other companies that are also seriously considering moving to Idaho.

The onions that froze or have debris mixed in with them — worth between $7 million and $10 million — are no longer good and will be buried in area landfills.

That’s to protect the region’s reputation for quality, Riley said. The area, which calls itself “Onion Country, USA,” is under a federal marketing order and promotes and markets its onions as a region, he said.

“We have a good reputation for quality and if somebody sent something out that had problems it would reflect on all of us,” said Riley, the marketing order chairman.

In the meantime, the rest of the region’s onion industry, which produces about 25 percent of the nation’s big bulb storage onions, wants customers to know plenty of onions are still available.

“We still have plenty of onions to ship,” said Grant Kitamura, general manager of Murakami Produce in Ontario, which did not sustain any weather-related damage. “Most of the onion sheds have their normal supply of onions.”

With the region declared a federal disaster area, many businesses are eligible for low-interest loans, which will help the rebuilding process.

Myers and others said Oregon and Idaho officials have done a good job of helping to speed up the recovery by cutting through red tape where possible.

That includes making exceptions that allowed more landfills in the area to accept onions and building debris, and relaxing restrictions that otherwise would have slowed the recovery.

For example, buildings usually can’t be burned during demolition but exceptions have been made, Myers said.

“The bureaucracy was bypassed as much as possible, where possible, to allow things to happen in the way that they needed to to make sure that we’re in business next year,” he said.

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, a Republican, and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, toured the region on a National Guard Black Hawk helicopter and saw the damage first-hand.

Oregon farmer Paul Skeen, president of the Malheur County Onion Growers Association, was on the helicopter with them and made sure they understood the magnitude of the damage.

“There’s no question they saw the devastation because I was pointing it out to them,” he said. “They understand it fuller now. They’re seeing our plight.”

BANDON – It was a delicious event for those attending the annual Bite of Bandon, a fundraiser for the Bandon Community Youth Center, held Saturday night at the Bandon Community Center.

BANDON – It was a delicious event for those attending the annual Bite of Bandon, a fundraiser for the Bandon Community Youth Center, held Saturday night at the Bandon Community Center.

BANDON -- The small Jewish village of Anatevka, Russia, home to a tight-knit community of peasants, becomes the setting for New Artists Productions’ spring stage presentation, Broadway Junior’s "Fiddler on the Roof Junior." The year is 1905 when this musical…

LANGLOIS -- The Friends of Langlois Library honor an individual each year from the community that goes over and beyond. This year it is Jake Pestana of the Langlois Market and The Spoon restaurant.

BANDON — The small Jewish village of Anatevka, Russia, home to a tight-knit community of peasants, becomes the setting for New Artists Productions’ spring stage presentation, Broadway Junior’s "Fiddler on the Roof Junior." The year is 1905 when this musical…

PORTLAND — The Port of Portland has officially regained control of its container terminal, but agricultural exporters can’t expect shipping from the facility to resume quickly.

The port’s commission voted unanimously March 8 to sever ties with ICTSI Oregon, a terminal operator involved in a long-running labor dispute that brought container shipping at Terminal 6 to a halt.

“This gives us the opportunity to press reset,” Keith Leavitt, Port of Portland’s chief commercial officer, told the commission.

With ICTSI out of the picture, the port will now seek to repair relations with the International Longshore Workers Union, said Leavitt.

While that partnership is key to resuming service at Terminal 6, finding a new company to run the facility is more complicated, he said.

“How do you proposition when you have no cargo and no volume?” Leavitt said. “The value proposition to an operator is a complex equation.”

The port will need to identify its market strengths and develop a business plan for reactivating the container terminal, he said.

“We want to take the time to study what our future in the container business is,” Leavitt said.

The port expects to “hit the ground running with a new strategy” in early 2018 after conferring with shippers and other stakeholders, he said.

The undertaking comes at a time of upheaval in the shipping industry, adding another layer of difficulty to the situation, he said.

“We have to find our market niche. It’s changing and it’s more narrow than it’s ever been,” Leavitt said.

Getting the container terminal up and running will only be part of the solution for agricultural shippers, he said.

Even at full capacity, Terminal 6 was only serving about 55-60 percent of the potential regional market of importers and exporters, Leavitt said.

In the future, the port will need to take a comprehensive approach by helping shippers get products to ocean carriers in the Puget Sound as well as restarting its own terminal, he said.

One idea could be to send containers to ports in Seattle and Tacoma on barges, though the economic viability of this concept is questionable due to the added travel time involved, he said.

Terminal 6 also has a rail yard that’s been underutilized, Leavitt said. “We’ve never really consistently activated it.”

It’s not an option for the port to operate the terminal because that has proven unprofitable in the past, said Bill Wyatt, the port’s executive director.

“We were losing boatloads of money in the course of that,” Wyatt said. “We were subsidizing the operation of Terminal 6 by selling land and we were running out of land.”

This unsustainable position led the port to lease its container terminal to ICTSI for 25 years in 2011.

While the arrangement initially seemed productive, a dispute broke out in 2012 over whether the ILWU had jurisdiction over plugging in and unplugging refrigerated containers.

Since then, ICTSI has been locked in a labor battle with the longshoremen’s union that has involved several lawsuits.

The conflict resulted in slowed productivity that prompted ocean carriers to abandon Terminal 6 in 2015 and 2016.

“It could take a few years before there is light at the end of the litigation tunnel,” said Leavitt.

Now that ICTSI has agreed to amicably end the contract, the Port of Portland is once again free to decide what to do with the container facility, Wyatt said.

“It’s been a journey,” he said. “Maybe a saga is the best way to characterize it.”

Oregon State University’s novel small farms program is asking producers to help guide where it goes next.

The program is part of OSU Extension and offers classes, workshops and training in the Willamette Valley, Southern Oregon and the Columbia River Gorge. Associate Professor Melissa Fery and Assistant Professor Amy Garrett are asking small farmers to take an on-line survey that will gauge interest in various topics.

The survey asks farmers which production topics interest them, ranging from pasture and grazing management to organic certification, and from fruit, nuts and berries to small grains and diversified vegetables.

Another survey question asks farmers if they are interested in selling directly to schools, hospitals and retirement communities. Food system activists believe institutional buying is an untapped market for many small and mid-size producers, hampered in part by consolidation, storage, processing and distribution problems.

Other survey questions cover business development and agritourism. Another asks respondents if they want to learn more about growing fruit and vegetables without supplemental irrigation; Garrett conducted a “dry farming” trial at OSU.

The survey also asks farmers to rate their interest in learning about livestock and forage topics and woodland management topics. The latter include tree planting, riparian management and timber harvesting.

SALEM — Oregon’s farm regulators encountered no objections to a bill that would authorize them to conduct on-farm inspections and enforce federal food safety law.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture has asked lawmakers to grant it the ability to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act on behalf of the federal government, though the agency remains unsure it will acually use that authority.

Under Senate Bill 18, ODA officials could inspect farms at the behest of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ensure compliance with food safety standards for raw produce, among other provisions.

Last year, the Oregon Board of Agriculture — an advisory panel overseeing the agency — decided ODA shouldn’t seek federal money for on-farm inspections until it became clearer how FSMA enforcement would be carried out.

The ODA has nonetheless obtained $3.5 million in FDA grant money for FSMA education and outreach over five years, which will likely involve hiring three staff members, said Stephanie Page, the agency’s food safety and animal health director.

At this point, though, the ODA is contemplating cutting inspections of food manufacturers conducted on FDA’s behalf to catch up on state food safety inspections.

Any on-farm inspections and enforcement related to FSMA would be contingent on federal funding, but ODA has proposed SB 18 to confirm it has the necessary statutory authority.

The proposal drew no opposition from the public or members of the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

The committee’s chair, Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, said he planned to soon schedule a work session to vote on the bill.

Several other proposals related to ODA regulations have recently gained traction in the legislature, including:

• House Bill 2364, which restores the agency’s ability to mediate among farmers of genetically-engineered, conventional and organic farms. A program to mediate conflicts over cross-pollination and similar issues was created in 2015, but another bill unintentionally removed ODA’s authority to oversee it. The House voted unanimously to approve HB 2364, which corrects the mistake.

• House Bill 2256, which clarifies that ODA can regulate nutritional supplements as food. While the agency already licenses and inspects manufacturers of such products, statutory language wasn’t clear that ODA can regulate them. HB 2256, which formalizes this authority, has unanimously passed the House.

House Bill 2255 aligns language regarding ODA’s authority to regulate pasteurized milk with federal rules. The bill has unanimously passed the House.

• House Bill 2254 exempts Oregon produce headed for foreign markets from labeling requirements. Currently, such crops must be labeled for sale before being shipped overseas, complicating the export process. The House has unanimously approved HB 2254, which allows commodities to be shipped without labels and then labeled in the destination country.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The second trial involving people who occupied an Oregon wildlife refuge last winter reached closing arguments Tuesday, with the prosecutor telling jurors to use common sense and not overthink a relatively simple case.

“At its core, this case is about four defendants who went too far,” Ethan Knight said.

Knight employed a similar closing argument last fall, when jurors surprisingly acquitted occupation leaders Ammon and Ryan Bundy of conspiring to impede U.S. Interior Department employees from doing their jobs at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge through the use of force, threats or intimidation.

This time around, Knight spent more time stressing that a conspiracy does not have to include a formal agreement. He told jurors to look at the armed patrols, the roadblocks, the thousands of rounds of ammunition found on refuge property and the presence of men with guns sitting at desks where employees would normally sit.

“How do you know there was an agreement? You look to the actions,” he said.

The defendants are Duane Ehmer of Irrigon, Oregon; Jason Patrick of Bonaire, Georgia; Darryl Thorn of Marysville, Washington; and Jake Ryan of Plains, Montana. The men waived their right to a speedy trial last fall, preferring to have more time to prepare.

Three of them are also charged with possessing a firearm in a federal facility. Two are charged with depredation of government property.

They were among the more than two dozen men and women who answered Bundy’s call to occupy the refuge to protest federal control of Western lands and the imprisonment of two ranchers convicted of setting fires on public rangeland.

Defense lawyers in both trials contend the occupation was a peaceful, mostly spontaneous protest in support of the ranchers, and there was no evidence of a conspiracy or specific agreement to impede workers.

“All political protests involve some sort of impediment,” defense attorney Andrew Kohlmetz told jurors in his closing argument. “Democracy itself isn’t always pretty.”

Kohlmetz, who represents Patrick, said “criminal conspiracies thrive is darkness and secrecy,” and those who occupied the refuge acted in an opposite manner, holding news conferences, organizing community meetings and delivering lectures on the Constitution.

He said those who testified during the trial could be broken down into two groups: Witnesses for the government who got their information secondhand and witnesses for the defense who were on the refuge and got an unfiltered view.

Those in the second group, he said, know the occupation was more friendly than menacing.

“The media and law enforcement narrative is just a lie,” he said. “It didn’t jibe with what was going down on the ground.”

The protesters gained control of the refuge on Jan. 2, 2016. The Bundys were arrested in a Jan. 26 traffic stop away from the refuge that ended with police fatally shooting Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, an occupation spokesman.

Defense attorneys in both trials said the situation at the refuge became more chaotic after Finicum’s death, with fears rampant that federal authorities might violently storm the buildings.

Attorney Michele Kohler said that’s why her client, Duane Ehmer, dug a trench, the act for which he is charged with depredation of government property: “He feared for his life.”

Two Oregon State University associate professors won a national science writing award for their collaboration on a children’s book set in Eastern Oregon.

The book, “Ricky’s Atlas, Mapping a Land on Fire,” is the second by stream ecologist and author Judith Li and Peg Herring, communications director for OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences and who illustrated the book. In February, they received one of five awards for outstanding science writing from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Subaru of America Inc.

The pair’s first collaboration was “Ellie’s Log: Exploring the Forest Where the Great Tree Fell,” published in 2013. Oregon State University Press published both books.

As the titles suggest, both books center on the adventures of friends Ricky and Ellie. “Ricky’s Atlas” finds the youngsters learning about the impact of wildfire on the dry forest of Eastern Oregon. While visiting the ranch of Ricky’s uncle, a lightning storm touches off a fire and the children later explore the burned area, handle fossils and visit a fire lookout tower. Ricky plots their explorations and findings with maps and field notes. In “Ellie’s Log,” the pair study the aftermath of a huge tree falling to the forest floor during a winter storm.

Li, who is retired from teaching but still does some research at OSU, said “Ricky’s Atlas” is drawn in large part from her years of field work in Eastern Oregon’s John Day River basin. “Ellie’s Log” began as an initiative prompted by the National Science Foundation and grew from research conducted at OSU’s H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. It also marked the start of Li’s collaboration with Herring, who has a background in fisheries biology and is a longtime science writer at OSU. Li learned to her surprise that Herring also is an artist, and that led to the line drawings and watercolors that illustrate the books.

“I didn’t realize she was such an amazing artist,” Li said. “We discovered we had two little friends in our lives, Ricky and Ellie, who I invented and she illustrated.”

The stories are intended for upper elementary school students, but are not dumbed down, Herring said.

“These are fun books and they’re meant to delight children, but they’re also accurate,” she said. “The science in these books is matched by established scientific benchmarks. The level of precision is appropriate for a 10-year-old, but it’s accurate as well.”

The protagonists record their field notes in journals and make maps, practices that match the work of adult scientists and that Li and Herring hope encourage children to get outside and take note of what they see. Instead of a glossary, the books use margin notes and illustrations to help young readers better understand the text.

“The story is fiction but the information is related to the science of the landscape,” Li said.

The books have received positive reception from teachers, parents and young readers, she said.

Li and Herring are working on two more books in the series; each representing a different part of Oregon. One will take place on the Oregon Coast, with Herring doing the writing this time. The other will examine the natural world that can be found in a city, with Portland being the model.

SALEM — Oregon’s anticipated budget shortfall has prompted lawmakers to consider limiting tax credits for processing livestock manure into energy in biodigesters.

Biodigesters break down manure, releasing methane gas which is used to generate electricity. The remaining solids have many uses.

They are expensive, and farmers have used the tax credits to offset the costs.

Under House Bill 2853, tax credits would only be available for manure processed in biodigesters that were operational before the end of 2016.

The credit effectively costs Oregon about $4 million a year in foregone tax revenue and has the potential to grow more expensive due to the proposed construction of a large dairy, said Rep. Phil Barnhart, D-Eugene, during a March 7 hearing on HB 2853.

Barnhart said he’s not “wedded” to the idea of disqualifying biodigesters that became operational in 2017 or later from tax credits and would appreciate alternative suggestions from the House Agriculture Committee.

“If we don’t do anything, this credit is going to increase significantly over the next couple years,” he said.

The question pertains to how Oregon encourages the adoption of biodigesters, said Barnhart.

The tax credit is one approach, but Oregon could simply require large “confined animal feeding operations” to cover the cost instead of using the general fund, he said.

Lawmakers should consider the extent to which the tax credit encourages the development of new large CAFOs, Barnhart said.

“They have a number of problems associated with them,” such as air and water pollution, he said.

Representatives of the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association, the Oregon Farm Bureau and Threemile Canyon Farms — a dairy near Boardman, Ore. — testified against HB 2853, arguing the tax credit has promoted air quality and contributed to renewable energy development.

By relying on regulation rather than incentives, the government would effectively impose a new tax on dairies as well as their customers, said Len Bergstein, representative of Threemile Canyon Farms.

“There’s a reason we’ve decided to go in a different direction in Oregon,” Bergstein said.

By limiting the tax credit, lawmakers would unwittingly be playing into the anti-dairy agenda of certain activists who oppose new facilities in Oregon, he said.

Dairy producers already made a sacrifice last year, when they agreed for the tax credit to be reduced from $5 per wet ton of manure to $3.50 in exchange for keeping the incentive until 2021, Bergstein said.

However, Bergstein said other options were possible, such as setting a cap on the amount of tax credits that can be earned from biodigesters or reducing the per-ton credit amount over the life of a project.

Friends of Family Farmers, a group that’s critical of large CAFO operations, said tax credits shouldn’t be available to new biodigesters until Oregon implements a program to control dairy emissions.

Since 2007, when the tax credit was enacted, the number of dairies in Oregon has fallen from nearly 600 to fewer than 240, Maluski said. “If Oregon’s goal with this tax credit is to support struggling small and mid-sized dairy farms, it has failed.”

The first picture I am sharing this week was probably taken in the 1970s, and shows logs stacked on the lot along First Street, across from what is now the Port of Bandon's Old Town Marketplace building. Not sure where…

SALEM — The latest count of Oregon wolves shows there are eight breeding pairs in Eastern Oregon, meaning state wildlife officials move into a management plan phase that potentially could ease restrictions on killing them if they decimate deer and elk herds or chronically attack livestock.

Under Oregon’s wolf plan, three consecutive years of at least seven breeding pairs advances the state into what’s known as Phase III management. The ODFW Commission is scheduled to receive the annual wolf report at its April 21 meeting in Klamath Falls.

Oregon Wild, the Portland-based conservation group that has been heavily involved in development of the state’s wolf plan, called the count of breeding pairs “heartening” but warned it could lead to wolves being killed by “trophy hunting” or under the plan’s “controlled take” provision.

“Controlled take” means wolves can be killed if they are causing declines in elk and deer populations or are involved in chronic livestock attacks. Arran Robertson, Oregon Wild spokesman, said the group worries the policy will be used to kill wolves. He said more deer are lost to poachers than to wolves.

ODFW spokesman Rick Hargrave said the wolf plan does not allow a general hunting season on wolves. “This policy differentiates Oregon from other states like Idaho and Montana which currently allow general season hunting of wolves,” he said in an email.

Hargrave said ODFW has no immediate plans to propose controlled take of any wolves in Oregon. The five-year update to the Wolf Management Plan will provide clarity regarding this issue.

In a prepared statement, ODFW wolf biologist Russ Morgan said the state will continue to prioritize “non-lethal solutions to wolf conflicts.”

“Take (killing) of wolves can only be considered as a management response in very specific situations and there are no plans for controlled take at this time,” Morgan said in the statement.

Oregon’s wolf population has grown steadily in the decade since the first wolves migrated from Idaho into Northeast Oregon. The state had a minimum of 110 wolves at the end of 2015, and the 2016 count, due to be reported at the April ODFW Commission meeting, is expected to top that number.

ODFW officials have described Oregon’s wolf population growth as a biological success story, and the state commission took wolves off the state endangered species list in 2015. They remain protected under the federal Endangered Species Act in areas west of U.S. highways 395, 78 and 95.

The state management plan hinges on the number of breeding pairs, defined as two adult wolves that produce at least two pups that survive through the end of the year. Oregon counted nine breeding pairs at the end of 2014, 11 in 2015 and eight at the end of 2016.

SALEM — Oregon farmers would dodge a key requirement of two bills aimed at improving schedule predictability for workers but still face a “show-up pay” requirement for canceled shifts.

Under House Bill 2193 and Senate Bill 828, large employers in the retail, food service and hospitality industries would have to provide workers with additional compensation if their schedules are changed with less than two-weeks’ notice, among other provisions.

Proponents say the bills are necessary because workers in these sectors often contend with schedule disruptions that prevent them from pursuing an education, obtaining adequate childcare or even getting sufficient sleep.

Critics say it’s unrealistic for employers to plan two weeks ahead for canceled events, family emergencies, unforeseen worker departures and other incidents that can upend schedules.

While agriculture isn’t included in the two weeks’ notice requirement, farmers would nonetheless have to compensate workers who show up for a shift that’s shortened or canceled with less than 24-hours’ notice.

The employer would then pay workers at their regular wage for the missing hours, or four hours, whichever is less.

Farmers have objected to this provision because foul weather can unexpectedly delay harvests or other operations, so requiring “show-up pay” would unreasonably impose a heavy financial strain.

“Weather plays a big role and we have no control over this,” said Anne Krahmer, whose family raises blueberries in the Willamette Valley, during a March 6 hearing on HB 2193.

Krahmer said she closely watches weather forecasts and communicates with workers, but has nonetheless been forced to cancel berry-picking after only an hour or two due to rain.

If she had to pay 150 workers an average of $15 for each of the four hours they didn’t harvest fruit, the cost would come to $9,000 for a single day.

“It would only take a few days to put me out of business at this rate,” Krahmer said.

Apart from “show-up pay,” growers are concerned about provisions related to a worker’s right to request a flexible schedule, said Jenny Dresler, state public policy director for the Oregon Farm Bureau.

Employers must keep records of every conversation with workers about requested schedule changes, creating another unrealistic paperwork obligation, she said.

“If those conversations are happening out in the field, that’s really absurd,” Dresler said.

Under the bills, interfering with a worker’s right to request schedule changes would be considered retalation, an unlawful employment practice that’s penalized by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries.

The Oregon Farm Bureau is concerned that “interfering” can be interpreted too broadly to accuse employers of retaliation, Dresler said. “It sets up a ‘gotcha’ for small business.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The average statewide snowpack for Oregon is well above normal for March after a harsh winter that featured heavy snow across much of the state.

However, hydrologists warn that an early thaw could quash hopes for above-average summer stream flows.

Snowpack levels as of March 1 were 138 percent of normal, according to numbers released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The service conducts the surveys monthly during the water year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, said Scott Oviatt, a snow survey supervisory hydrologist for the USDA service.

The last time Oregon’s snowpack was well above normal on March 1 was in 2008, when it was 157 percent of normal. Last year, the snowpack was 94 percent of normal at the end of February.

The news came as a boon for farmers, ranchers and irrigators who have weathered several years of drought in much of eastern Oregon. If the weather remains cool and the snow doesn’t melt until late spring, above-average stream levels could replenish drinking water supplies and also mean good news for migrating salmon, Oviatt said.

“Snow accumulation during February was twice the normal amount at many monitoring locations,” he said.

Last year, excitement about near-average snowpack levels evaporated when unusually warm April weather melted the snow early, depriving farmers, salmon and reservoir operators of late-season runoff they needed.

All basins in the state have received well-above-average precipitation for the 2017 water year.

Lake County and Goose Lake basins have gotten the most, at 152 percent of average, while Mt. Hood, Sandy and the Lower Deschutes basins have had 111 percent of normal precipitation, the service said.

Lake Owyhee Reservoir, near the Idaho border, is now at 128 percent of average after several years of water levels that were well below average. The lake is now storing more than 500,000 acre-feet of water for the first time since 2012, Oviatt said.

Heavy snow has also meant reservoirs in Malheur and Baker counties are the fullest they’ve been in years, he added.

The reservoirs “aren’t near the normal or average levels, but they’re higher than they have been in the past,” he said. “It is good for farmers and irrigators.”

Tuesdays

PENDLETON, Ore. — The Umatilla County Weed Department has received more than $25,000 from the state to uproot two species of noxious weeds invading local farms and watersheds.

Officials plan to treat 90 acres of tansy ragwort near Milton-Freewater and Pilot Rock, and another 200 acres of common bugloss in the Walla Walla River Basin. Both projects were funded by a pair of grants from the Oregon State Weed Board.

Tansy ragwort, with its dark green leaves and bright yellow flowers, has been found on Saddle Mountain above Milton-Freewater and in the Bear Creek drainage above Pilot Rock. It is toxic to cattle, and both areas are used primarily for grazing.

“Our goal is to reduce the seed bank, eradicate and control the spread of tansy ragwort throughout the county,” said Teddy Orr, county weed department supervisor.

Of the 90 acres treated, 60 will be in the Saddle Mountain area and 30 on Bear Creek. Workers will continue to monitor another 2,500 acres between the two sites.

Common bugloss was first discovered locally in Meacham Canyon, and traced back to the Walla Walla River drainage near Milton-Freewater. It is a perennial herb, growing about two feet tall with deep blue or purple flowers. Once the plant spreads into an alfalfa field, it can be difficult to control and molds hay from the inside out.

Orr said the weed poses a threat to farmers, and the department plans to target 200 acres of farm and residential land around the Walla Walla River. Letters will be sent to private landowners asking for permission to access and treat common bugloss on their property.

Treatment is expected to begin April 1 and will be finished by Nov. 1, roughly the time when common bugloss blooms for the year. Tansy ragwort control is expected to run from June 1 through Sept. 15.

Anyone with questions about weed identification and control should contact the county weed department at 541-278-5462.

PENDLETON, Ore. — Marika Sitz knew she wanted to return to Eastern Oregon. Her timing couldn’t be better.

After graduating from Pendleton High School in 2011, Sitz moved to Silicon Valley where she earned her bachelor’s degree in human biology from Stanford University. Her focus was predominantly on food and agricultural systems, which led to an interest in water development and sustainability.

Now, as local farmers find themselves on the cusp of new irrigation supplies that could mean hundreds of millions of dollars for the basin, Sitz has come home to revive the dormant Oregon Water Coalition, a nonprofit group formed 25 years ago to promote water resources.

Sitz, 24, was officially hired in January as coordinator for the coalition. She will serve at the recommendation of an eight-member board of directors, including longtime irrigators and irrigation district managers.

“It’s nice to be able to come back to a small town like this and have an opportunity like this,” Sitz said.

Sitz is a former PHS athlete and Lantern Cup winner, the school’s highest award for personal and classroom achievement. Her family comes from a cattle ranching background and she said rural issues have always informed her way of thinking — even after college in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Sitz graduated from Stanford in 2015, and followed that up with a one-year fellowship with the Bill Lane Center for the American West. It was there she became involved with a program called Water in the West, researching solutions to the region’s increasing water shortage.

From there, Sitz said she began looking at opportunities in Oregon and came across the Northeast Oregon Water Association, or NOWA. That’s the group working to negotiate new mitigated water rights for Umatilla and Morrow county farmers out of the Columbia River, a delicate and lengthy effort with potentially huge economic rewards.

Sitz reached out to J.R. Cook, executive director for NOWA and a board member for the Oregon Water Coalition. Cook said he felt Sitz would be a great fit for the water coalition, which formed in 1992 to educate and do outreach, but had largely become inactive and nearly dissolved last year.

“(Sitz) lit a fire under us,” Cook said.

With Sitz on board, Cook said the coalition has been reborn. And though Sitz said she is still learning the ropes, she is already at work rebuilding their website and re-establishing their community partnerships.

“It’s a little bit about finding our place,” she said.

Ray Kopacz, coalition vice president and manager of the Stanfield Irrigation District, said it will take some time to get themselves organized after years of sitting in limbo.

“It never really died. We just lost some key people who were helping run it,” Kopacz said.

Sitz plans to stay with the coalition for two years before applying to law school. She said the relationships she builds now will be invaluable down the road.

“Water is not going to become any less important in the future,” she said. “It’s just key to the economic engine of so many areas.”

When Sitz leaves, Cook said they hope to continue recruiting new blood to carry on the work that’s already been done. It has taken 30 years of work to get to where they are now, he said, and it will be up to the new guard to see many of these projects to fruition.

“The goal is to bring people Marika’s age back our way to work for northeast Oregon,” Cook said.

SATURDAY, MARCH 4