Paulette Pyle says she is retired after 35 years as grass roots director of the lobbyist group Oregonians for Food and Shelter, but that may not be possible.

For one thing, she works 40 hours a month while new Executive Director Katie Fast gets her feet on the ground. “I told Katie I want to make sure she’s successful,” Pyle said.

Beyond that, her status as mentor and model — especially to women in agriculture and forestry — may not allow her to simply slide out of the limelight.

The Capital Press caught up with Pyle as she was once again on the move, this time to the Oregon Farm Bureau’s annual golf tournament. A sampling of the conversation:

Her best accomplishment?

“You mean what WE’VE done and what WE’VE accomplished?” Pyle corrected, emphasizing that a coalition of people have worked together to represent producers.

“I think the highlight for me has been engaging in a profession that is my passion,” she said. “Helping ag and forestry is very rewarding.”

She regrets that in an era of highly partisan politics, the people who supply society’s food, fiber and shelter have been “demonized.”

And yet there appears to be growing recognition, at least among legislators and agency policy-makers, that rural Oregon and natural resource industries are critical parts of the state’s economic structure. Producers have been able to make the case that their viewpoints deserve consideration, Pyle agreed.

“I think, politically, we have,” she said. “When we have time to tell our story and present the facts, we do prevail. It’s a struggle and it’s hard work all the time, but we can get it done.”

She has three major concerns over the next couple years. At the top of her list is the urban-rural divide.

“The biggest challenge is for rural Oregon to stay in business,” Pyle said. “Life begins and ends with politics, it’s a true statement. Until urban legislators take the time to understand the challenges of the less populated part of the state, that will be the number one challenge.”

Second on her list is another divide, this time between various types of farmers, “Initiated by our organic friends,” Pyle said. Oregonians for Food and Shelter supports all kinds of agriculture — organic, conventional or using genetically modified crops, she said. But she said organic farmers, hoping to get an edge in the market, are trying hard to bend public policy their way and complicate life for farmers who use other tools to get their crops to market.

“We ought to let them all grow what they want to grow on their own private property, and take it from there,” Pyle said.

Pyle did not include the flap between Oregon wine grape growers and other farmers over spray drift that can damage vineyards. Some wine grape growers explored taking the issue to the Legislature, but OFS helped steer it to farmer-to-farmer discussions instead.

“I think we are on track to resolve that issue,” Pyle said.

Third is the growers themselves. “I believe they need to step it up,” Pyle said. “Every farmer in this state, all farmers — GMO, biotech, conventional, organic — needs to stand up and tell their story in a positive way.”

On another topic, Pyle praised the young women farmers who have emerged to effectively tell ag’s story through social media and at the Legislature.

“They come as a whole person — a mom, a farmer — and present a different version of what agriculture is all about,” she said.

Paulette Pyle

Who: Retiring grass roots director of the lobbying group Oregonians for Food and Shelter.

Career: Came to Oregon in late 1970s, was hired by OFS as temporary campaign worker to defeat measures that would have banned application of phoenoxy herbicides. OFS offered her a job in 1980 and she was with them until announcing retirement this year.

Personal: 69, lives in Albany with her husband, Ken. They have six grown children and 16 grandchildren.

Awards and honors: Pyle will be presented the Oregon Agri-Business Council’s 2015 Ag Connection of the Year Award in November. A council news release said she “excelled at connecting natural resources groups with lawmakers to defend and protect Oregon’s natural resources industry.”

She previously received the 2013 Ted Young Award from the Oregon Forest Industries Council, which said she has “done so much to unite agriculture and forestry — and not allowed any one of our immediate interests to forsake the greater partnership. She also was presented the 2014 President’s Award from the Oregon Farm Bureau.

Advice to her successor, Katie Fast: “Stay close to the ground roots. Don’t take your eye off the ag and forestry businesses we represent.”

BOARDMAN, Ore. — The Oregon Department of Agriculture is drawing up a new strategic plan to guide the agency’s activities in the future.

The goal is to develop a document that’s actually useful to ODA officials rather than gathering dust on a shelf, said Ron Sarazin, a consultant who’s assisting ODA with the process.

“It’s got to be something that’s used on a day-to-day basis,” Sarazin said at the recent Oregon Board of Agriculture meeting in Boardman.

The department decided to update its strategic plan because the most recent version was completed before ODA Director Katy Coba was appointed in 2003, said Bruce Pokarney, the agency’s communications director.

“We really want to find out what we do well and what we need to improve upon,” he said.

To that end, members of the Oregon Board of Agriculture weighed in on the challenges facing the agency, including:

• Coexistence: The farming industry, and by extension the ODA, is struggling with coexistence among different types of agriculture, said Coba.

The battle over cross-pollination between biotech, conventional and organic crops is a prominent example, but the issue isn’t limited to genetic engineering, she said.

A similar dispute involves hemp and marijuana, as well as canola and the specialty seeds that are related to that crop, Coba said.

• Water: ODA is rolling out a program to increase its oversight of water quality in “strategic implementation areas” throughout the state, which involves identifying problems and persuading landowners to correct them. The agency aims for voluntary compliance but can issue civil penalties if landowners refuse.

While the agency has made significant progress in its water quality program, the objectives yet to be accomplished are “daunting and the resources are limited,” said board member Steve Van Mouwerik, vice president of operations for the Pacific Ag forage and residue harvesting company.

Even when the ODA does ensure that a landowner corrects water quality problems, the same property can easily slip back into non-compliance when it changes hands, said board member Doug Krahmer, a blueberry farmer in the Willamette Valley.

• Outreach: Some non-traditional farmers, such as those in urban areas, don’t know how to access services provided by the ODA or don’t feel like the agency speaks for them, said Laura Masterson, the board’s chair and a Portland-area farmer.

Such growers often aren’t involved in commodity commissions and other traditional channels that ODA is used to working through, she said.

Other farmers in remote rural areas are also reluctant to seek help from ODA because they’re intimidated by government agencies, said Tracey Liskey, a farmer in the Klamath basin.

• Retirements: With a large number of ODA employees expected to retire in coming years, the agency should build a “bench” of people who will be able to replace them, said member Barbara Boyer, chair of Oregon’s Water and Soil Conservation Commission.

The subject of developing future leaders to head key agency programs is definitely on ODA’s radar, Coba said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says two salamanders in Oregon and Washington may qualify for Endangered Species Act protection.

The findings on Tuesday about the Cascade torrent salamander and Columbia torrent salamander mean the agency will initiate full status reviews for the species to see if they warrant protection.

The findings come in response to a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity. The Center first asked for protection for the salamanders in 2012. The petition said they are increasingly rare because of habitat loss due primarily to logging and road building.

The four-inch brown salamanders live in forest streams and are found only in a small stretch of the Cascades and Coast range. Biologists say their health is an indicator of the overall health of streams.

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — For the third consecutive year, gypsy moths have turned up near Grants Pass. In fact, half of the state total of 14 detections this year came from one single trap in the Azalea Drive area a few miles west of town.

The leaf-eating moths don’t pose an immediate threat at this level, but their presence makes foresters nervous.

“We’re catching these before they have populations high enough to damage trees,” said Clint Burfitt, manager of Oregon Department of Agriculture’s Insect Pest Prevention and Management Program.

In large numbers the moths, which were imported to Massachusetts from Europe in 1869, are among the worst tree defoliators around. In their caterpillar stage, they can eat as much as a square foot of leaves per day.

Of the 14 caught in Oregon this year, 12 are the European variety, while two of the more destructive Asian gypsy moths were caught in the Portland area.

That’s not exactly an infestation — more than 19,000 were trapped in Lane County alone in the mid-1980s — but it is cause for concern.

“This is an exceptionally destructive insect that would change the health of our forests, making them far more vulnerable to other invasive plant issues, causing a loss of foliage on trees as well as damaging agricultural-related industries that would face quarantines should the gypsy moth get established,” Burfitt said in a news release from the Department of Agriculture.

The Department of Agriculture put out 15,000 traps statewide in the spring. In addition to the moths found in Portland and Grants Pass, there were three others in the Portland area, one in Forest Grove and one in West Linn.

According to the agency, Asian gypsy moth females can fly, unlike the European strain, which could lead to more rapid infestation and spread. The Asian strain also has a larger appetite for what grows in Oregon, including conifers.

Only three Asian gypsy moths had been detected in Oregon before this year — a single catch in Portland in 1991, one in Portland’s Forest Park in 2000, and one in St. Helens in 2006.

The European strain most often arrives when people move from the Midwest and East where the moth populations are far higher.

The seven moths caught here indicate a breeding population exists, Burfitt said.

In 2013 only two moths were caught, and last year it was three, in the same area. Burfitt said it’s possible to find the “epicenter” where females are laying eggs.

As of now, there are no plans to spray, but there is the possibility of moth eradication projects next year in Josephine County and Portland, the ODA said.

For many years spraying for the gypsy moth was done annually in Oregon, but the most recent eradication occurred in 2009. Prior to this year’s 14 detections, there were only seven detected in the state from 2012 through 2014.

“We put a lot of resources into mitigating this statewide, and we’ve had a pretty successful track record for 30 years,” Burfitt said.

Nik Wiman, an entomologist with extensive experience in integrated pest management, is Oregon State University’s new orchard crops extension specialist, a position designed to focus on hazelnuts.

Wiman, 38, started in his new position Sept. 16. He is based out of the North Willamette Valley Research and Extension Center in Aurora, Ore.

Wiman replaces Jeff Olsen as the lead hazelnut extension specialist in Oregon. Olsen served the hazelnut industry for nearly 30 years as a Yamhill County Extension agent before he died unexpectedly in January of 2014.

Wiman, however, will have more research responsibility than did Olsen, according to Mike Bondi, regional administrator of the Clackamas County Extension Office and director of the North Willamette Valley Research and Extension Center.

“Nik has more of a research expertise background (than Olsen did) and will be able to fill a role that more fully integrates the applied research as well as the extension and outreach piece,” Bondi said. “And because he has worked in the research realm as much as he has, we believe he will be in good position to bring in significant grant-contract funding, which will allow him to expand or to grow his program with faculty research assistance and or other program assistance.

“We ultimately decided, in conjunction with the hazelnut industry, to realign the position and relocate it at North Willamette, so the person would have more of a research community to work with and the facility to do the research,” Bondi said.

The college conducted a national search to fill the position, Bondi said, reviewing what he characterized as a small but relatively strong pool of candidates.

“We really felt that Nik was by far the strongest candidate,” Bondi said. “And we are very, very fortunate to get someone who has been working some with hazelnuts, because, obviously, it is hard to find people with a background with that crop.”

Bondi said Wiman is expected to invest about 80 percent of his time on hazelnuts, with the remaining 20 percent focused on tree fruits and other orchard nut crops.

Wiman holds a doctorate in entomology from Washington State University, where he worked extensively in tree fruits, and holds a master’s and a bachelor’s degree from Montana State University.

Wiman, who spent the past three years working as a post doctorate in Oregon’s brown marmorated stink bug project, said he already has started working with hazelnut growers to identify and prioritize research projects.

“I plan to be involved in issues like irrigation, weed management and cover crops. There are so many different interesting experiments to be done,” Wiman said.

“But the biggest thing I think is needed is effective communication to growers, particularly new growers coming on. There is really good information out there that OSU has put together. And also the hazelnut commission has good information, but there is not a one-stop place people can go and find out everything they need to know,” he said.

“I’m real excited,” he said. “You couldn’t pick a more exciting industry.”

Funding for the position was allocated in 2014, Bondi said, and is not part of the $14 million in additional funds lawmakers provided OSU’s statewide public services in the 2015 Oregon Legislature.

BOARDMAN, Ore.— The Oregon Department of Agriculture plans to create about 26 new positions with an increase in funding from lawmakers.

The agency fared well during the 2015 legislative session, with total funds growing to nearly $106 million over the next two years. That’s up from $97 million during the previous biennium, ODA Director Katy Coba said.

ODA will hire five new regulatory laboratory employees and upgrade its testing equipment, which is long overdue, she said at the Sept. 23 meeting of the Oregon Board of Agriculture in Boardman.

Three new people will also be hired to implement the agricultural water quality program, Coba said. Under that program, the agency uses aerial photography to identify problems in selected watersheds known as strategic implementation areas.

Landowners are encouraged to seek help from local soil and water conservation districts to correct problems on their properties, but ODA does have enforcement authority to issue fines.

Seven new strategic implementation areas were established this year, and ODA will identify six more next year, Coba said.

Concerns about pesticides led the legislature to devote more than $1.7 million in additional money to the agency’s pesticide program.

Those funds will be dedicated to four new pesticide investigators, a customer service representative and a case reviewer, she said.

As the federal government rolls out its new food safety rules, ODA will fund three full-time natural resource specialists.

To fully implement the Food Safety Modernization Act, which was signed into law in 2011, Congress will need to appropriate substantially more money to help states with outreach to farmers, Coba said.

It’s currently unclear what role ODA employees will play in on-farm inspections of produce operations, she said.

It’s possible the agency may focus on education and leave enforcement to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, she said.

With recreational marijuana now legal in Oregon, the agency will also hire a marijuana policy analyst, Coba said.

While the Oregon Liquor Control Commission has primary jurisdiction over recreational marijuana, ODA will likely be involved in the regulation of pesticides and edible products, she said.

Currently, no pesticides are registered for marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law, she said.

However, some pesticides have such general labels that they likely could be used on the psychoactive crop, Coba said.

The agency is considering developing a list of such products, she said.

The ODA is also facing an unusual situation with its regulation of industrial hemp, a related but non-psychoactive crop, Coba said.

Contrary to expectations, currently licensed growers are producing hemp for medicinal compounds rather than industrial products like fiber, she said.

“The things that have come at us are nothing we could have ever predicted,” Coba said of legalized marijuana and hemp.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Post Holdings plans to spend $90 million to buy an egg producer that serves the Northwest in a deal announced a few months after the cereal maker’s egg supply took a hit from a deadly bird flu outbreak.

St. Louis-based Post said Wednesday that Willamette Egg Farms LLC will be combined with its existing Michael Foods egg business after the deal is completed. The company expects that to happen early in its first fiscal quarter of 2016.

Willamette owns two egg production facilities in Oregon and Washington.

Post Holdings Inc. said in May that roughly 20 percent of its egg supply had been impacted by a deadly bird flu outbreak that hit the Midwest.

In June, Michael Foods sued an Iowa egg farm, accusing it of breaching its contract after bird flu disrupted the egg supply.

Michael Foods primarily supplies extended shelf-life liquid and precooked egg products and eggs used in food ingredients.

Shares of Post Holdings closed at $67.33 on Tuesday and have soared more than 60 percent so far this year.

IMBLER, Ore. — The spark from a cutting machine that ignited a blaze at Barenbrug USA’s seed-cleaning facility near Imbler earlier this year did more than damage the facility. It also served as the catalyst behind the purchase of the facility by Blue Mountain Seeds.

After the March 31 fire, Barenbrug decided to stop cleaning seed at the facility, creating an opportunity for Blue Mountain to expand.

“We needed room to expand,” said Bill Merrigan, manager of Blue Mountain Seeds. “We were right at capacity, both cleaning capacity and storage, and we were out of land to build on. We viewed this as a good opportunity.

“If growers choose to increase grass seed acres in Union County, we’ll have the facilities to handle it,” he said.

The purchase includes the plant’s 4-acre lot and 5 acres connecting an existing Blue Mountain seed-cleaning facility and the former Barenbrug plant.

The purchase also includes a slightly damaged seed-cleaning line, which Blue Mountain plans to refurbish and use for cleaning fine-leaf fescue and bluegrass seed. A second line was destroyed in the fire.

Blue Mountain has already begun storing seed in the west end of the Imbler facility, which was not damaged in the fire, Merrigan said. That section alone adds about 2.5 million pounds of seed storage capacity to Blue Mountain’s current capacity of 12 million pounds, he said.

Depending on how much of the facility Blue Mountain rebuilds, it could increase its storage capacity by another 2.5 million pounds, he said.

“We may not rebuild that facility the way it was,” Merrigan said. “We may put up a new building, or we may try and change the design of that building. That is something we are discussing right now.”

After the fire, Barenbrug USA decided to reinvest in a seed cleaning facility it operates in Boardman, Ore., rather than rebuild the Imbler plant, said company CEO and President James Schneider.

The Tangent, Ore.-based company has since added square footage to its Boardman plant and installed a third seed cleaning line, which is dedicated to cleaning bluegrass seed.

“Overall, it increases our capacity because it makes it more centralized,” Schneider said. “We will actually be able to clean more product.”

Adding to the incentive to sell the facility was its age, Schneider said. “It was an old facility, and because of our strategic plans, we felt it better to reinvest in our Boardman facility.”

He added: “We are thankful that good came out of such an unfortunate event. Blue Mountain Seeds has always been a great neighbor, and we can’t think of a better outcome than for the sale to allow both our companies to continue to invest in future growth.”

Barenbrug plans to continue contracting with growers to produce seed in the Grande Ronde Valley, Schneider said.

“We’re not abandoning the Grande Ronde Valley,” he said. “We still have a field man based there and we are contracting directly with growers there. But we are now cleaning that seed in Boardman.”

Among its plans for the facility, Blue Mountain is considering redesigning the plant’s seed storage facility with modern specs, improving the company’s capacity to handle modern seed production.

“Most of our warehouses were designed in the ’60s and ’70s,” Merrigan said. “They were set up for small trucks, smaller combines and smaller fields. And back then, harvest used to last a month.

“Today it is big combines and big trucks and harvest lasts about two weeks, and these warehouses aren’t designed for that,” he said. “We have small bins and a lot of labor involved in filling those bins.”

The sale leaves Blue Mountain Seeds as the only commercial grass seed cleaner operating in the Grande Ronde Valley.

AURORA, Ore. — In considering the ideal vegetable, a farmer will often desire different attributes than a chef.

Yields and disease resistance are generally top of mind for the farmer, while the chef may focus on flavor and appearance.

The Culinary Breeding Network, managed by Oregon State University, aims to help plant breeders bridge this divide by getting farmers and chefs to communicate what they’re looking for in a vegetable.

“There’s a lot of power in bringing these people into the same room together,” said Lane Selman, an OSU agricultural researcher who helped start the network.

The network organizes events such as the upcoming vegetable variety showcase, scheduled for Sept. 28 in Portland, where the participants from various sectors of the food industry can compare notes on new cultivars.

“A lot of it is focused on flavor and culinary applications,” said Timothy Wastell, a chef who consults for the network.

The network was spawned in 2009, after breeder Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed released open-pollinated new pepper varieties to replace a popular hybrid cultivar that was discontinued.

Seed companies frequently drop hybrid vegetable varieties if they don’t generate enough sales, even if the cultivars are important to some growers, said Selman.

Open pollination allows farmers to save seed, as they’re not dependent on the two parent cultivars used to produce hybrids.

When Morton developed several new pepper varieties, chefs tended to prefer those without a sunken stem, as it eases cutting in a busy kitchen environment.

“These are things plant breeders don’t necessarily think about,” said Wastell.

The episode convinced breeders and OSU that chefs and retailers should be involved in the variety development in an organized manner.

“We started realizing, ‘Wow, this is something missing,’” Selman said. “We know what farmers want, but we don’t know what end users want.”

Breeders often focus on developing cultivars that are “true to type” — that fit the vegetables traditional characteristics — but these traits may not necessarily be important to buyers, she said.

By getting input from chefs and other end users, the breeders can incorporate information that wouldn’t otherwise be on their radar, Selman said.

Flavor and other attributes that are important to chefs don’t conflict with agronomic qualities because the Culinary Breeding Network doesn’t showcase varieties that would be unappealing to growers, she said. “I don’t bring the dogs in.”

Oregon State University is involved in other cooperative programs with seed producers.

The university is paid by several seed companies to grow out vegetable varieties at its North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora, Ore.

The plots serve as a “learning farm” for new growers while providing breeders with information about how the cultivars perform at that location, said Nick Andrews, small farms extension agent at OSU.

Unlike a farmer, OSU doesn’t harvest the vegetables, which allows seed companies to see how well plants hold up in the field past maturity, he said.

Seed companies can also bring their customers to the location to demonstrate new varieties, Andrews said. “It’s a public location.”

Marty Myers, the general manager of a diversified dairy and crop farm in Boardman, Ore., has been appointed to the Oregon Board of Agriculture.

The company he operates, Threemile Canyon Farms, has about 50,000 cows and also raises potatoes and organic produce on more than 90,000 acres in the Columbia River Basin.

“I’ve got a diverse background in agriculture,” said Myers, noting that he worked on farms through high school and college.

Myers said Oregon Gov. Kate Brown asked him to join the advisory board, which makes policy recommendations for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, due to his past experience with task forces on dairy air quality and biotechnology, as well as his involvement in international trade programs.

“I try to find solutions rather than take hard line positions,” he said.

The appointment is not without controversy, however.

Friends of Family Farmers, a group that advocates for environmentally responsible agriculture, criticized Brown’s choice as misguidedly bending to corporate farming.

“For us, it shows the governor wants to take agriculture in the direction of industrialization,” said Ivan Maluski, the group’s policy director.

Maluski said Threemile Canyon Farms isn’t representative of sustainable farming in Oregon because it’s a “mega-operator” that causes air pollution and generates large amounts of manure.

It’s also concerning that Myers will be able to guide ODA policies that affect his company, which could create a conflict of interest, said Maluski. “They don’t need special access.”

Myers said it was offensive to label his operation as a “factory farm,” as it’s run by two families.

“It’s a group of families that have come together and we’re farming,” he said.

The dairy has a digester that captures methane from manure and turns it into renewable energy, Myers said. “When you look at air quality, we’re very proud of what we do.”

The company employs 300 full-time employees and is regularly subject to customer audits to ensure animal welfare and other best practices, he said. “Large does not mean it’s bad. It gives the critical mass to do things the right way.”

BEND, Ore. (AP) — The power company PacifiCorp is asking Oregon to change green power rules so as to reduce contract lengths and lower the amount of renewable power it is required to accept.

The Bulletin in Bend reports that the company has asked the Oregon Public Utility Commission to lower contract terms for qualified renewable power generators from 15 years to three. It has also requested to lower the limit on renewable power projects that the utility must connect to its system from 10 megawatts to 100 kilowatts.

Critics of the request say it will stifle growth of renewable energy sources by making them difficult to finance.

PacifiCorp officials argue that the fixed-price, long-term contracts don’t work with the short-term nature of the energy market.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Forest Service is planning to cut down trees that are encroaching on meadowland at Marys Peak.

The Statesman Journal reports timber company Georgia Pacific is paying over $175,000 to harvest about 3,000 trees Tuesday in the popular recreation area east of Corvallis.

Retired Siuslaw National Forest ecologist Cindy McCain is a member of the Corvallis-based Marys Peak Alliance who says noble fir reduce meadowland by about a half meter each year. The tree growth has fractured what was a single meadow in 1948, impacting habitat and views.

Five years of studying the issue led the federal agency to collaborate with the Marys Peak Alliance to remove the trees.

Work will cause periodic closures of camps, trails and roads.

ONTARIO, Ore. — A free pesticide collection event for agricultural producers in Malheur County will be held Oct. 23.

The first-ever such event for farmers and commercial applicators in Eastern Oregon was last year.

Oregon State University Cropping Systems Extension Agent Bill Buhrig, who is helping coordinate the event, said, “It’s a pleasant surprise” that another free collection is being held so soon. “We’re trying to get the word out to everybody to take advantage of it.”

A total of 10,506 pounds of unusable pesticides were collected during the 2014 event and organizers are expecting a similar amount this year, said Kevin Masterson, toxics coordinator for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

The collection event is being funded by ODEQ and the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the work has been contracted out to Clean Harbors Environmental Services.

Masterson said a household hazardous waste collection is being held the day before and because Clean Harbors is the waste collector for both events, it made sense to hold another pesticide collection.

“It allows us to stretch our dollars further by pairing those two events,” he said.

The pesticide collection event will occur from noon to 4 p.m. at Ontario Sanitary Service, 540 SE Ninth Ave. in Ontario.

Growers must fill out an application and pre-register with Clean Harbors. The pre-registration requirement is only for logistics purposes so the company can schedule drop-off times and not be overwhelmed, said Graham Gadzia of Clean Harbors.

People can use only their first names if they wish, he said.

“The only reason I ask them for a name at all is so I can contact them and make an appointment,” he said.

Buhrig said the sole purpose of the event is to get rid of unwanted pesticides and the registration information is for internal use only and won’t be shared with any government agency or third party.

After an application is submitted, Clean Harbors will call the grower and schedule a drop-off time.

“You can register under a fake name as long as you remember that fake name when they call,” Buhrig said.

If growers are unsure what a product is, they can just describe the quantity and physical state of the waste as best they can on the form, he said.

Empty containers will also be accepted.

Applications must be returned to Clean Harbors by Oct. 9. For more information, contact Gadzia at (503) 953-6397 or by e-mail at gadzia.graham@cleanharbors.com, or call Buhrig at (541) 881-1417.

Registration forms can be downloaded at http://extension.oregonstate.edu/malheur

SALEM — Oregon’s minimum wage won’t rise in 2016, which is expected to save money for farms and other businesses but also invigorate advocates of a higher rate.

Due to stagnant inflation, as measured by the federal “consumer price index” for urban areas, the state’s Bureau of Labor and Industries will keep the minimum wage at $9.25 per hour next year.

Both supporters and opponents of a higher wage floor believe that the flat rate will be used as an argument in favor of a substantial increase.

“It’s a mixed blessing, politically,” said Jenny Dresler, state public policy director for the Oregon Farm Bureau.

While it should be good news for low-income workers that prices aren’t rising sharply, the unchanged minimum wage will likely spur political action, said Steve Buckstein, senior policy analyst for the Cascade Policy Institute, a free market think tank.

“It probably will increase pressure in the legislature, or through a ballot initiative, to raise the minimum wage next year,” he said. “Both efforts will be bolstered politically by the fact the minimum wage is staying flat.”

Proponents say the unchanged rate is based on a nationwide measurement of inflation and doesn’t reflect unique factors, such as increased housing costs, seen in Portland and elsewhere in Oregon.

“To bring people out of poverty, we need at least $15 and in places like Portland, more than that,” said Jamie Patridge, chief petitioner for a 2016 ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage.

Patridge said he was disappointed by the flat rate but acknowledged that it will likely convince people that the current inflation-based system is inadequate and persuade them to take action at the ballot box.

“It’s probably positive for our campaign but negative for low-wage workers,” he said. “Workers should not be living in poverty. Every worker should be paid a living wage.”

The Oregon Center for Public Policy, a non-profit that supports increasing the minimum wage, said the rate would be $19 per hour if it had tracked worker productivity for the past half-century.

“We’re seeing growing support for some action,” Tyler Mac Innis, policy analyst for OCPP.

To achieve economic security in Oregon, a single adult with a child needs to earn roughly $45,000-$51,000 per year, depending on the region, according to the group. With the current minimum wage, a worker earns $19,240 per year.

“It’s certainly not good news that it’s staying flat. It highlights the fact minimum wage workers need a significant increase in the minimum wage,” said Mac Innis.

Dresler, of the Oregon Farm Bureau, counters that farmers in the state compete against others in the U.S. and internationally, so a higher minimum wage puts them at a disadvantage.

Oregon already has the second highest minimum wage in the nation behind Washington, she said.

“That keeps us less competitive than it does our neighbors” in the Midwest and South, Dresler said.

Farms in Oregon are currently highly diverse, but a major hike in the minimum wage would likely convince growers to transition to crops that are less labor intensive, she said. “That would be one of the reactions to that sort of increase.”

Other types of companies will have to raise prices, lay off workers or reduce benefits to cope with a higher minimum wage — or they’ll simply go out of business, said Buckstein of the Cascade Policy Institute.

“There are always unintended consequences,” he said. “There’s no magic pot of money that businesses have to pay more wages.”

The wolves found dead in Northeast Oregon’s Wallowa County last month were blamed for killing a calf in June, according to an Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife report.

State police have asked the public’s help investigating the deaths of the Sled Springs pair, whose bodies were found within 50 yards of each other during the week of Aug. 24. Police did not disclose the killings until Sept. 16, saying they didn’t want to tip off the person or people responsible. The spot where the wolves were found is north of Enterprise.

Police and wildlife officials have not disclosed how the wolves died. The investigation began when a tracking collar worn by the pair’s female, OR-21, emitted a mortality signal. She and her mate were found dead.

Wolves in northeastern Oregon are protected under the state’s endangered species law, and killing them is a crime. State police have referred to the case as a “criminal investigation.” Wolves west of Highways 395, 78 and 95 are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. The feds have delisted Oregon wolves east of those highways, but the state listing and management plan hold sway in that corner of the state.

ODFW biologists have not spotted the pair’s pups, which are thought to be about five months old. Department spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy said the pups — their number is unclear — are weaned and typically would be free-ranging at this point. Wolves are secretive, and not seeing them would not be unusual.

Meanwhile, the Mount Emily pack in Umatilla County has recorded five attacks on sheep since June, four in August alone.

Under Phase 2 of Oregon’s wolf plan, which changes as the number of breeding pairs increases, a producer can ask ODFW for “lethal control” of wolves after two confirmed “depredations,” as they are called, or one confirmed attack and three attempts. All five attacks have been confirmed, but the producer has not formally asked the department to take action, Dennehy said. The attacks happened on a public land seasonal grazing allotment that expires Oct. 1, she said.

JEFFERSON, ORE. — It’s like leasing ground to the future. On about 90 acres that in the past was planted in vegetables and corn for silage, researchers are raising varieties of fast-growing poplar trees that can be used to make bio-fuels and other products.

It’s an idea that’s been promoted and federally funded for several years, but the promise of making fuel and industrial chemicals from renewable plants instead of petroleum has yet to fall in step with market reality.

If the two link up — believers say it’s inevitable — Pacific Northwest and Northern California farmers might have another crop to consider.

Jefferson, Ore., landowner and farmer Rob Miller, who leased about 90 acres to GreenWood Resources, a global timber company based in Portland, said marginal land in Oregon’s Willamette Valley might be ideal for growing hybrid poplars.

Acreage in the 45-mile stretch from Albany south to Eugene that is not irrigated and is used for grass seed production, for example, might work for poplars, he said.

The trees regrow after being cut and can produce six crops in a 20-year period. After the initial planting cost, they require little care and can be harvested and chipped with forage cutting machinery. With additional irrigation water likely to be hard to get in the future, growing trees for bio-chemicals is an attractive option, Miller said.

“It would be a really good crop if the market turned around,” he said.

There’s the rub. The U.S. push to develop alternative fuels is stalled by a drop in oil prices and reserves tapped by fracking technology. Bio-fuels require simultaneous cart-and-horse development of expensive refineries and the acreage to feed them.

But many believe bio-fuels’ time is coming. The environmental cost of fossil fuels, instability in the Middle East and the limit of U.S. supplies could raise oil prices.

“Which puts this stuff right back into the sweet spot,” said Rick Stonex, westside tree farm manager for GreenWood Resources.

GreenWood is part of the Advanced Hardwood Biofuels Northwest consortium, which includes other industry partners and researchers from six universities. The consortium is one of six research efforts funded by the USDA since 2011, compiling a total of $146 million.

The ultimate goal of the project is to produce “drop in” fuel that is compatible with conventional cars, trucks and aircraft. Given the state of the oil industry, however, the partners are focusing on high-value bio-chemicals such as acetic acid, ethyl acetate and cellulosic ethanol, that are produced in the first stages of the bio-fuel process. Those chemicals can replace petroleum-based products used to make plastics, paints and even runway de-icer.

In additon to the Jefferson project site, researchers are growing hybrid poplars in Hayden, Idaho; Pilchuck, Wash.; and Clarksburg, Calif.

GreenWood also has a poplar plantation growing alongside Interstate 84 near Boardman, in Eastern Oregon. Those trees are intended to feed a refinery planned by ZeaChem Inc. The company plans to break ground on the plant next spring.

Sixteen students who will be freshmen at Oregon State University this fall toured the Jefferson test plot Sept. 15 with GreenWood’s Stonex and Rich Shuren, the company’s director of tree improvement operations.

One of the students asked Stonex if bio-fuels would be viable in his lifetime.

“I think you guys will see it,” Stonex replied.

PORTLAND — A high-rise to be built using cross-laminated timber panels is co-winner of a $3 million USDA prize designed to spark the use of timber products in tall construction.

Framework, a 12-story project in Portland’s upscale Pearl District, split the Tall Wood Building Prize Competition with a project in New York City. The USDA sponsored the competition in conjunction with the Softwood Lumber Board and the Binational Softwood Lumber Council. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the awards Sept. 17.

The Portland project will have ground floor retail, five levels of office space, five levels of workforce housing and a roof top amenity space.

According to the developers, the building’s design is intended to “communicate at street level the project’s innovative use of wood and engineering technology in the development of a high rise structure, along with its relationship to the rural economy.”

The building will feature an engineered wood core and lateral system to withstand earthquakes, and cross-laminated timber floor panels up to 50 feet long.

The design team is led Thomas Robinson, of LEVER Architecture. Construction schedule details were not immediately available.

Cross-laminated timbers, or CLT, are panels made by bonding dimensional lumber in perpendicular layers. Boosters of the technology say the panels — which can be up to 8- to 10-feet wide, 10 to 20 inches thick and 64 feet long — are strong, lightweight and much faster to install than standard steel and concrete construction.

D.R. Johnson, a mill in Riddle, Ore., south of Roseburg, is the first U.S. manufacturer certified to make the panels. State and industry officials believe CLT technology could revitalize Oregon’s timber industry.

JOHN DAY, Ore. — The Canyon Creek Complex continues to burn, but many people are already asking whether the blaze would have been less severe had the forest been managed better.

Dave Traylor, a member of the Grant County Public Forest Commission, is one of many voices questioning whether enough thinning and slash cleanup was done in past years on the 1.7-million-acre Malheur National Forest.

“We’ve got to make some changes because we’re losing our forest,” he said as the blaze reached 110,000 acres. “What we’re doing is not working.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Malheur National Forest Supervisor Steve Beverlin agrees.

“We do need drastic change,” he said.

Even Aron Robertson, communications director for environmental group Oregon Wild, thinks there are ways to decrease wildfire risks with precise thinning practices.

But overall, their prescription for change is vastly different.

Traylor thinks the forest needs more active management, including a significant increase in grazing and logging.

“That means cattle in the woods eating grass down and not letting it just dry up and become fuel, and we need to do some logging. Not clear-cutting, but spacing out trees and taking out dying trees. We can provide jobs and create a healthy forest that is fire-resistant and protects the water.”

A lack of proper forest management, including thinning, salvage sales and slash cleanup, was a significant factor in the size and severity of the Canyon Creek Complex fire, says Prairie City resident Levi Voigt.

“The only control you have over a wildfire is to reduce the amount of fuel in the forest,” he says. “I believe a reduction in the amount of fuel out there would have reduced the severity of the fire.”

It was Voigt who asked Beverlin during a community fire update meeting in Prairie City Aug. 31 whether the Canyon Creek Complex fire would serve as a learning lesson in forest management.

Beverlin said it would.

There is no denying that forest fires are increasing in frequency and intensity across the American West, and it’s no different on our local forests and rangeland.

But Beverlin says that is mainly because we’ve been so good at wildland firefighting for so long. He said before European settlement arrived in Oregon pre-1860, historically 100,000 acres burned on average each year on the Malheur National Forest — roughly the acreage burned up this year by the Canyon Creek Complex. Beverlin said fire scars in the rings of virgin timber has shown how often fire came through the area.

But those fires, while spreading wide, were of low intensity. They burned up grass, downed limbs and dead trees, but large healthy trees were strong enough to survive. The fires therefore kept it a healthy ecosystem, restoring nutrients while cleaning out fuels.

In the last fifty years, Beverlin said this is the first time fire burned the average amount of acreage that burned up in the forest before human intervention.

“If you look at how active we’ve been the last couple years, I’m not sure we could go at it any harder,” said Beverlin, pointing out prescribed thinning projects on a map in his office.

Bob Vidourek, a retired U.S. Bureau of Land Management forester in John Day, lives on Little Canyon Mountain, a few miles south of John Day and just east of Canyon City.

Before he retired 7 years ago, Vidourek guided a series of projects that resulted in most of the 2,500 acres of BLM land on the mountain being cleaned up.

That included the thinning of forest stands, the cleaning up of a significant amount of slash from the forest floor and timber salvage sales. The projects occurred from 2003-2007.

One of the projects was a 10-year BLM stewardship contract that was purchased by a local company that hired a lot of sub-contractors to do the work.

Because of the work that was done, when the Canyon Creek Complex fire came roaring toward his property, which was placed under a Level 3 “leave immediately” evacuation order, Vidourek, whose home abuts the BLM land, says he was never really worried.

“I knew if it got into that stand, it wouldn’t burn too hot,” he says.

The fire did burn some of the BLM land as it roared up the south side of the mountain, but it slowed considerably after it reached the northern part of the mountain and left most of the BLM land unscathed or lightly burned.

It stopped about 1,000 feet above Vidourek’s property.

“It killed everything on the other side of the mountain. I’m confident the work we did slowed the fire down … and probably saved some of these houses,” he says, pointing in the direction of eight other homes near his.

Grant County rancher Alec Oliver says the fire barely touched a pasture his cattle lightly grazed this spring.

“I was surprised at the difference between the area where we grazed earlier this year compared with the area across the fence that hadn’t been grazed in a year,” he says.

What angers a lot of locals, Oliver says, is the lawsuits that have stopped a lot of proposed forest management work resulted in the damage caused by the Canyon Creek Complex fire.

Traylor, Voigt and Vidourek don’t lay the blame on the Forest Service. Rather, they blame environmental groups that have sued to stop proposed thinning, slash clearing or logging projects.

“It’s not the Forest Service; it’s the environmental groups that have them handcuffed,” Vidourek says.

Traylor says based on past promises that never materialized, he doubts forest management practices in the Malheur National Forest will change much, despite the severity of this fire.

“They’re going to tell us they’ll do something but the truth is they won’t do anything that amounts to anything,” he says. “They are not listening to us.”

Robertson said he too understands the danger of living too close to an unhealthy forest, just crossing your fingers until it lights. And he said that more thinning projects may make sense in urban/forest interfaces, which accounts for much of rural Grant County.

But he said there are different definitions of reasonable forest management, and groups like his disagree with others on how best to create a healthy forests.

“Some projects call them thinning projects, but they look more like clearcuts,” he said.

Robertson said the fire has refocused the organization’s efforts on making a forest “more resistant” to devastating blazes.

“Fires like these are tragic, and we have to do what we can to stop them from being so powerful,” he said.

Beverlin said the Forest Service is willing to do what it can, but can’t make everyone happy.

The Forest Service fields complaints across the board. Often, people complain about logging projects too close to roads or homes, saying it is loud work and ruins their view. Beverlin said people also complain about smoke in the air when crews try to do prescribed burns in spring and fall, when they can keep control over them and use them to clean out downed fuels. He gets complaints from some groups when they take a more active role, complaints from others when they are more hands-off.

Beverlin said he will continue to work with the public to try to find the right amount of management, the right amount of logging, the right amount of firefighting, the right amount of letting nature do its thing.

“We know what a healthy forest looks like,” he said. “We want to get it to the place where fire helps our forest, doesn’t hurt it.”

Wolf pups from Northeastern Oregon’s Sled Springs pair haven’t been seen since their parents were found dead within 50 yards of each other during the week of Aug. 24th, an Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife spokeswoman said.

Oregon State Police have been investigating the killings since the wolves were found dead in Wallowa County, but didn’t make the case public until Sept. 16.

“We didn’t want to tip our hand,” spokesman Lt. Bill Fugate said.

Wolves are protected under state and federal endangered species laws, and killing them is a crime. OSP is asking anyone with information about the case to contact Senior Trooper Kreg Coggins at 541-426-3049, or call the agency’s TIP line at 1-800-452-788, or email TIP@state.or.us.

Fugate said OSP won’t disclose the cause of death at this time.

Oregon Wild, the Portland-based conservation group that pushed for conditions adopted in Oregon’s wolf management plan, said the deaths were “definitely a cause for suspicion.”

“Wolves have been killed illegally in Oregon before, and there is a very vocal minority that enthusiastically encourages it,” the group said in a prepared statement.

The investigation began when a tracking collar worn by OR-21, a female, emitted a mortality signal, ODFW spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy said. The female wolf and her mate were found dead.

The pair had pups that would be about five months old and weaned at this point, Dennehy said. The pups hadn’t been seen as of Wednesday morning, but wolves are secretive and the pups should be free-ranging by now, she said. It’s unclear how many pups the pair had.

Water levels in reservoirs across Oregon are two-thirds below average as summer ends, but autumn and winter weather may not offer much help, experts say.

Mountain snowpacks that provide irrigation water and replenish reservoirs are facing another tough year as the “El Nino” atmospheric pattern bodes for warmer winter weather.

“There’s a lot of concern those reservoirs won’t fill,” said April Snell, executive director of the Oregon Water Resources Congress, which represents irrigation districts.

At this point, the deviation toward higher temperatures over winter is projected to be among the three most significant variations since the 1950s, said Tom Di Liberto, meteorologist for the Climate Prediction Center at the National Weather Service.

“We do expect it to be one of the strongest ones,” he said.

While a strong El Nino is reliably associated with warmer weather, the impact on precipitation is less clear — the event generally indicates drier conditions in Oregon, but that’s not inevitable, he said.

“El Nino is never a guarantee of a certain set of outcomes,” Di Liberto said. “Weather can be chaotic.”

Areas of low pressure tend to usher in storms toward the southern West Coast during El Nino winters, but it’s tough to say where this “anomaly” will be strongest, so the Northwest may also be affected, he said.

With higher temperatures, though, the precipitation isn’t as likely to come in the form of snow, he said.

Aside from El Nino, another significant weather pattern to watch is the Arctic Oscillation, which determines whether storms around the North Pole will spread out and impact lower latitudes.

This trend may either enhance or conflict with the effects of El Nino, though it’s too early to tell at this point, Di Liberto said. “Those are the type of patterns we don’t have a ton of predictability with.”

Soil moisture is another consideration heading into winter, as the ground must be saturated before snowpacks become available in the form of runoff, said Scott Oviatt, Oregon snow survey supervisor for the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“We’re worried that we’re going into the water year with a deficit,” he said, noting that some regions in Oregon have experienced several years of insufficient moisture. “That has made the situation worse and it’s why we’ve been so susceptible to wildfire this year.”

Despite the “exhausted” soils, it wouldn’t be desirable for Oregon to see “high intensity” precipitation that would lead to flash flooding, he said.

That risk is particularly acute in areas that have suffered from wildfires, since ash impedes the soil’s ability to take on water, Oviatt said.

It’s preferable for the state to encounter a progression of “low intensity” storms that will replenish moisture without overwhelming the soil, he said.

Low stream flows across Oregon in 2015 caused water regulators to shut off irrigation for junior water rights holders weeks ahead of normal, said Diana Enright, spokesperson for the Oregon Water Resources Department.

Water calls also went back further in time in terms of priority date — the John Day River, for example, was regulated back to 1876, while Fifteenmile Creek in the Hood River area was regulated back to 1861, according to OWRD. In other words, irrigators with more recent priority dates had irrigation shut off.

It was also unusual that irrigators in the Northwest corner of Oregon were subject to water calls, Enright said. In Polk County, for example, Rickreall Creek was regulated back to 1940 and the Luckiamute River was regulated to 1964.

Longtime area residents said they hadn’t experienced such shortages before, Enright said. “We don’t usually regulate in those areas.”

With the possibility that more precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow, the management of reservoirs may need to be reconsidered, said Snell of the Oregon Water Resources Congress.

Water is traditionally released during winter to ensure adequate flood control, but if recent conditions are the “new normal,” those requirements must be balanced against the need for adequate water during summer, she said.

If there is an upside to the drought, it’s that more people are thinking about the need for water supply management and development, Snell said. “It’s an eye-opener for folks.”